Is Sebenza still in business?

[Dan - Glendale Designs]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

I wonder if the same way a module developer can remotely disable a module, can MM remotely intervene and disable developers ability to disable merchants module when issues such as these arises.

No, with most module developers implementing their own license managers over the years for a variety of reasons, only way I see Miva Merchant killing a module would be to manually block it from usage in the admin, which would basically kill any and all associated functionality. With Miva Merchant working on a new license manager, I highly suspect we will see something implemented to handle these situations, but there are legal and practical considerations to keep in mind.

With that, here is the rub. Sebenza has their Gift Certificates, Coupons, Order Status, Points and Reviews. There are direct replacements for a few of those, but in my experience many stores continue to use these for very specific needs/reasons. With Miva Merchant on the verge of a number of these things becoming core, it is simply too much of a risk for a 3rd party developer to take on for such a short run, unless there was enough of a commitment by end users in the community. The problem there is a lot of the modules continue to function for the most part, and the volume is not there to justify development of a stopgap solution.

[lancermedia]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

What's his other company? I noticed in the other thread Rick from Miva said he would help. I guess that didn't work out?

From this thread: http://extranet.mivamerchant.com/for...200#post415200

Scott from Sebenza owns Searchspring.net

Rick was a great amount of help in that he could only do so much. Our issue was a bug in Miva itself effecting the Sebenza gift certs module. Scott did eventually test things and I guess Miva gave him a dev environment to use....but in the end it's a Miva bug that isn't going to get fixed until v9.

Also, it's painfully clear that Sebenza doesn't have ANY employees.....and that it's only Scott. That to me is reason enough to stay far far away.

With that, here is the rub. Sebenza has their Gift Certificates, Coupons, Order Status, Points and Reviews. There are direct replacements for a few of those, but in my experience many stores continue to use these for very specific needs/reasons. With Miva Merchant on the verge of a number of these things becoming core, it is simply too much of a risk for a 3rd party developer to take on for such a short run, unless there was enough of a commitment by end users in the community. The problem there is a lot of the modules continue to function for the most part, and the volume is not there to justify development of a stopgap solution.

I look forward to seeing Miva implement these things......that way we don't have to rely on a ton of 3rd party devs. It's just like Wordpress.....you get a module that works great, but then WP updates and the dev doesn't want to put the time in and suddenly your are stuck looking for an alternative.

The more Miva can build in, the more things we are rely on working through version upgrades.

-Kevin

[JFancett]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

As a fellow store owner I can definitely commiserate that the third-party module developer community is nowhere it was a few years ago. Understand that James at eMediaSales (with his Copernicus modules) and Scott at Sebenza were shining examples of what a good developer was to this community. We relied on those people when we couldn't rely on Miva itself under the old regime. It was a nice business for them and it helped us add functionality to store where the core was lacking.

But things have changed. Developers are hard-pressed to be able to make it a business anymore and they're starting to move on. Most store owners don't want to pay for the heavy lifting of developing a module, but these days there isn't enough demand to guarantee an ROI for the developer based upon mass appeal. Sure, there are some cases like Glendale's new Google Trusted Stores module where the functionality will probably be in pretty good demand and Miva has no plans to add it to the core anytime soon. But for the most part, either it's built into the core, is going to be in the core sooner than later, or the functionality is so niche that there isn't a large enough demand pool. We found that in a custom upsale module I envisioned. We ended up paying Kent from MagicM to do a custom module. And it wasn't just a couple hundred bucks.

I could foresee some modules that have competition now but given the state of their developers, other developers might jump in and create a module. For example, our shipping calculation lives on the Viking Coders (eMediaSales owns the module now) Fedex Advanced module. We use it for so much more than just talking to the Fedex servers. With the hiccups at eMedia these days maybe there's an opportunity in advanced UPS, FEDEX and USPS modules. I really don't think Miva is interested in developing that into core anytime soon but I could be wrong. Address (multiple) books, product favorite/gift registries, membership rewards group, product reviews, suggested products, and dropship vendor management are all things that could be considered but developers are skiddish to invest money and I for one don't blame them.

In the case of Scott, SearchSpring has grown to a place where it consumes all of his time and IMHO (not from anything he's said) he's basically sunsetting Sebenza slowly removing the modules that get deprecated and rendered unusable as the Miva platform evolves. Sebenza has 7 modules for sale. There used to be over 20. I hate to see this happening but it's understandable while frustrating. We use the old editable basket items template module. It's not 100% with post-Wombat Miva and it's not going to be updated. But it is what it is. Frankly, as a Searchspring customer I'm glad his time is devoted over there. SearchSpring is more important to our conversion than any of his other modules and we use quite a few. There's not a great answer but it's the current state of affairs.

Miva is an easier platform to use today than at any other time. Third-party module developers made a lot of money making the difficult easy. But with SMT being introduced with Miva 5, more and more functionality being added to the core, and Bill Weiland doing unbelievably awesome work in constantly expanding what you can do with Toolkit, it's a lot harder for developers to make a business of it today compared to just a couple years ago.

[lancermedia]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

In the case of Scott, SearchSpring has grown to a place where it consumes all of his time and IMHO (not from anything he's said) he's basically sunsetting Sebenza slowly removing the modules that get deprecated and rendered unusable as the Miva platform evolves. Sebenza has 7 modules for sale.

