Miva Merchant Express Hosting Questions

[jsdva]

I see that there is an option for a hosting account called Miva Merchant Express. I am not seeing a lot of information there. I am wondering if this would be a very good solution for some of my much smaller e-commerce clients ( >50 products). I understand the intro price is $9.95, then after a year it is $14.99.

Does anyone have any pros or cons that they can help me with in deciding on this type of hosting for my small clients? I have a client now that this sounds like a good option for them, but I would like to know what others experienced/know about this hosting/have expertise with(Miva folks).

Also, some other questions. (I know they probably sound clueless, but I learned a long time ago to ask regardless...)

1. Where would my domain reside...a registrar and then point the domain to my store at store.miva.com, or will I have an option when ordering regarding a domain?
2. Email? I guess the above would give me a better indication as to whether this needs to be asked.
3. So, no SSL would be needed since it only goes through Google, PayPal or Miva Payment, correct?
4. What is the deal with Miva Payment...is it a transaction fee or percentage based fee type of Merchant solution? Is it automatically in Miva Merchant Express, a module...?

Thanks in advance for any help with my questions and other information. I hate walking into things blind, and definitely don't want to go in blind when a client is involved.

Jamie

[leslienord]

Re: Miva Merchant Express Hosting Questions

I'll try to answer this the best that I understand.

You will have your own domain name - it will be in addition to your MM Express store. You have 2 options you can link directly to the MM Express store or you can create add to cart/ buy now type buttons and add them to your HTML pages that will reside at your domain name. You domain name name can be hosted anywhere you would like it to be. MM Express supplements your static site. Take a look at how PayPal or Mal's lets you add buttons. The neat thing about MM Express is it will also build pages you could use instead of adding a bunch of buttons to static pages. This something that neither Mal's nor PayPal can do.

Email would be up to your domain name host.

SSL is handled by MIVA.

I don't have any experience with MIVA Payment (I would like to see more payment options added like Mal's has) but yes, it's included with MIVA Merchant Express.

FWIW - I was able to create a MM Express store complete with look & feel of an existing site in about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, it was a beta store that I no longer have access to.

Hopefully, more folks will chime in with additional answers for you.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Re: Miva Merchant Express Hosting Questions

Heck,

I'm still waiting on MIVA to explain how the hosting partners are going to benefit from this direct competition...

[jsdva]

Re: Miva Merchant Express Hosting Questions

Yes, thank you, Leslie! You have explained that exactly as I needed. I couldn't find anything to answer those questions on the Miva corp site.

That does help a lot. I think it would be a great alternative to PayPal. I am not sure about Mal though, since I have not used that. I do like the idea of the store being hosted by Miva, since they should know their application best The under 50 products option gives a more affordable option for the smaller guys. The only problem though is the price then increases (cost of domain/host + miva store) to about the same price as hosting with many of the other solutions for the smaller client but with them you can have the domain/host/store all in one.

As far as the hosts (Wolfpaw Computers statement), I am not sure about that either. I do hope it doesn't affect the good hosts out here that offer Miva Merchant, especially since they offer an all in one solution (domain, site, and store in one place). For some of my clients, that is important, since they are first timers to the e-commerce world, so any amount of simplicity I can find for them helps them enormously.

I have had a bad experience for a couple of my clients that host at ValueWeb...ValueWeb decided they would host another wysiwyg store and do not give good support for Miva anymore...consequently any other type of support my clients there needed went away with the support of Miva. I am sorely disappointed with that too, since I always found ValueWeb to be top notch and fast help in the past.

Jamie

[leslienord]

Re: Miva Merchant Express Hosting Questions

Glad I could help a little bit. I don't want to push you away from a MIVA solution but do take a look at Mal's - there is a free version but there is also a Premium (paid) version that is loaded in features that I really would like to see MM Express include - especially the "Manual card payments" which would be Simple Validation in MIVA-speak.

As for Vic's question - perhaps it's a way to introduce new store owners to the MIVA product family and when the store owner outgrows the 50 products they will want to move up. Personally, I would like to be able to host the product much like we could host MIVA Order.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Re: Miva Merchant Express Hosting Questions

That is supposed to be the idea. Its a direct competitor of PayPal and EBay stores. At least that is how it was designed.

A lite version if you will, of Merchant to get customers used to the interface. Hopefully they will grow to want to full version, hosted with a MIVA Partner.

Thats the part of the puzzle we're still waiting to see explained to us.

As for Vic's question - perhaps it's a way to introduce new store owners to the MIVA product family and when the store owner outgrows the 50 products they will want to move up. Personally, I would like to be able to host the product much like we could host MIVA Order.

[Kanu]

Re: Miva Merchant Express Hosting Questions

Hi All,

MIVA Express is totally built for Small Merchants who can make their business online at a single place integrated with all the solutions.

Currently, MIVA Express is supporting 3 payment methods (MIVA Payment, Paypal and Google Checkout). All the merchants can avail the Google's one year free account subscription.

Again, hosting company has no opportunity to provide any services related to MIVA Express. As concerned to our business, we do provide design, customization support and we also give a book written for MIVA Express to our customers. URL: http://store.webstoreengineers.com/m...ry_Code=C-MXBS