[Thepurplesash]

We've been in business for 9 years and are ready to enter the online market. I've been doing a little research and have read several forums, but I'm still a bit lost when it comes to the e-commerce/shirt design solutions.

InkSoft-
Love the 9000+ stock templates and clip art
Hate- the inability to design on tablets (flash) and was told it would tak 20-30 hours to create

Deconet-
Seems perfect, love all the functions, quotes, works on smart device, love the embroidery features, etc,
HATE- the month reoccurring fee based on orders processed.

ShirtTools-
LOVE- the non-flashed based software and the one time price.
HATE-we are concerned that the software will be difficult (or impossible) to integrate into our current godaddy site.

Any ideas or comments would be helpful. We are even considering hiring someone to set it up for us.

 

[TPrintDesigner]

Hi

ShirtTools works with Opencart so you would need move your content from your GoDaddy site into ShirtTools but it's really easy to do. The great benefit from doing that is your website becomes "mobile responsive" so it will re-scale to fit the size of device it is being viewed on.

Our designer is built using HTML5, Javascript and Twitter Bootstrap so it's responsive as well. You can drag objects with your finger on a smartphone, tablet or touch screen which is what mobile users want to do. Only our designer can do this.

There are pros and cons with all platforms, I always tell people to compare platforms by using real people who don't have experience using online designers. Sit them in front of the screen and ask them to create something and get their feedback. After all, these are the type of people who will be spending their money with you.

P.S Thanks for the post. I'm humbled (and proud) that we're getting compared against the big guys

 

[KristineH]

We use DecoNetwork because paying the monthly fees were easier to deal with financially instead of paying a lump sum up front.

 

[Thepurplesash]

We use DecoNetwork because paying the monthly fees were easier to deal with financially instead of paying a lump sum up front.

Besides the financial aspect, have you found other benefits to using deconet? May I see your site or is that asking too much? Also, I'm curious what you use for stock art. InkSoft comes with 9000+ clip/templates. To my understanding, deconet does not have stock art but it can be imported.

Thanks so much!

 

[ETA]

I also use DecoNetwork, they do have stock clipart as well! I will PM you a link to one of the sites I run on Deco currently (one of the best perks I have found is that with their highest package you can run an unlimited number of sites!).

 

[ETA]

Thepurplesash, your inbox is full! You need to delete a message before I can send you another

 

[Thepurplesash]

Thepurplesash, your inbox is full! You need to delete a message before I can send you another

WOw! I guess I'm limited to 5 messages. ANyway, Inbox is empty!

 

[KristineH]

Check out www.demo.deconetwork.com
This is their demo site - with all of the available clipart and templates. Some templates are an additional cost, but paying for all of the artwork, your monthly fee is the same as InkSoft - minus the 1.85% transaction fee.

None of the sites I have running have the designer enabled, it's all pre-designed products so probably not very helpful for you. When I get something ready, I'll ask for reviews in the Site Review section - it will be a while since we are a small shop and I'm doing all the design work myself!

 

[RodJ]

If we go with DecoNetwork do they process the credit cards themselves or do we still have to use a merchant service/paypal on top their fees? My concern is we already have to pay about 2-3% of the transaction to the merchant services and adding the deco network fee on top of that means we are nearly doubling our current transaction for online sales. Plus, what do we do in the event of fraud, cancelled orders, oops orders? Do I have the ability to review the order before it's batched out? We like to review each and every one of our online sales as we get fraud orders from time to time and we decline them if it looks fishy.

 

[chuckh]

You do need to have a Merchant Account - we are in the process of switching to Stripe Payments, 2.75% I think.

You can set most Merchant Accounts to Capture & Process or just to Capture - where you manually accept payments. DecoNetwork does not charge transaction fees on orders until the order is marked as shipped. You move an order through the system - "In Production", "Awaiting Shipping" and "Shipped". So you can cancel any order, you also have the option to reactivate the order.

 

[RodJ]

Wow, well that is a lot of charges. I'm not in love with deco network, but our business currently does more embroidery than printing and it's the only one with embroidery options.

Currently, we use Costco for merchant processing...which is Elavon. We get 1.99% fees on normal cards, but corporate/business cards are about 4%. So, that means the deco network would cost us 4-6% of each invoice.
Doubling our current cred card service fees. As it is, paypal costs us more but we get so many requests for it we had no choice but to integrate it into our store despite the higher fees.

