Linnworks or other stock control programs
Discussion
Hi Guys,
Currently looking to change from our current stock program to another, I have come across Linnworks which seems reasonably priced, has anybody used it and have any thoughts? Good or bad experiences etc?
We would be using it to integrate with eBay and our Magento store, if it can integrate with either Royal Mail or Interlink even better.
We need something that supports product composition, distribution and retail pricing etc. For some reason our old program doesn't actively tell you when something is out of stock and you cannot enter minimum supplier purchase order quantities - these are quite important features and for the life of me I cannot work out why the company have told me customers don't want these features!!!
Currently looking to change from our current stock program to another, I have come across Linnworks which seems reasonably priced, has anybody used it and have any thoughts? Good or bad experiences etc?
We would be using it to integrate with eBay and our Magento store, if it can integrate with either Royal Mail or Interlink even better.
We need something that supports product composition, distribution and retail pricing etc. For some reason our old program doesn't actively tell you when something is out of stock and you cannot enter minimum supplier purchase order quantities - these are quite important features and for the life of me I cannot work out why the company have told me customers don't want these features!!!
If you're already using Magento, why not just use that do all the inventory, distribution and pricing and use M2E Pro to tie it in with eBay/Amazon? There are also extensions for RM and Interlink too.
I've done Magento integration work for a client who was also using Linnworks. It's fairly good at what it does but it is quite clunky. Tbh I never understood why the client was using Linnworks as well as Magento. There didn't seem much that Linnworks offered that Magento couldn't already do.
I've done Magento integration work for a client who was also using Linnworks. It's fairly good at what it does but it is quite clunky. Tbh I never understood why the client was using Linnworks as well as Magento. There didn't seem much that Linnworks offered that Magento couldn't already do.
"Linnworks which seems reasonably priced,"
Are you sure you have costed it out over the entire range?
One warning when i wanted to use Linn / Bright etc we sold a lot of products as bundles ie
A + B + C or 3*A + 2*B + C type of thing and none of them could make it work we spent £15k with Brightpearl before they lost interest trying to help (very keen and active but useless).
I sold the company and the new company that had the same issue themselves wrote a program to handle the entire business and employed the programmer which on their calcs was cheaper than using Linn (!)
Are you sure you have costed it out over the entire range?
One warning when i wanted to use Linn / Bright etc we sold a lot of products as bundles ie
A + B + C or 3*A + 2*B + C type of thing and none of them could make it work we spent £15k with Brightpearl before they lost interest trying to help (very keen and active but useless).
I sold the company and the new company that had the same issue themselves wrote a program to handle the entire business and employed the programmer which on their calcs was cheaper than using Linn (!)
DSLiverpool said:
"Linnworks which seems reasonably priced,"
Are you sure you have costed it out over the entire range?
One warning when i wanted to use Linn / Bright etc we sold a lot of products as bundles ie
A + B + C or 3*A + 2*B + C type of thing and none of them could make it work we spent £15k with Brightpearl before they lost interest trying to help (very keen and active but useless).
I sold the company and the new company that had the same issue themselves wrote a program to handle the entire business and employed the programmer which on their calcs was cheaper than using Linn (!)
I remember the issues you were having and you might remember I was having the same and it is something that has been sorted now.Are you sure you have costed it out over the entire range?
One warning when i wanted to use Linn / Bright etc we sold a lot of products as bundles ie
A + B + C or 3*A + 2*B + C type of thing and none of them could make it work we spent £15k with Brightpearl before they lost interest trying to help (very keen and active but useless).
I sold the company and the new company that had the same issue themselves wrote a program to handle the entire business and employed the programmer which on their calcs was cheaper than using Linn (!)
ModernAndy said:
I remember the issues you were having and you might remember I was having the same and it is something that has been sorted now.
Thing is apart from a 3 month payment holiday they wanted paying for something that didn't work and when they said "it works now" it didn't. I started a claim on them just before I sold DST but dont know if it was carried on or not. Pity as every aspect apart from bundles was fine.DSLiverpool said:
ModernAndy said:
I remember the issues you were having and you might remember I was having the same and it is something that has been sorted now.
Thing is apart from a 3 month payment holiday they wanted paying for something that didn't work and when they said "it works now" it didn't. I started a claim on them just before I sold DST but dont know if it was carried on or not. Pity as every aspect apart from bundles was fine.Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I did look at brightpearl before but by the time I added up all the extra's that was required then it came to over £500/m which was far too much money.
It's a difficult one this, I need something that can allow us to do the following:
Fully track stock.
Allow for product compositions - I make and sell products that are comprised of many pieces.
Manually enter customer & distributor orders.
Good low stock notifications.
Apply discount to our distributor accounts.
Integrate fully with Magento including attribute sets.
Integrate with eBay.
Automate shipping as much as possible.
So far Linnworks looks like it can do all the above and more, they seem to have a sensible pricing structure and all the integrations are included. It seemed high at first but once I realised I then don't have to pay for M2E pro and the eBay template monthly cost its not that much higher.
