Update: The latest version of Interspire is fantastic and we will be reviewing it soon, in the meantime check out the full feature list at the Interspire site.
The quest to find a truly SEO friendly shopping cart has been a long one but I’m glad to say it’s finally over. I’ve been testing the Interspire Shopping Cart and its almost perfect.
There are a few issues with the software and I’ve pointed these out to Interspire and they will be fixed ready for the next version of the software which is due in October. Then this really will be the best out of the box e-commerce software on the market.
I’ve used the software to build a party supplies website for a friend, its not finished yet but should be up and running in time for Halloween.
What’s Great
- Full 30 day money back guarantee
- In-built affiliate program
- The URLs structure is excellent – products are just in the format http://www.partyheroes.co.uk/products/Sumo.html so no issues there.
- Each page and category has a well optimised title tag that can be overridden manually if required.
- Each page also has a meta description tag that can be overridden in the control panel.
- The software has Google Analytics support built in.
- Support is also included for a product feed to be uploaded to Google Product Search.
- Another cool feature is the Adwords campaign generator which creates an Adwords campaign for all your products in a few clicks.
- A range of excellent templates included for free
- Datafeed import and export.
Drawbacks
Meta descriptions currently default to the main sites description. You can override them for individual pages but it would be better to automatically default meta descriptions on product pages to be the first 250 characters of the product description. Most users won’t bother to manually set meta descriptions for all their products so an automated solution is far better.
The second issue is that changing the name of products causes the URL to change. At present the software doesn’t redirect the old URL to the new one meaning visitors see a 404 and search engines don’t get sent to the new product page. A lot of users won’t realise re-naming products is an issue so it’s important to apply the redirect automatically.
Both these issues are being fixed for the next version.
The Price
The price is $295 to $1795 depending on the features you require. More expensive than most PHP software but less than a lot of commercial .NET systems.
The time it saves can be considerable compared to the time it takes to implement any of the free shopping carts available.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been involved in a project using it as well and it’s proven to be quite nice.
Hi Patrick, Did you test Magento? It has all those features you listed + good solutions for the cons you listed.
Magento is AWESOME for SEO.
Hi Patrick,
Which version are you using for party supplies?
Thanks for the review, very interesting.
H
Are those URL’s dynamic or is there a flat file produced? If dynamic, there needs to be some mechanism to redirect to a single case version.
The URLs are http://www.partyheroes.co.uk/categories/Themes/Halloween/
But if someone was to manually type a link to that page I can guarantee you they would link to http://www.partyheroes.co.uk/categories/themes/halloween/
Well said.. Kenneth.. I was about to recommend Magneto.. ! Have seen many bloggers recommending them already. But it does have few flaws with duplicate content – same products listed under multiple categories that will result in multiple pages with same product description. But I really believe this should be fixed soon by the creaters or you could tweak them manually!
SEO Advantages of using Magneto (from their features page)
* 100% Search Engine Friendly
* Google Site Map
* URL Rewrites give full control of URL’s
* Meta-information for products and categories
* Auto-generated Site Map for display on site
* Auto-Generated Popular Search Terms Page
Worth a try!
I have heard a lot of good things about Magneto too, I did install it one afternoon to play with it but the skinning/themes mechanism made my head hurt! Though it probably is easy once you get your head around it.
I have been using CubeCart V4 for a couple of side projects, it is pretty good, though has similar floors as Interspire. The URL structure is slightly different and doesnt look quite as nice an example of mine wigtrendz.co.uk/womens-wigs/millie-wig-noriko/prod_40.html (sorry for the link drop i left off http though). Though it does avoid having /categories/ in the middle of the URL which is good.
Some features are missing, but a lot of 3rd party mods fix them like rss feeds, automatic gbase export, and brands etc.
It costs about 90 quid i think for the licence.