And this is what makes me the most upset. I have no problem with him wanting (needing) to ramp Sebenza down.....but it's an awful business practice to get people to pay good money for a module that clearly will have NO support and no future. If he wanted to change his site to say you can buy this with NO support, then maybe I'd understand. But taking people's money, having people potentially buy license renewals, only to have this money go nowhere......no thanks.

We bought the Gift Certificate module that I have to tell my client....sorry I wouldn't use it because the company doesn't stand behind it and likely won't even be here a year from now.

-Kevin

[SpeakerRepair.com]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

Thanks for your input, Jason.

I don't think it's too much to ask for Scott at Sebenza to respond to tickets since he is still selling modules. I would never use SearchSpring, knowing that he is involved with them. If you don't support your Sebenza modules, don't sell them.

I'm also having another issue with Power Search which is a whole other long story. I guess Bill sold his company to Miva?

[wcw]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

What is the issue with your power search?

[SpeakerRepair.com]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

Bill,

Leslie Kirk is working on it for us, and I believe she spoke to you about it. Here is another thread discussing it:
http://extranet.mivamerchant.com/for...Complete/page6

I think she opened a ticket with Miva, but I'm not sure what the status is with that.

Are you still supporting your modules, or is Miva supporting them now? Did you sell your company to them?

[wcw]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

The post on 4-17, she said it is showing the data. Hence, power search issue was fixed two weeks ago. Someone mentioned css issues but that is not a bug in power search or other 3rd party module. Css is a whole another universe.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

FWIW, as of yesterday, Sebenza is no longer charging annual maintenance fees.

[lancermedia]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

FWIW, as of yesterday, Sebenza is no longer charging annual maintenance fees.

That's all well and good, but doesn't make my client feel any better about spending money on a module to have to fight for close to a month to get support and in the end be out the money for that module because we can't in good faith recommend they use it because it likely won't be supported in the future.

-Kevin

[William Davis]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

I am very close to just switching platforms altogether. I've gotten demo stores setup for both 3DCart and BigCommerce and it's amazing what both of those can do right out of the gate that Miva can't, or must have third party modules for. We've been with Miva for 15 years and I'm waiting to see what their next version has to offer. But if it's not up to what the others are doing, I'll switch.

I can understand your frustrations. We've all been there at one point or another with different types of service providers, and vendors.

A while back I worked on a on a project that required extensive research on one of those carts that you mentioned, and I can tell you professionally speaking, things are definitely NOT what they appear to be. All though you are for the most part correct as to the "easy" and some "functionally" these solutions provide out of the box, I can assure "anyone" (including those solution developers you mentioned, wherein they would have no other alternative but to conceded), that is where it "starts", and where it "ends"! This is NOT an opinion, but a long and tedious methodical head to head study, not based on marketing brochures.

At the end of the study it was unanimously concluded without any hesitation, MIVA Merchant and its modules can do anything its competition can do, just not as easily (at least not just yet, wait a few months and shall see), but the competition "cannot" do many things that MIVA Merchant and its modules can do, and that is solely based on facts!

Without anything to gain either way, every time the conversation has come up in the past, I have "always" managed to make a successful case for MM.

For example, did you know that one of those two big players that you mentioned do not have MM practically "unlimited custom data fields" for categories, products, and customers? If memory serves me right, at the time I conducted my study, they only had something like six "reserved" fields you can use (e.g.: Field1, Field2, etc...), that one did not even have the option of naming!

That alone, is reason enough to rule out the competition, its clearly an open and shut case based pure facts. No system in the market has the scalability MM has, nor in better position for growth. If you still have any doubts PM me, and I will send you my phone number, and in less than 20 minutes, I guarantee you will have a change of heart once you have all the facts. Again, I have nothing to gain or lose either way.

SUPPLEMENT UPDATE:

Oh, most important I forgot to mention, there is "NO" no eCommerce solution in the market that even comes close to MM active community forum. But please do not take my word for it. Go to their forums, and check what kind of activity they have:

• How often is forum being used?
• Landscape of forum participants (e.g.: End-users, Third Party Developers, MM Tech Support, MM Management!)?
• Participants level of product knowledge and above all sophistication (MM users are without question more resourceful)?
• Ratio of solutions vs questions?
• Etc...

I tell you what, rather than going on and on... do yourself a favor, subscribe yourself to all of their forums categories for two weeks using an alias email address, and let them make the case for MIVA Merchant. ;)

[lesliekirk]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

The post on 4-17, she said it is showing the data. Hence, power search issue was fixed two weeks ago. Someone mentioned css issues but that is not a bug in power search or other 3rd party module. Css is a whole another universe.

I've posted some updated comments to the aforementioned thread

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

All, lets not confuse any possible over sites with an orderly transition (such as Miva acquiring Weiland's modules) with the other issues in this post. Weiland is doing the responsible thing here.

[wcw]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

Thanks Bruce. While the Miva folks are doing the lion's share of the support, I am available to them for those rare times when they weren't sure of the answer. Those times have been few and far between. Brennan and his support team have transitioned this very smoothly.

[Dan - Glendale Designs]

Re: Is Sebenza still in business?

All, lets not confuse any possible over sites with an orderly transition (such as Miva acquiring Weiland's modules) with the other issues in this post. Weiland is doing the responsible thing here.

Agreed, don't think Bill Weiland, Emporium Plus and the Power Search module pertain to the issues/concerns reported in this thread. No question those modules have been fully supported over the years.