The other issue is how much time this whole thing will take, I have hundreds of products and it feels like I am having to start again from scratch, so bludy frustrating...
I did look at brightpearl before but by the time I added up all the extra's that was required then it came to over £500/m which was far too much money.
It's a difficult one this, I need something that can allow us to do the following:
Fully track stock.
Allow for product compositions - I make and sell products that are comprised of many pieces.
Manually enter customer & distributor orders.
Good low stock notifications.
Apply discount to our distributor accounts.
Integrate fully with Magento including attribute sets.
Integrate with eBay.
Automate shipping as much as possible.
So far Linnworks looks like it can do all the above and more, they seem to have a sensible pricing structure and all the integrations are included. It seemed high at first but once I realised I then don't have to pay for M2E pro and the eBay template monthly cost its not that much higher.
The other issue is how much time this whole thing will take, I have hundreds of products and it feels like I am having to start again from scratch, so bludy frustrating...
Mudgey said:
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I did look at brightpearl before but by the time I added up all the extra's that was required then it came to over £500/m which was far too much money.
And Linns cheaper? I can only think you havent been given the full costs ? I did look at brightpearl before but by the time I added up all the extra's that was required then it came to over £500/m which was far too much money.
Mudgey said:
Allow for product compositions - I make and sell products that are comprised of many pieces.
.
Whoever you go with get a demo of this - dont accept that it will be ok!.
Also do you not need a quality Google shopping feed ? this is a major ballache and I am actually trying to help a beauty company with this now who just cant get anywhere with a solution.
I haven't looked into the google shopping feed, will have a look into that tonight.
I am currently demo'ing the Linnworks system and have only put in a couple hours so far and watched a few video's on their integration, so far so good. Next task is to get a couple sample suppliers/products and push them through to the right channels to make sure the software functions as they say!
With regards to costs I can opt for the £200/m or £150/m if paying for a full year, apparently there are no further costs involved and I have asked this question more than once! Linnworks offers unlimited SKU's and orders.
I think the reason Brightpearl is a lot more expensive is the similar priced package is limited to 2500 orders per month and 5000 SKU's, if I go up it gets more expensive quite quickly, plus extra monthly costs for integrations for the various channels and shipping agents. Once I get myself up and running I see myself going over this pretty quickly.
I am currently demo'ing the Linnworks system and have only put in a couple hours so far and watched a few video's on their integration, so far so good. Next task is to get a couple sample suppliers/products and push them through to the right channels to make sure the software functions as they say!
With regards to costs I can opt for the £200/m or £150/m if paying for a full year, apparently there are no further costs involved and I have asked this question more than once! Linnworks offers unlimited SKU's and orders.
I think the reason Brightpearl is a lot more expensive is the similar priced package is limited to 2500 orders per month and 5000 SKU's, if I go up it gets more expensive quite quickly, plus extra monthly costs for integrations for the various channels and shipping agents. Once I get myself up and running I see myself going over this pretty quickly.
To be fair when I did search I didn't come across anything as thoroughly documented as the other systems I am on or currently looking at using. I presume Magento requires plugin's to get this level of functionality, if so what would you recommend from experience?
M2E Pro is currently being used, I have my system set up like the following:
TradeGecko (Stock control) talks to Magento, Magento in turn talks to eBay using M2E Pro.
M2E Pro is currently being used, I have my system set up like the following:
TradeGecko (Stock control) talks to Magento, Magento in turn talks to eBay using M2E Pro.
The only plugins you might need are for stock control and courier automation. Magento does both to a basic level out of the box, so it really depends on what level of stock control and courier automation you require.
I only strongly suggest this route because, from my experience, every integration is a pain point - in fact integration is probably the biggest pain point you can get in software design. By integration I mean two systems that have been designed and created separately and then had some code slapped in the middle to get them to talk to each other.
For the record, I consider M2E Pro to be more of an extension for Magento as it was always built to work with/on top of Magento. Where as Linnworks/BrightPearl were built completely independently, so there will always be some friction where one system wants to do something one way, and the other system wants to do it another way, and there has to be some "twisting" of the data to get it from one system to another.
I only strongly suggest this route because, from my experience, every integration is a pain point - in fact integration is probably the biggest pain point you can get in software design. By integration I mean two systems that have been designed and created separately and then had some code slapped in the middle to get them to talk to each other.
For the record, I consider M2E Pro to be more of an extension for Magento as it was always built to work with/on top of Magento. Where as Linnworks/BrightPearl were built completely independently, so there will always be some friction where one system wants to do something one way, and the other system wants to do it another way, and there has to be some "twisting" of the data to get it from one system to another.
jammy_basturd said:
Again, I don't really see anything in your requirements that would rule out Magento + M2E Pro, is there another reason why you don't seem to be keen on this route?
