Hello ALL,

I've been using Turbo Lister for about 2 years. Just installed AW and starting to evaluate.

Posters on this board generally seem to give AW2K great praises. I am looking for cut and dry comparisons with other products. Turbo Lister, SOLD!, and others.

If you've used AW for a while and have knowledge of how it compares to the competition, please post your thoughts here. Perhaps we'll end up with a comparison grid suitable for promoting AW (or perhaps the competition?) ;)

Todd Stubbe
retrosoft
todd@earjoy.com

Hi, Todd, all you really need to know is that the tech support is fabulous. It does not matter how good any of those other programs may be if, when you have a problem, there is no help to be found. I was an old customer of Blackthorne before eBay bought it out, changed the name to Sellers Assistant Pro and raised the prices to an outrageous amount. I had been using the program for 3 years but decided to switch and tested 8 different auction management programs. I can't give you specifics on comparisons as it was 3 years ago, but can tell you that for this program beat them all hands down. The absolute best part is that Thom, the president of AW2000, worked with me so that all my database from the Sellers Assistant Pro could be imported into Blackthorne and I didn't lose my auction info and customer database. So, it is the tech support and the honesty and integrity of the owner, Thom Withgott
that makes this program so valuable - not to mention the very generous 60 days free trial period and very reasonable price. Another bonues is the tvery fast response to eBays changes - even the eBay auction management program did not respond as quickly as AW2000!! I can compare this program to Turbo Lister in this respect - Turbo Lister is just a bulk listing tool that will retain some basic info on the listing form so you don't have to keep keyng it in again. That is about all it does. AW2000 is a total auction management program that will store your customers info, send invoices, update auctions, manage inventory, send out end of auction notices, manage your email, and provide templates for your auction listing pages - just to name a few . You won't ever regret buying and using AW2000. Lenny Salandi userid: gemsoftheearth

Throughout my month-long Dec 2003 trial, Sold! was consistently flaky/buggy. Only about 3 of 5 queued listings would successfully post; conversely, this meant that I had the time-consuming (and frustrating) task of trying to repost the dropped 40%.

The integrated FTP and image editing in AW2000 are the best I've seen. Sold! only has limited image editing... but uses a really nifty GridView component (click column headers sort asc/desc, resize the columns, etc)... and employs a readily-accessible MS Access database. Sold! also has a kickass feature-packed report creation engine.

My biggest criticism toward AW2000 is in regard to its GridView. Why the hell can't a user see (choose to have) the TITLE field as a leftmost, or at least readily visible column?!? WIthout a TITLE and/or ITEM NUMBER column immediately in view (i.e., without requiring constant horizontal scrolling)... for me, the GridView has proven to be entirely UNUSABLE.

IMO, Sold! suffers from trying to do too much (sniping, purchase management) and fails to provide reliable CORE selling-related features. Even so, I feel it's currently the ONLY close competitor to AW2000.

EasyAuctionTools? Naw.
Kinem kAuction? (Bwahaha! What a wacked interface!)
AuctionTamer? (Hmm, naw.)

Blink, though, and tomorrow will be here. I reckon EVERY app vendor knows/expects eBay to continually make aggravating changes to their SYI pages (ones that seem to have no functional reason)... and that they will be leaning HARD on getting all of us to "get with the program" and resign ourselves to posting via their API (at a licensing fee of 2cents per listing, currently). Their big partners will get API discounts for added profit margin... little developers like AW2000 will get squeezed out of existence... and we'll be faced with the prospect of paying $24.95/mo either directly to eBay (for their flavor of API-driven posting interface) or to Andale, or Verio.

So, my mindset is to use AW2000 today, for what it can do for you today...
...and keep your eyes open as expanded-functionality apps enter the market.

"Why the hell can't a user see (choose to have) the TITLE field as a leftmost, or at least readily visible column?!?"

Because the user doesn't understand how to do it.

Works perfectly for me. I drag the Title column over to the far left and it stays there.

Don't get me wrong. I am very frustrated that every feature request gets the same cut and paste non-answer but you can put the title in the first column.

if only aw2k would add a timed auction posting capability it would truly be better than just about anything out there.
imho its about the only feature missing that the online listing programs give you and aw2k doesnt. aside from that, aw2k beats most other listing methods... but that is a rather large feature to be missing.