MarketDirect StoreFront

Bare bones way to sell your products

Vorteile:

We use this software to allow internal clients the ability to order their own marketing materials once we have them finalized. It saves us a ton of time since we no longer have to respond and coordinate each order.

Nachteile:

The web design feels like it hasn't been updated since the early 2000s. For new users, it can be confusing on how to access specific files and whether an account is necessary or not. Generally not a great uer experience, but it gets the job done.

A very good software package that could be best in class with the right core adjustments

Kommentare: Overall I consider MDSF a really good product, with a lot of potential for truly being best in class. We have hitched our wagon to MDSF, although at the time it was mostly due to being integrated with other EFI products. From a strictly web-2-print system, there are others I've used that I prefer based on certain customer requests and features. From an personnel interaction standpoint, I have nothing but positive things to say about MDSF. The team is great and over the past 1-2 years, the direction of the product seems to be going in a really positive direction.

Vorteile:

The software package has been very stable for us, which is very important. Many features are in place that we enjoy using that do not require being purchased ala carte, so you don't feel like you're being nickeled and dimed. Over the past 1-2 years, several of the enhancements and upgrades have really gone in the right direction for small - medium sized businesses and solved holes in the EFI solutions model (i.e. MDSF Fulfillment, being able to add a customer to a product for filtering, the new UI experience). Support has always been great for the product when we have needed it, and professional services has always been great when needed.

Nachteile:

There are some foundational pieces which MDSF was built upon that are definitely showing their age. Having your profile address fields and the checkout shipping address fields tied to the same requirements checkbox doesn't make a ton of sense as the purposes of these fields are completely different in many cases. Another thing is only having 5 customizable fields for user profiles. Another is the tiers features are assigned to. For instance, the 5 customizable fields referenced above are setup on a global level (i.e. if one customer is required to have that field filled in, every customer is required to have that field filled in). Having billing and shipping options on a company level instead of a group level. (we've had several customers who want customer admins to be able to see all shipping addresses and edit the address, while an end-user can only change the company and contact name fields and not change the address or be able to see all the addresses. In addition, customer admins may be able to pay with PO’s whereas end users must pay using a credit card.) The overall ability to import and export things. Whether it's products, orders, address lists, users, etc. fully supported both ways. Some QOL features, such as being able to copy an existing storefront should be a fairly simple thing then adjust it for another customer (or to use as a backup) would be a welcome improvement.

Storefront

Kommentare: The software is not what we were shown in the demo and we struggled along to find out we were sold the hosting option but it would not allow the custom reporting our customers needed so we were switched to a self-hosted option almost a year into our struggle.

Vorteile:

It offered a lot of features and some customization.

Nachteile:

It is so customizable it's hard to pin down or complete what is needed. It is like wanting illustration software from Adobe and they give you the programming language to write it yourself.

Works well

Kommentare: For the most part it's been great. Updates occur regularly and we see improvements.

Vorteile:

Setup and deployment was easy. Customizability was pretty good, and people on campus use it daily.

Nachteile:

It is advertised to integrate well with PrintSmith Vision, but we have issues with communication between both systems that requires employees to go in and fix tickets frequently. Price changes have to be added to both systems because one doesn't push to the other.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: PressWise

Gründe für den Wechsel zu MarketDirect StoreFront: Integration with PrintSmith was the biggest selling point.

my store front experience

Kommentare: Our customers like using the ordering systems and can easily see the product they need to order.

Vorteile:

I love the integration of our products into our store front. Easy for our customers to order and for us to implement. There is a learning curve at the beginning, but once you have created your templates, adding products is easy.

Nachteile:

The learning curve in setting up templates is challenge. Not an easy task for the average person.

Best Web to Print Option Available

Kommentare: Our experience with EFIMarket Direct has been exceptional. Tech support team has always been very engaged on finding solutions to problems to every day problems. They have developed two custom reports which have been very helpful. And they are always on call when we upgrade (we're self hosted). It's one of the big reasons I recommend this software.

Vorteile:

The thing I like most about the software is that it is built for selling custom printed products. Any other run of the mill e-commerce option will not have any level of option needed for printers. (From simple things such as impressions, and page counts, to complicated things such as variable data and mailing lists) Also, other e-commerce print solutions do not allow you to customize products like MarketDirect StoreFront. We have previewed other options in the past and StoreFront is always the clear winner. From being able to have multiple cost sheets, easily building products and specs, options for layouts, and gathering data from queries and reports. Nothing else comes close.

Nachteile:

I wish we had easier options to change colors and headers/footers of the site layouts. Our University has a specific color pallet required for departmental sites; I have to do a lot of custom work just to change banner colors. Also, some layouts look a little outdated. For a site to be trusted by the user; it should have a more modern esthetic. Last but not least, I wish the product views would show bleed - and if the document doesn't fit the page selected it would be great if it showed an error and ask the user to pick a larger page size.