I think I might give magento a proper attempt at my next project. If I can get my head around coding my designs into it then I think it could be the best option out of the lot.
we use magento on a few stores.
it has massive duplicate content issues with the standard install & template/theme
you can control 95% of the issues via robots.txt and custom theme development
custom theme development is a must with magento who cares seriously about seo factors
Following Patrick’s review yesterday and Vinjay’s comments on Magento I thought I would download and install it to give it a try.
Well, after I eventually managed to get it installed (the installer didn’t work at all either on my test server or on my shared host) it looked pretty good and full of many good features.
I was able to setup Google Checkout without any problems and was making transactions in Sandbox within a few minutes.
I then thought I would try the Protx module as I use them quite a bit on other sites and the magentoconnect installer wouldn’t complete, it just stopped. I then tried to download another theme and the installer stopped too!!
Looking around the forum it may have something to do with file/folder permissions however, I did exactly as it said and I still couldn’t get it to work. I would even have been happy to download and ftp the files to my server and install them that way however, I don’t think that is possible as I can’t find any links to download the files other than the source files for Magento.
So far I have spent quite some time playing around and although I have a working site, I cannot update anything and given some of the comments and concerns on the forum about having to change file permissions, it does make me a little concerned about the vulnerability of a working store.
If someone has had positive results, I would be happy to hear them however, I think I might just try Patrick’s recommendation and see if that interspire is less problematic!
IMHO,
Interspire Shopping Cart is probably THE solution for eCommerce website. A close friend of mine had had many troubles with free eCommerce solutions. However, after he had earned some money, he decided to invest it, and his partner’s suggestion was to actually buy some real software for eCommerce. Then, he bought Ultracart. Pretty good, you’d say. Yes, it was pretty good, but it lacked some features, one of them being not having an affiliate integrated which was really boosting my friend’s sales. He then ran onto Interspire’s Shopping cart and lived happily ever after
STEER CLEAR OF MAGENTO. Trust me. The code is a mess, you can’t get support unless you pay $1500/year and their roadmap is utter bull. Everything listed on the roadmap never materializes.
Interspire on the other hand are up to version 4.0 – their features blow Magento out of the water (yes including SEO). Their product comes with 50 store templates that are plain sexy, they have drag and drop design mode, full QuickBooks support, 40+ payment gateways, etc – these guys KNOW HOW TO BUILD GREAT SOFTWARE.
Magento is a web design company turned software company. Interspire has been a pure software company for 5 years. These guys are worth every cent – and did I mention their support is phenominal too?
Boo Magento – HOORAY INTERSPIRE. I can’t recommend them enough.
I second the idea of staying away from magento. The code was horrible written. The load its puts on the server is HUGE. Magento is not internet marketing friendly, SEO Friendly maybe, but that is just 1 area of internet marketing. Adding a product takes forever. There are just too many bugs and flaws to name. I personally dont see magento competing with bigger cart solutions like volusion or zoovy or even interspire anytime soon. If magento was not free, no one would use it just like zencart.
I agree Magento is the very best for SEO and that should be the number one for any one selling online. However Magento has a major flaw… its too slow or needs two servers to run it at speed once you get a few thousend orders, for me the code is also very difficult to understand. I will go with Interspire once the URL address issues are set up correctly, which should not really be too big a job.
Hi, I tried to enable seo friendly urls but after that site crashed. Those url or .html are not working.
could you tell me what else I need to modify to make this work?
Thanks
Pankaj
Hi Patrick,
First and foremost, thanks for the great post and blog, just stumbled over it, and enjoying the read. Unfortunately the Drawbacks are still not implemented, I hope they will be included in the Feb release. Also, I hope there’s an option to fully customize urls.
I’ve a couple of qs and wonder if somebody can help.
1. I found InterSpire through Finest Shops, http://www.finestshops.com, who seems to offer great support and ecommerce hosting. Any comments / recommendations about suitable hosting for InterSpire?
2. Do you know if the new update will allow customized urls? And in the root directory?
3. Yahoo! Store allows customized urls, and from the root directory without the /product and /categories folders. Check out myWeddingFavors.com (Brad Fallon) e.g, that seems to have an SEO advantage. Do you agree? Prior to the next InterSpire update, am contemplating building duplicate category pages with customized urls in the root directory. Does this make sense?
