ChannelOnline vs. Squarespace

It would be ideal for a small solution provider looking for an entry level option to handle many of the company's functions at the same time. If customer relationship management, sales reporting, having a indexed eCommerce site, or having the ability to connect to 3rd party solutions is important to you; I would not go with ChannelOnline

We've found Squarespace perfect for quick, well-designed websites that you can literally design and launch in a day. However, if you want to get more complex with your website, including custom backend integrations or code, Squarespace presents a bit more of a challenge when it comes to what they will allow you to modify on their platform (especially using third-party integration apps).

Incentivized

• Detailed product information
• Product reviews
• Supplier Relationships

• Squarespace is very easy to use, this is a super helpful thing as small business owners we have to wear many hats and being a full blown website developer doesn't need to be one of them.
• Squarespace has quick and simple plugins.
• Squarespace allows you to easily expand as you need to.

Incentivized

• Sales Reporting Features
• Product Documentation and Training
• Customer Relationship Management
• Account Management
• Supplier Integration
• New Release Information
• Search Engine Indexing
• Custom Solutions

• Customizing the sites can be highly UN intuitive
• Navigation for editing the sites can be difficult and frustrating
• Squarespace has different versions and it's hard to know which version you're on. You can't switch after you start making a site with one version.

Incentivized

Updates aren't valuable and don't see us ever being ahead of the competition with this solution. Feature enhancements that are released are just attempts to stay relevant with other ERPs in the industry. If you're trying to take your company to the next level this isn't going to be your solution unless you're a very small company

It's a great CMS tool. Easy to use and maintain. It looks great and the support is excellent.

Incentivized

The interface is pretty easy to use and get used to. It's the lack of account, product and customer management usability that hinders ChannelOnline

It's dead simple to use. There are no over complicated controls or tons of menus to screw things up. People with bad taste couldn't make an ugly website. While it may be frustrating for the pro designer to get exactly what they want, it prevents the uninitiated from making something ugly

Incentivized

We are down for 5-20 minutes once or twice a month

Support Staff is very nice and friendly. Most are knowledgeable but other than phone support they're lacking in every category

Help is available directly from the back end and uses full sentence searching to find answers to questions others may have asked before. With a ton of articles and support questions documents, it is very likely that your question has been answered. If not each page has the ability to open a direct email to support. Each case has a number and can be followed. Responses are often quick and have links and directions clearly stated

Incentivized

Squarespace if much less work than WordPress, plus hosting and security are not an issue. GoDaddy and Wix are okay, but nowhere near the flexibility or advanced feature set that you can get with Squarespace. Compared to the other products that I have used, Squarespace definitely offers more options, customization, advanced features and design options than others, for a great price.

Incentivized

New features are released twice a year. Often these releases are fixing bugs and will rarely be an enhancement that will take your company to another level of effectiveness

• It handles most business functions so the value is definitely there.
• Account Management is really inconvenient and will cost you hours of pay if you're in a business with a relatively medium-high employee turnover.
• It won't easily integrate at all with your website.
• Lead Management is pretty much non existent.
• Quotes and orders are fairly easy to manage so employee efficiency could rise.
• Training and readily available documentation on ChannelOnline is weak. This is especially true for new features.

• I can see how squarespace can improve efficiency since it's so quick to build a site on there.
• For those who don't want to hook up a bunch of different stuff to their website and make it work...they most likely have whatever plug in you need and you can add it. Worst case scenario, they have developers you can hire who can make what you need.
• As your business grows you can add an online storefront to your site and make more money that way! Easy peasy!
• They have an easy system for adding special SEO words/phrases so you don't have to learn SEO at all!

Incentivized