Digital Storefront - Excellent product

Vorteile:

One of the best features of DSF is the way it scales for small and large customers. The system is easy to manage and handles print and kitting better than other storefront software. The Job tickets and files set up allow for automation through any type of system.

Nachteile:

The inability to route a product to a specific plant or printer. The routing is currently user location based. Also, the inability to connect with other systems for two-way communication. Currently, we can only send information one way.

Great end product for customers but getting there is hard.

Kommentare: MarketDirect will help us streamline our repeat orders. It is perfect for us to build a storefront for customers who are looking for an easy button for repeat orders. With this implementation, it also frees up time for our sales team to continue growing our business.

Vorteile:

The final storefront for customers is very professional and easy for them to use. I also like that we can personalize the URL for each store making it fit the brand of the people we are building for. I have also appreciated the recent update to the internal Products page. Our trainer [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] is incredibly helpful and knowledgeable about the product. He is the reason we can use the product.

Nachteile:

Setting up a storefront is incredibly difficult. I wish there were a training manual and videos that goes through everything you need to setup a full storefront. The help section is very in-depth, which is great, but it does not tell you what needs to happen in what order. I am also very disappointed that MarketDirect does not integrate easily with Monarch.

Great but it can be better!

Vorteile:

Direct integration with other EFI applications, such as EFI Fiery.

Nachteile:

Slow development process while switching from Flash base to HTML 5. The lack of easily available and detailed user guides. Pricing structure.

EFI MarketDirect StoreFront is an excellent Web-to-Print solution

Kommentare: Good local support.

Vorteile:

Easy to use, solid UI, not lagging or buggy at all, Smartcanvas.

Nachteile:

It is less efficient if your mainly using MAC vs PC hardware.

Digital Storefront

Kommentare: Overall the usage of the MarketDirect Storefront platform is positive. We are able to easily receive orders and move them into production. We are also able to easily customize sites to fulfill different customer needs.

Vorteile:

Overall the software is easy to use for both administrators and end users. For end users the sites are very easy to navigate and use. For administrators it is easy to customize site HTML and CSS if you have the skills, or it is easy to use the default templates if you do not. It is also easy to create and manage products, users, and user groups. We have several thousand products hosted on our sites. We are able to run our storefront job tickets into our MIS system with ease.

Nachteile:

While the software is easy to use for basic tasks, there are issues with more high level functionality. Part of the issues we have, stem from some of the administrative menus being cluttered and confusing. There are also some settings that are only available as overall site settings, and are not customizable for individual companies. Batch uploads/changes of products needs work, as it is currently very basic and the products need further configuration after they are uploaded.

digital storefront not updating...

Kommentare: i have had terrible luck trying to get my site updated and have finally given up. this is the second time i have come to this point and the last time it cost me $8,000 for professional services, on top of the yearly maintenance. i'll be switching over to another company at this point and reteaching how jobs are to be submitted to our shop.

Vorteile:

i have been using this software since August 8, 2008 in a fully operational JDF workflow that is the envy of every print shop that's visited. Digital Storefront and our JDF workflow made it possible for our very small shop to output a TREMENDOUS AMOUNT of small jobs very efficiently for both our customers and my staff.

Nachteile:

buggy updates while updating our self hosted site.

Implementation During a Pandemic

Kommentare: We haven't had MDSF for very long but it is helping our unit streamline job orders and keep track of all incoming orders. It has also made the process easier for our customers to place and track orders.

Vorteile:

I like how easily I can edit the site and how much I can edit. I've used services in the past where the company had full control over the ordering site and we had to call them every time we wanted to update or change anything and it really didn't work out for us.

Nachteile:

I don't like that Market Direct Store Front and Print Smith Vision are very different from each other but expected to work together. It would be nice if MDSF was redesigned to match PSV better or at least integrate better. I felt like after setting up PSV I spent hours setting up the same stuff in MDSF. Very few things translate from PSV to MDSF.

Interprint MDSF Review

Kommentare: Overall my experience with the storefront has been fantastic - Easy to use and (once set up correctly) integration to our MIS is smooth - we are still in the process of developing and realising the full potential of the storefront, with each element we get right it makes processing orders much easier. We set up different storefronts and brand them for specific customers, who really appreciate how easy the interface works and it looks great too.

Vorteile:

This software is fantastic for streamlining the order process for our clients, and processing orders that would usually take someone a long time to manually process! The back end functionality is simple to use and set up too.

Nachteile:

Personally when the storefront kicks back a technical issue I find it difficult to get the support with fixing it swiftly. Sometimes it takes a few days for the support team to get onto it. It would be great to have an easier, more direct contact with technical support for the issues that disrupt the use of the storefront.