Thanks!
Andy
We are looking at Interspire for a 2nd online store. We have researched about 30 others, and actually tested 5-6 (including Magento), and none of them made the grade for what we need. Interspire looks to be about the best option right now, but we need to find more feedback from actual users, not just feature list readers.
Magento especially has not lived up to the hype it has been getting – I 2nd most of the comments already stated above about spaghetti code, poor documentation, bugs, and extreme server loads.
Hi guys,
I’m with finestshops.com and we offer Interspire based ecommerce solutions. Right now, we are running a promotion and you can get Interspire store installed and ready to use for free. We will ask you to pay for Interspire license and hosting after 30 days but only if you decide to keep it.
If you are interested, please contact sales @ finestshops.com and we’ll set you up.
Looking forward to work with you,
Anton
http://www.finestshops.com
Windsun,
If you contact sales @ finestshops.com and we can get you in touch with some of our clients who is running stores on Interspire.
Regards,
Anton
finestshops.com
Very good post and some interesting comments.
We’re in the process of migrating from OsCommerce to Magento. I found that interspire whilst a nice fast package had limited options settings, however one very nice feature was the ability to add a weight to a variable. Magento is very easy for adding a product and options in one go, some of our scales have upwards of 15-20 options/variables and often they are not carried over to other products.
Magento does not allow for this as standard, it would be very handy to have as we have a number of products that have different sizes and weight options. This has a great impact on calculating the shipping weights as the base product may only weigh 15kg, but choosing a certain option can add 30kg, an extra cost of around £7.50 and the margins are already tight.
I will report back when i have got a fully working store up.
You might want to check out the Interspire forums before considering purchasing from them direct…
http://www.interspire.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=190
I have been involved in a Interspire development for a client who actually got a refund before his 60 days where over.
Interspire is not a SEO friendly cart for several reasons like no clean URL’s and every time you change an item title it rewrites the URL
Support sucks slow not to the point it took often several days of email tennis to get them just started on an issue
Implementation of many features is mediocre at best
It’s quite expensive and the update-upgrade policies and pricing is close to criminal
Updating of a customised cart is very time (cost) intensive and updates are frequent as bug testing and detection is basically done by paying customers
If you thinking about spending money with Interspire I would request access from Interspire to the customer to customer forum BEFORE purchasing, thats where all the customer comments Interspire does not want you to see are and they can be very helpfull in making an informed decission.
Some posts like this can be found there:
I’m thoroughly confused here and share in most of the mentioned frustration.
I recently ‘renewed’ (at least I think that’s what I did) for $359 in February and thought I was covered for any upgrades/bug fixes that would come out in the future. Here’s what the email from ISC said:
Hi ,
You are receiving this email because one or more of your Interspire support and upgrade periods are about to expire in 30 days.
You can renew your Support & Upgrades at any point of time at http://www.interspire.com/clientarea/. Keeping your support and upgrades active will ensure that you can always get updates when they are available and support when required.
My complaints:
* I bought this product in Beta and have found tons of bugs…I haven’t counted them all, but the ‘Shopping Cart’ folder in my email box has 712 items in it.
* I would guess that 50-75% of the upgrades I have done to my cart have broken something.
* I realize that products are unstable in Beta, but even after Beta, ISC was still very much bug-ridden. After a while, I became scared of upgrading the cart because I was afraid of the upgrade breaking something else. I typically waited a week or more to upgrade. I still haven’t upgraded to 4.0.7 and from what I have read, 5.0 and even 5.01 are bug-ridden as well.
* I was not promised…but was convinced by ISC staff before I bought ISC that International USPS real-time shipping quotes would come and they still haven’t.
For the most part, Tech Support has been good and the team has been responsive. Overall, I really do like the look and feel of the cart, but options for shipping has always been the weakest area and it is still not nearly what I would like it to be. Also, this upgrade mess is really a dissapointment to me.