James how confident are you on M2E pro and bundles and bundles to google shopping? If your confident I think I may need you to work on a forthcoming project I am pitching next month.My experience of M2E Pro, at least with bundles is about 18 months old now. Back then it seemed to be fine, we were mainly working with clothing, so you could buy a pair of trousers with a jacket, or a uniform which would comprise of a few different items. I think we came up against problems when trying to create bundles with variation products and to be honest I think we parked that stuff and never went back to it. I'm not sure what your specific needs are, but this documentation gives you an idea of what it can do.
I have to admit I don't have any experience of M2E Pro with Google Shopping, in fact I'm pretty sure it was just Amazon and eBay that they'd integrate with back when I was using it, nor were they charging to use M2E Pro either! I think Rakuten was just about to come in too.
Happy to look in to it further if you wish? Actually, you might be able to help me with an up-coming venture of mine.. I'll PM you later today.
I have to admit I don't have any experience of M2E Pro with Google Shopping, in fact I'm pretty sure it was just Amazon and eBay that they'd integrate with back when I was using it, nor were they charging to use M2E Pro either! I think Rakuten was just about to come in too.
Happy to look in to it further if you wish? Actually, you might be able to help me with an up-coming venture of mine.. I'll PM you later today.
AnimalMother said:
Its far from perfect but very powerful and feature rich. Covers all the functions you list and more. Suitable and used by some pretty large operations.
volocommerce.com (formerly EsellerPro)
They do one of my least favourite things, which is to not say how much they cost. Presumably because they want me to pay how much I can afford, not a fair price.volocommerce.com (formerly EsellerPro)
I'm oot.
Mudgey said:
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I did look at brightpearl before but by the time I added up all the extra's that was required then it came to over £500/m which was far too much money.
It's a difficult one this, I need something that can allow us to do the following:
Fully track stock.
Allow for product compositions - I make and sell products that are comprised of many pieces.
Manually enter customer & distributor orders.
Good low stock notifications.
Apply discount to our distributor accounts.
Integrate fully with Magento including attribute sets.
Integrate with eBay.
Automate shipping as much as possible.
So far Linnworks looks like it can do all the above and more, they seem to have a sensible pricing structure and all the integrations are included. It seemed high at first but once I realised I then don't have to pay for M2E pro and the eBay template monthly cost its not that much higher.
The other issue is how much time this whole thing will take, I have hundreds of products and it feels like I am having to start again from scratch, so bludy frustrating...
I have used linnworks in the past and you will get many who say its brilliant and great but I had a different experience. I did look at brightpearl before but by the time I added up all the extra's that was required then it came to over £500/m which was far too much money.
It's a difficult one this, I need something that can allow us to do the following:
Fully track stock.
Allow for product compositions - I make and sell products that are comprised of many pieces.
Manually enter customer & distributor orders.
Good low stock notifications.
Apply discount to our distributor accounts.
Integrate fully with Magento including attribute sets.
Integrate with eBay.
Automate shipping as much as possible.
So far Linnworks looks like it can do all the above and more, they seem to have a sensible pricing structure and all the integrations are included. It seemed high at first but once I realised I then don't have to pay for M2E pro and the eBay template monthly cost its not that much higher.
The other issue is how much time this whole thing will take, I have hundreds of products and it feels like I am having to start again from scratch, so bludy frustrating...
At the time I was on the package that was around 100GBP. This gave me all the functionality I needed but only ticket support.
I found the whole system very clunky and annoying to use, had a poor UI and just generally didnt feel i could trust it. Further to this it took bloody ages to set up and get it to a stage I could use it day to day.
Twice I had it fail on me and trying to get support was a joke, Ticket support was 12 hour later replies at which case everyone knows on Amazon/eBay is too late. Try phoning for a polite request for urgent action and you get told to basically f
k off as you dont have 300 pounds plus a month. I know 100 pounds is not a lot of money a month but its not a small amount either.
They seem to apply patches every week which is nice in theory but in reality its bloody annoying and causes issues.
I dumped them after 6 months. Just my experience.
IATM: The UI doesn't look very intuitive I have to admit and I am loathed to have to learn yet a new program this year... Did you find a better/neater solution that fits your criteria?
Jammy Basturd: I agree with what you say; simpler the better! Is there a particular stock addin/plugin that you have used or would recommend?
Do you know if you can have compositions within Magento? I will be moving away from selling other peoples products and more towards my own assembled in house items.
Either way right now I feel like just giving up entirely, changing to another stock program feels like i'll be going back 6 months when I could be spending the time developing new products etc. Such a PITA!!!!!
Jammy Basturd: I agree with what you say; simpler the better! Is there a particular stock addin/plugin that you have used or would recommend?
Do you know if you can have compositions within Magento? I will be moving away from selling other peoples products and more towards my own assembled in house items.
Either way right now I feel like just giving up entirely, changing to another stock program feels like i'll be going back 6 months when I could be spending the time developing new products etc. Such a PITA!!!!!
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