EFI MarketDirect StoreFront

Kommentare: We had an old StoreFront type software that did not let us integrate our Production and Creative Departments, which led to delays and quality issues. When we changed to this new platform it allowed us to integrate all areas of our business which in turn created more opportunities and positive growth.

Vorteile:

We love the ease of use and the ability to implement this software throughout our company. This product has opened up more doors as well as new doors of opportunity with our client and prospective client base. We have seen a positive growth in business with a small percentage of that growth credited to this product.

Nachteile:

There is nothing we like least about this software.

DSF Review

Kommentare: The software resolve a lot of non-value waste such as logging in orders, tracking, notifying customers, and building a customer print job, pre-press.

Vorteile:

The tracking feature is great, the ease of use for customers. The software built-in workflow and, customizations of products.

Nachteile:

The amount of infrastructure, and planning it takes to implement the software. Although the business card feature is great, creating a good template takes a lot of time and computer knowledge. The lack of integrating the software with a shipping solution, and unnecessary third party involvement on the mass mailing side.

EFI Storefront

Vorteile:

Our customers find this software so easy to use it requires almost no training on our end. It's a powerful order fulfillment system when it comes to utilizing Kit builds to consume inventory. The Customer Service has also been wonderful! My EFI support team has been a real pleasure to work with!

Nachteile:

Occasionally there are things I'd like to duplicate in an easier way, but for the most part, it surpasses our customers needs.

Efi review

Kommentare: I've been very happy with this system, it does take a lot of time to get it set up and I'm always updating and still tweaking things. I feel like there is many more options that I could use and need to learn.

Vorteile:

I like the pricing component, it makes it very easy for the user to choose different options based on price.

Nachteile:

some of the layout options do not transfer correctly through our Ricoh system. So it takes more time to process the order than just transferring the file.

Review of EFI MarketDirect

Kommentare: Getting answers from support is not as easy as it used to be. No documentation for easy questions

Vorteile:

We have used this product from the beginning, Printersite Fulfillment. when it was used for fulfillment only. Having this product put us into the 21st Century.

Nachteile:

The administration of product has not eased up. It is very convoluted to add new products.

One Stop Shop for Your Shop

Kommentare: Overall, great.

Vorteile:

The EFI MarketDirect StoreFront has been essential to our location's operations. It's simple and intuitive, with extended functionality that streamlines our process; e.g. applying or changing statuses to multiple orders, editing order items after the order has been placed, etc.

Nachteile:

One feature I would like to see (if not already implemented) is the ability to view the order's files/documents without opening the order ticket. A small preview thumbnail of the artwork next to the order's info in the "Line Items" list would help with efficiency.

Healthcare Storefront

Kommentare: I have worked with this software for over 14 years and have only positive things to say about it.

Vorteile:

It was easy to learn the basic functionality of the software. We also liked how easy it was to deploy the software to a large healthcare system.

Nachteile:

The Fusion Pro software was not easy to learn.

MDSF Review

Kommentare: It had its ups and downs, however the experiences with bugs and issues brought up with customer service, sales reps, and other reps made the experience bad because they were not willing to be responsible for their own products, and was consistently not helpful and was rude on top of it all.

Vorteile:

The SmartCanvas software was pretty decent, offered switches that worked like if statements which was much better than Design Studio.

Nachteile:

Every step is manual, as a result there is a lot of repetition, doing the same basic steps every single time. There are also quite a few bugs in the software, even the simple ones were open cases for months to years, and was not fixed even on the updates. Then the updates brought more bugs.. was unprofessional.

DPS Review

Kommentare: I am pleased overall no major issues.

Vorteile:

The ease of customization coming in after the initial implementation I found it easy to learn how to customize the software for our use.

Nachteile:

Problem connecting to Printsmith, and talking between programs.

Shannon B

Kommentare: Overall experience has been amazing. We have gained new customers with the system being user friendly.

Vorteile:

EFI Store Front is not only admin user friendly but also user friendly. All in one software. Teach support is very responsive to emails and phone calls. One call and the issue is resolved.

Nachteile:

Only Con is not having a manual. There is an online but sometimes its not that details for visual learners.

Could be great with some improvements

Kommentare: We have several customers who will use this quite regularly and appreciate the ease of use. The amount of effort that goes into setting up a new customer though is a little exhausting. When we signed the contract for DSF, we were told it integrated very easily with PrintSmith, which we were already using. That was the big draw for us. After becoming familiar with DSF and how it works with PrintSmith, we do not believe that is the case at all.

Vorteile:

The storefront is visually appealing and relatively easy to use from a client's perspective.

Nachteile:

There are SO MANY STEPS when creating a product. From a ticket templates (many steps in itself just to create this) to the actual product to a template in Printsmith, it just seems like there should be a better way. There are so many small flaws that I find nearly every time I use DSF.