So now I wonder…I just spent $359 a little over a month ago and find out I have to pay more for 5.0? What about version 4…is my $359 going to pay for continued bug fixes or is 4.0.7 the last one? Do I have to upgrade to 5.0 to enjoy bug fixes? Is Interspire going to continue to support two versions?
What did the $359 buy me?
Interspire = arrogant management, highway robbery, empty promises and misleading advertising
I found a great ecommerce software: http://www.renlock.com
It is a Romanian company with a great product.
I was really surprised by the power and elasticity that they provide.
Guys I am really intrigued now.
Is Interspire good, bad or indifferent?
I was planning to calling them to set up a new e-commerce store, but given the comments I am now more than a little unsure.
Hi everyone,
After really listening to your feedback and talking to hundreds of customers, we’ve now officially changed our upgrades and maintenance policy.
Here’s an overview:
- All new purchases include 12 months of maintenance free
- All upgrades are provided to customers free instead of being paid
- If your maintenance period expires, you can optionally renew it, however it’s completely optional
- All customers have been given an extra 9 months of maintenance free, giving them more technical support and the latest release of the Interspire Shopping Cart free
The new upgrade and maintenance policies have been really well received by customers and we really do thank everyone for your feedback, both good and bad.
You can have your say and learn about our new policy (which was implemented last Monday) here:
http://www.interspire.com/content/blogs/477/
Cheers,
Mitchell Harper
Interspire Co-Founder
mitch [AT] interspire [DOT] com
They charge usd 1,800 for beta versions. e.g. here the bugs in previous v5.05:
Bug Fixes / Changes
Bug #5506: UPS online tool should allow shop owner to select Destination type
Bug #5507: Edit an user doesn’t save the user status
Bug #5508: The page should stay on reviews tab after posting a review on product page
Bug #5511: Furniture template does not have a transparent background on certain versions of PHP/GD
Bug #5117: Side top sellers panel’s layout is broken when there is only one item in the list
Bug #5523: TextLink menu items that have a sub menu and are on the right of the page should be right aligned
Bug #5524: Duplicate array key 2 for ReturnReasons, causing “There was a problem” to not show (reported by websnail/Martin)
Bug #5525: Undefined variable warning shows in log when no currency modules are selected (reported by websnail/Martin)
Bug #5533: FastCGI servers may not load statistics graphs
Bug #5535: If all the products have fixed shipping in the cart then the shipping total will be $0 in Google Checkout
Bug #5534: Ogone module generates a PHP error if the server’s IP can’t be determined
Bug #5536: Extra error handling if a product condition isn’t supplied when importing a product
Bug #5541: Store importer/exporter can hang on some servers when flushing output buffers
Bug #5532: Top links in the Furniture template are split up over multiple lines
Bug #5538: Invoices should show line item total for each item in the order
Bug #5539: System and administrator logs are not pruned automatically according to max # of entries
Bug #5540: Include tags should only allow file inclusion from a specific directory, and not allow PHP execution from local files
Bug #5542: Inventory tracking is always being turned on when updating existing products via import
Bug #5566: Uploaded category and brand images do not set the correct file permissions
Bug #5568: If all products are tax free and tax is setup to be based on subtotal + shipping, no tax is calculated
Bug #5570: Any directories created should be CHMOD to ISC_WRITEABLE_DIR_PERM, not 777
Bug #5571: The ‘Allow customers to purchase this item’ string is hard coded in the product form template file
Bug #5576: Product condition is not using the language variables on the product page
Bug #5577: Disabled categories that are assigned to products still show in the product breadcrumb
Bug #5579: Store may get stuck in redirect loop when using SSL under some server configurations
Bug #5588: Order notification email shows %numItems
Bug #5563: Configurable fields and variations on product page are displayed inconsistently across browsers
Bug #5569: Store Design area doesn’t load when using PHP version less than 5.2
Bug #5592: Google Base export uses new character cleaning function for descriptions
Bug #5602: Interspire Payment Gateway doesn’t process orders after a successful transaction
Bug #5620: Images can’t be uploaded from TinyMCE or Image Manager if their server has open_basedir restrictions
Bug #5646: Order status doesn’t update for the second ping from PayPal
Bug #5647: Upload logo image function should also allow capital file extension
Bug #5649: Edit State form field doesn’t save the updated info.
