Actinic and Oxatis: Q&A

[DanielHollier]

One thing i have not seen is the mention of product reviews, i may have missed it. We use code path for our main site, is there a built in product review system in the online saas or one on the pipeline ?

Thanks
Wes

No plans as yet, there are a few work arounds that may be possible. Also it will be possible for plug-in partners to develop with Actinic Online, hopefully one will build a customer feedback one.

[Darren B]

Any chance you can answer the question posted twice already

With regards your 6gb bandwith usage I regard this as a small / medium sized site. I certainly would not use one sample set of data to understand what are average uses of websites

[DanielHollier]

2) where are the servers located

3) what are the support hours, still 9 to 5

Sorry Darren missed them:

2) The servers are in the US at the moment, but will be in France very soon
3) The Telephone support provided fee of charge has opening hours of 9-5 Monday to Friday. The servers are obviously monitored and maintained 24/7

[Mike Hughes]

2) The servers are in the US at the moment, but will be in France very soon

Seems a bit odd? Is this because it's hosted by Oxatis?

Re: 15K page views. Is this correct? If I look at http://www.oxatis.co.uk/Help/HelpCen...55319&LangID=1 the figure is 100K.

You benefit from a certain volume included with your service subscription:
Up to 1000 products in the catalog
Up to 1000 users and 1000 newsletters a month
Up to 100,000 viewed pages a month
Up to 50 MB of disk space

Mike

[Darren B]

Thanks for the reply

Us at the moment then France, perhaps someone here will be able to answe what the impact on seo is. Uk based servers always used to be recommended option for seo.

As for support - 24/7 is the norm these days, although this might only be by a ticketing system there is still someone offering answers when things go wrong waiting from 6pm on Friday night to 9am Monday morning when your website is down is not acceptable, it happens when scripts fail to execute and server monitoring fails to pick this up.

[Mike Hughes]

I'd have to say the SEO impact of servers being in France is nil as long as you have a .uk domain name.

If you don't have a .uk domain then you should really get one. Just being hosted in the UK isn't as good a geo locator as having a targetted domain.

Mike

[TraceyHand]

Hi Wesley

It is the plan to provide MarketPlace Manager free of charge on an ongoing basis.

This is interesting. A far cry from the claim of £35 a month though!

The limits concern me also.
15k page views is a drop in the ocean (or maybe a large lake) compared to our norm and I calculated that, for our needs (number of products, page views etc) the cost would be well in excess of £100 a month.
Noting that our current hosting package (for standalone software that includes ebay integration) is about £40-50 a month, that is definitely NOT a figure I would have wanted to add an extra £35 a month to!

[DanielHollier]

Hi All

The Market place manager is free of charge. So no extra costs there.
I haven’t seen the free one that comes with your hosting Tracey, but I imagine its nowhere near as powerful.

As for the page views we are going to have a range of price bands introduced later in the year. - Please remember Actinic Online is still in its soft launch.

To bring some balance to the discussion regarding pricing - with Actinic online there are going to be no additional hosting costs or support costs. In many cases Actinic Online sites are going to be cheaper to run than Actinic Desktop, and thats with the increased functionality.

[TraceyHand]

Hi All

The Market place manager is free of charge. So no extra costs there.
I haven’t seen the free one that comes with your hosting Tracey, but I imagine its nowhere near as powerful.

Nah, it's not hosting-provided. It's integrated with the software (and certainly comes at cost because it's only included in the top version)

To bring some balance to the discussion regarding pricing - with Actinic online there are going to be no additional hosting costs or support costs. In many cases Actinic Online sites are going to be cheaper to run than Actinic Desktop, and thats with the increased functionality.

The inclusive support is a big issue. This is telephone support (office hours)?
Any 'out of hours' support available?

There is one other ecom package which is comparable to what Actinic/Oxatis are offering and costs look as though, in the long run (when more favourable banding appears) the prices could be comparable too.
However, their support is pretty dire!
Who is providing the Actinic Online support? Actinic or Oxatis? (or both?)

[Jyan]

Unless Actinic allow me to stop paying for Actinic Cover before the end of the cover period , there is no way I would take this on now due to cost. Seems daft being forced to pay for Cover for a product for a long period when you want to change the product to another from same company, you'd have thought they would have a plan, but no, so no Actinic Online for me until my Cover period ends.

[Jyan]

Unless Actinic allow me to stop paying for Actinic Cover before the end of the cover period , there is no way I would take this on now due to cost. Seems daft being forced to pay for Cover for a product for a long period when you want to change the product to another from same company, you'd have thought they would have a plan, but no, so no Actinic Online for me until my Cover period ends.

I stand corrected they have now changed their mind and I can stop paying for Cover if I switch over. I will trial the online software for 30 day first though.

[DanielHollier]

Market place manager

Just for clarification te Marketplace Manager is free of charge. There will be no cost for this.

This applys to all price bands.

[DanielHollier]

Support

Telephone support is provided free of charge with Actinic Online. This is available Mon-Fri 09.00-17.00.

The support is provided by the Actinic Online support team based in West Byfleet (UK based).

[j2001m]

Telephone support is provided free of charge with Actinic Online. This is available Mon-Fri 09.00-17.00.

The support is provided by the Actinic Online support team based in West Byfleet (UK based).

you need uk servers