Hello all! I have tried a handful of auction managers over the last few months including Vendio, Auctionhawk and currently ebay's SMPro. I'm using Sparedollar as an image host and ad launcher and SMPro to manage everything after launch. I also have an ebay store. My question is will this program be an improvement over my current setup?? I have a few complaints with both SpareD and SMP functionality and the cost is $21/mo for both. Any honest, unbiased input is greatly appreciated! Thanks

I've used other managers, but that was about a year ago, so it's hard to compare. I have used sparedollar - but eventually stopped using the few features I found useful (counters and galleries - both turned out to be useless) You might do better to tell us specifically what weaknesses in these other systems are causing you to look for an alternative. Also...what are your primary requirements?

I think what it comes down to are your specific needs. At the time, I wanted a single system to manage my inventory, post my auctions, and handle followup and emails - AW2K does that. I also did not want any kind of system that takes either a percentage of my meager profits or charges me monthly - AW2K fit that bill. I also preferred a stand-alone system - I don't like having my sales data on a website somewhere. I also needed a system that handled both my ebay store and regular auctions - and handled combined mutiple auctions - all done by AW2K.

If you had specific questions...you'd get better answers ;-)

Rich

Thanks for your response Tradeguy. I'll let you know that I've only been selling online for about 3-4 months now, so I'm fairly new but jumping in with both feet. I've been running 130-160 items at any one time, mostly in the $40-200 range. I like sparedollar's counter, gallery and lister. They also host 50MB of images for they're $4.95/mo fee, so I'll probably keep it just for image hosting if nothing else. The Tracker, they're post sale management system, is very weak which is why I've been trying SMPro for my after sale mgmt. The complaints about SMpro on the boards are scary! Many disgruntled users. The only real problems I've had are some inaccurate numbers in the profit & loss reports which seem unfixable...very frustrating. Having accurate and thorough accounting is important to me. I haven't used SMPro for listing/inventory at all, and I definitely don't like the $16 price tag every month.

I'm certainly willing to give AW2k a 60 day trial. If it can do what ebay's SMPro is doing for me now I would be quite happy as it would be saving me $117 bones a year. It sounds like it is more robust and feature rich than SMPro and less bug-free as well...that would be very nice.

I am wondering what you all are using for your email and image hosting services with AW2k. I'm using Myway free email right now which can be setup for POP3 but I'm not sure if it is SMTP capable, which I believe would mean I couldn't use it with AW2k..is this correct? I will probably take the plunge soon and build my first website via Yahoo Stores (now called Yahoo Merchant solutions) which would give me plenty of email flexibility as well as my domain name. Anyone using this?? Sorry about all the questions, I just want to get the nuts and bolts right so I can can focus on selling! Thanks again for any input.

Russell

FYI - We used hotpop.com for e-mail. It is a Pop3 with SMTP capability and is FREE. I have since switched to my ISP, Adelphia. I found it was more reliable and it hosts my images on the web space they provide me for FREE (my favorite price). We sell items for a charity we run and usually have 20 - 100 items at a time, low priced. We don't use AW's accounting portion. We prefer just taking the info it provides and entering the figure totals in our regular accounting software. we just haven't taken the time to really use that portion of AW. The best parts of AW are the total intergration of the item listings, invoicing, e-mail during & after sale, and general ease of tracking your items from start to feedback. The one price with low annual fee is so much better than the monthly or gross sale fees others charge.

Edited by MamasHelpers on 01/21/04 09:58 AM (server time).