I actually like Inksoft more, but with no embroidery options and not iphone/ipad compatible it's a no go.

The Open source software seems half finished in comparison...maybe I just need to look at that more in depth.
The nice thing about Deco was that we just pick and choose the items from a vendor catalog - no need for months of working on it.

Seems to me despite the auomated feel to these studios, we're going to have to walk people through it most of the time on the phone anyway. Anyone's comments?

We need a solution, it's 2014 and regular info-webpage requesting for a quote just don't cut it anymore.
As it is we're going to have to upgrade to a more mobile friendly web solution already.

 

[RodJ]

forgot to mention, you can auto-pend a transaction for review before batching. at least with elavon.
that way we can check with merchant services if you have a high risk factor for fraud on an order before batching out.

i'm using the deco demo site right now. trying to put in team names....a little hard to edit them.
and i don't like the fact that the layout options are a the bottom of the page where I did not see them right away. And the location of a print seems really low in the image mockup...and if I pick a screen print for the fron there is no way to add team names because vinyl is not an option. sigh. not 100% happy with such an expensive service. are there any workarounds?

 

[YourLogoGear]

forgot to mention, you can auto-pend a transaction for review before batching. at least with elavon.
that way we can check with merchant services if you have a high risk factor for fraud on an order before batching out.

i'm using the deco demo site right now. trying to put in team names....a little hard to edit them.
and i don't like the fact that the layout options are a the bottom of the page where I did not see them right away. And the location of a print seems really low in the image mockup...and if I pick a screen print for the fron there is no way to add team names because vinyl is not an option. sigh. not 100% happy with such an expensive service. are there any workarounds?

If you have someone who knows html and css you can work around most (but not all) of the issues you'll run into with Deco. I can't speak for the other 2.

 

[brenden]

Do I have the ability to review the order before it's batched out? We like to review each and every one of our online sales as we get fraud orders from time to time and we decline them if it looks fishy.

Hi Rod,

You can certainly review and cancel an order at any time. I'm not sure what payment gateway you use, but you should contact them and ask them about their fraudguard protection. Some allow you to block certain IP addresses by country. For example, Ghana is a known hot-spot for fraud activities. Therefore you can block those countries, or if you wish to only deal with US you can block all sales from any region other than the US. Certainly look into that!

Let me know if you have any other questions about DecoNetwork or in general. Happy to help!

Cheers,
Brenden

 

[stevegamble]

Hi

ShirtTools works with Opencart so you would need move your content from your GoDaddy site into ShirtTools but it's really easy to do. The great benefit from doing that is your website becomes "mobile responsive" so it will re-scale to fit the size of device it is being viewed on.

Our designer is built using HTML5, Javascript and Twitter Bootstrap so it's responsive as well. You can drag objects with your finger on a smartphone, tablet or touch screen which is what mobile users want to do. Only our designer can do this.

There are pros and cons with all platforms, I always tell people to compare platforms by using real people who don't have experience using online designers. Sit them in front of the screen and ask them to create something and get their feedback. After all, these are the type of people who will be spending their money with you.

P.S Thanks for the post. I'm humbled (and proud) that we're getting compared against the big guys

Stumbled upon shirt tools and thought it looked too simple on the home page , BUT decided to stick around a browse.
I Finally designed a shirt with shirt tools.

From a non techy guy , fairly newish to the "decorating" biz and learning month by month.
I have to say wow, user friendly, simple, simple, quick, nice layout on webpage with no scrolling or looking around for buttons, it is just all right there..
Just me though.. Non Techy guy.
Now maybe , the newer techy generation would like the more complex feature rich designers.
But, Many of my customers want Simple, Fast, Cheap, Shirts.
So it might work for us.
Heck with a one time fee, I could see us adding it in a new catagory on our site under "Simple shirts" sub site , and for more complex designing and embroidery, customer management etc.. use whatever you may feel is more feature rich.
If that doesn't pan out, pay off.. you always have your life time owned shirt tools to sell the simple designs and or upload your own cool art.
Really so simple to use.
A lot of techy customers just email us their proudly designed art in photoshop and ask for a quote on qty of whatever styles.
They usually know what they want it to look like and what shirt they want.
They don't feel using a designer will produce the results they want, like it may get processed with filters of whatever.
The people learning the Buying Custom T shirt process, are browsing at night at home and looking for a combo of easy, fancy, quick, cheap... and buy.