Bug #5650: Test mode option should be available for UPS online tool and the negotiate rate is not displaying
Bug #5648: Remove a product or category should remove the discount rules in customer group for the product and category
Bug #5651: SideMiniCart error when showing checkout module’s own buy button
Bug #5659: Order instructions for orders listed in customers account show variables such as %%OrderID%%
Bug #5662: New categories are not showing in the category list
Bug #5669: Adding a virtual item to an order as the first item causes the manual order page to hang
Bug #5682: Company name for addresses isn’t loaded when editing an order
Bug #5685: PHP 5.3 shows “Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated” during installation
Bug #5687: Tax that is included in the total may not be displayed in some circumstances when printing multiple invoices
Bug #5702: Checkout modules disappear in the admin when using invalid biltin checkout module
Bug #5703: Added upgrade check for the old iDEAL module which can cause checkout settings to show blank
Bug #5684: PHP 5.3 doesn’t parse ini files where the value contains a dollar symbol at the start or end of the string
Bug #5372: ‘Use billing address’ and ‘Use shipping address’ shouldn’t be able to be checked at the same time
Bug #5587: Delayed capture for Authorize.net shows incorrect message in store logs
Bug #5583: Order emails that don’t contain order comments still show the order comments header
Bug #5147: Product list display mode is broken in Shoes template
Bug #5307: Users without the Add Brand permission can still create a brand when creating a product
Bug #5729: Cannot login again in express checkout
Bug #5146: Product list display mode is broken in Infinity template
Bug #5730: Force overriding address in PayPal standard causes orders can’t be processed in some countries.
Bug #5652: CARDSTART and CARDISSUE paramaters are needed for Switch/Solo cards when using PayPal Website Payments PRO UK
Bug #5737: USPS registration link in shipping setup instructions is incorrect
Bug #5178: Checkout page can be accessed when cart is empty
Bug #5406: SideCategoryNewProducts snippet needs updating
Bug #5335: There is no paging on discount rules, so if you have > 20, you can’t access the remaining rules
Bug #5699: Some payment methods accept duplicate transactions if confirm order button is pressed multiple times
Bug #5721: Rewrite Protx direct to support 3D secure
Bug #5746: Disabling the default payment gateway with no other payment providers enabled causes “Checkout Providers” to disappear.
Bug #5750: -Or use- text sometimes doesn’t show on cart page for PayPal express checkout
Bug #5752: php errors on the page after clicking on checkout button when using Cash on delivery
Bug #5758: ‘Not Rated’ image doesn’t align with the other elements in product boxes
Bug #5760: Product rating in product boxes shows underneath other elements until page refresh
Bug #5761: Product rating is shown in product boxes when the display setting is disabled
Bug #5764: Coupons not working correctly in Google Checkout
Bug #5717: Order notifications and customer subscriptions don’t occur under some circumstances when using a gateway that does a ping back to complete the order
Bug #5675: IIS Servers Not Showing Email Templates
Bug #5774: Edit order should load products original cost so that coupons are applied correctly
Bug #5775: Manual order is saving undiscounted item subtotal instead of the discounted total
Bug #5776: Coupons are now showed below all other amounts in the order quick view
Bug #5782: BPAY module now supports setting the reference number padding length and a reference prefix character
Bug #5785: Creating the customer account AFTER the order
Bug #5787: PayLeap/Interspire Merchant Gateway produces undefined index error when doing a delayed capture
Bug #5788: Visitor numbers are showing incorrectly in the customer statistics
Bug #5789: Gift wrapping doesn’t support utf8 character set
Bug #5791: Modify paysimple to store the static key in the modules table
Bug #5799: PayLeap/Interspire Merchant Gateway delayed capture/void requests don’t work
Bug #5808: Any non-required price variables are set to 0.00 if empty when saved
Bug #5809: ‘Add to cart’ doesn’t work due to cookies not being set in some browsers when the store address is an IP
Bug #5811: $X dollars of for repeat customer discount rule not working
Bug #5812: Customer group category discount should have fixed price discount option
Bug #5813: Web servers behind firewalls without CURL enabled may go into infinite loops
Bug #5817: ‘See all brands’ link doesn’t show in the side popular brands panel
Bug #5819: Storesuite template shouldn’t be using the IE specific stylesheet for IE8
Bug #5820: Posting a product review can redirect you to an invalid product page when required fields aren’t supplied.
