Here at Invesp, we work with all sorts of ecommerce platforms, hosted, customized, free, or paid. Working with the vast variety of platforms out there has always posed a challenge for our team, which is why, in many situations, we require our clients to do the actual implementations of the recommendations we submit to them. That does poses another slew of problems since time estimates are often miscalculated and delivery dates can’t met. However, we manage to work around all of these issues by offering our clients step by step instructions and unmatched customer service.

To top the list of difficult and challenging hosted solutions to work with though, has to be Network Solutions. We are constantly challenged with limitations in the recommendations that our clients can and cannot implement. Testing? Not an option! Network Solutions is not compatible with Google Website Optimizer.

The folks at Network Solution are unresponsive as well. So a rigid platform and poor customer service, what’s keeping these clients?

Migrating to another platform is a headache. Although, ultimately, the migration would give our Network Solutions clients flexibility and ease of mind, the initial pain of migrating and ensuring that everything stays in tact is a resource, time, and financial commitment.

In June of 2009, at the IRCE in Boston, Khalid was mentioning some of the challenges we face when we give clients recommendations at a website clinic he was conducting. Implementation delivery time becomes an issue, and more so when a client is limited because of their solution. He went on to mention a few particular clients that are hosted with Network Solutions. To his surprise, an executive from Network Solutions happened to be sitting there. She quickly introduced herself and noted that she would personally make certain that our client’s needs were met. We were relieved for our clients because we felt like we made a good connection.

Several phone calls, voice mails, e-mails and months later…we are yet to hear back from her.

Before considering Network Solutions for your ecommerce platform, we’d like to give you a heads up:

1. You can not test freely. There are too many limitations when it comes to testing: how to deploy it, on which elements, and what the conversion page must be; so much so that it ends up not being worth the hassle.

2. You can not optimize freely. The pages are hard-coded so that any specific glaring areas throughout the site can not be moved, changed, reorganized, etc.

3. You are at the mercy of Network Solution engineers. Whenever they roll out something new, or upgrade, you have to go through the pain and agony of doing a complete migration. It’s a taxing process, and you have virtually no control over it.

4. Support is poor to say the least. Sure, they ensure that the site is up and running, etc., however, if you do run into an issue, getting to a reliable agent is a tiring process.

Every solution has its positives and negatives, but when you have little control over your website because you are tied down to a specific layout, your ability to grow and prosper as an ecommerce company is suddenly limited as well. Are you on a hosted or custom platform? What are some of the challenges you’ve faced?