 

[Anonoprinter]

Inksoft either has or will very shortly have a new design studio that is based on HTML 5 - so it's tablet and phone compatible.

 

[stevegamble]

Inksoft either has or will very shortly have a new design studio that is based on HTML 5 - so it's tablet and phone compatible.

They have a very nice designer as well.
I'm on deconetwork demo site now.

Uploaded There stock clip art.
Trying to change a colour in the art and can not figure it out?
Unless that is a feature we can not use ?

Just frustrating to try to create a dang shirt in these designers.
Shirt tools is at least simple.

I like the complete package avail from Deconetwork, if only they would re do their designer.

Then text.. add DTG Printing , My customers are gonna say "What the hell is DTG Printing and the phone rings.

Too many techy guys that need to really gather some feedback BEFORE developing, But They know best.

Make it friendly for (Avg) customer wanting to design and buy T shirts First.
the developer web guys second.
I know the feedback has been great yadda yadda.. what do I know.
Inksoft has only USA catalogues, so have to load item by item.
Deconetwork has Sanmar Canada at least a head start to upload full catalogues (Save a ton of work).

 

[Anonoprinter]

Uploading a full catalog sounds like a great thing but you end up with way too many products for customers to choose from when you do that. Just my $.02

 

[JCS2013]

I have inksoft, DO NOT buy in for the art. Not worth it. Inksoft is on the cusp of being amazing as they are constantly hiring new staff and getting more talented programmers too. Inksoft works great for our needs and the 3.0 design tool is 5.0 HTML and its dope. However its still beta and has issues. Shouldnt be too long before it gets fixed.

I hate payiong$150 a month, but We just got into DTG so its a must in our eyes.

Lots of great stuff, still need to get around to using it all. Clipart sucks, design templates are ok.

Get Action Illustrated if you want art. I got their whole collection for basically nothing.

 

[stevegamble]

Thanks for the feedback.

We would upload Most of our art..
We have an established Client base with school, sport team, etc logo's on file maybe nearly 1,000 logo's to upload.
Currently people email us asking for Logo XYZ to be put on 4 hoodies etc..
Problem is , some teams have 5-6 different logo's they use and customers do not really know what they are asking for, Just way too much back and forth with mock ups "Is this what you want" ? and then Oh no I meant XZY logo, sorry..
Hoping a new ecommerce site with editable art, add names, numbers etc.. will save a lot of time for us.
And not everyone here in retail can open Corel and make some name files, but they all can run our easy to use DTG printing and embroidery machines.

Most don't know the difference between embroidery or screening, or DTG, or Sublimation, (Deconetwork) sites. change those buttons..
Have it when you hover over the DTG button it say "Direct print to Garment" might help , many ways to fix that. I would hope that is a editable feature?
I see there designer as their only drawback it looks old? The layout?
Inksoft Looks like Actual Designer software , like I went into a gimp, corel, adobe etc.. design software, Just in the first 5 seconds you feel the difference in appearance and feel.
Everything should be in a Button, not look for little text or scroll for it?

Inksoft has a pretty Nice designer, 150/mo is a ecommerce website with designer. Not too bad at all.
The upfront cost would have people starting out hesitant to make double sure before buying.
But almost all have a upfront cost I believe. (except Deco) But I am not smart enough to design a shirt on it, so If I can't use it I can't buy it.

Most(not all)small businesses looking to implement a designer are start ups , or in early stages of business and still have that "Cost of start up mentality".

Vs the OK, we're rolling along here, how can we perhaps spend/invest to grow this a little more and actually look where to spend some time and money.

And yes John, uploading an entire catalogue would be too much, now that I think of it.
Few choices , keep it simple , in the designer end.

I saw Deconetwork has a edit button that removes all items that are not screenprint friendly, and a Not embroidery friendly etc.. Kinda cool feature. Lot's of great Dashboard features I like.
They all get points for things they've done well.

But some things are real head scratchers?