Bug #5821: 2Checkout integration instructions need updating now that 2Checkout have redesigned their website
Bug #5822: Visiting an invalid product, category, brand or web page should send the 404 page w/ 404 headers & not “invalid” pages.
Bug #5823: Product variations are applying tax when the base product is set to not taxable
So BUY IT!!!! And then PAY for UPDATES like this!!!!
Very frustrated with our Interspire cart. When it works its great, its once of the best looking and simplest to use out of the box solutions out there. Unfortunately technical support is frustratingly near not existant and as outlined above, there are a great many bugs and problems that really should be fixed.
Damn, I was seriously contemplating either Interspire, or CS Cart for a client and indeed after the glowing review, thought Yep, Interspire it is, however, after reading the comments, I may instead go with CS cart. Better Value Overall
Find me on Twitter
Don, Interspire is very good, we use it all the time. I strongly recommend it.
More comments from Patrick AltoftHi Patrick,
Do you spend a lot of time hacking Interspire making to make it more SEO friendly or do you use almost as it is?
I ask as there seems to be quite a bit of duplicate content on the stores I have using it and I have to go into the templates and alter H1 & H2 tags as I don’t think they are that great from an SEO point of view.
Incidentally, I don’t know whether you still manage Party Heros but the site seems broken:
http://www.partyheroes.co.uk/products/Santa-Belt.html
Kind regards,
H
Not sure if anyone here has tried CoreCommerce.. After much research into Interspire, 3Dcart, goecart, (leaving x-cart), etc.. I have chosen CoreCommerce!
The staff seems to be very helpful via sales/customer service, the pricing is very competitive (all packages hosted on Rackspace!), customer reviews all sound good, a very large list of features, etc. Check them out..
P.s. – I do not work for them haha. I have spent a few weeks gathering information and made a decision yesterday that we are going to move to CoreCommerce.
I have already launched my online store but one problem does indeed persist no matter how much I’ve tried. I have a certain category whereby the items on the store are not aligned despite me setting 16 items to be displayed per page.
The items displayed are 16 yes but some rows have only one or 2 items despite me setting 4 items per row. The site does indeed look ugly and not attractive at all. Anyone who can help me sort out this? I’ll be really glad
Thanks for this information. I trying to edit my 3dcart to make it seo friendly. lots of great information.
roger
I like interspire and we use it often for several projects.
It would be nice if they would test it more throughly however. I keep coming across stupid bugs and sending the fixes to interspire, like for example the product import is in a different format to the product export… or how the product export strips all the HTML tags you've added to a product out for no real reason instead of just escaping the bits a CSV file can't handle. Not too hard to fix normally for us but its a pain in the backside.
Other than that its one of the best shopping carts we've used, its just the little bits that let it down really.
Patrick, do you think that Interspire Shopping Cart is better than other available shopping cart software in market?
Interspire Cart has a fundemental error
If you have say over 30 products, the menu is HUGE due to the fact that the cart has no (get this) dropdown menu system? How could Interspire miss something as fundemntal as that?
Whilst we have been asking for a fix/plugin for nearly two weeks (afterall, it cost over £1K) we're now in a email tennis game – Mitch Wilson/CEO suggested we bought one from one of their 'resellers' for £250UK!!!
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