(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In an interview posted on the Practical Ecommerce website Monday, publisher Kerry Murdock described a new product from shopping cart software developer Miva Merchant (www.mivamerchant.com), a hosted online storefront solution.
In a lengthy interview with Executive Vice President Rick Wilson (also a regular WHIR blogger), Murdock discusses in detail the new venture for Miva Merchant, described on the company’s website as simply Miva Merchant, and internally as Miva Merchant SaaS.
Right off the bat, the interview addresses the question that is probably of most interest to hosting providers – basically, “what about web hosting providers?” Murdock asks whether Miva Merchant is abandoning third-party hosts, the channel that has, up to this point, distributed the company’s products.
“We’re not abandoning our hosting partners at all,” says Wilson, in the interview. “Our take on it is … that the people who currently have relationships with hosts oftentimes are resellers, oftentimes they are web designers or web developers and that ecosystem works perfectly. We want to continue supporting that and foresee supporting that indefinitely.”
Wilson says the market for shopping cart services has changed since the company began offering its products. Small merchants coming online today see the company’s competitors, says Wilson, virtually all of which offer a hosted version.
It’s a move similar in some ways to the one Microsoft made last year when it began directly hosting a basic version of its Exchange email platform – a product that had always been very popular among resellers, who provided the product to their customers – and it is almost certain to draw some of the same criticisms, namely, that the company shouldn’t compete with its resellers.
Some of Microsoft’s comments at the time apply pretty accurately to this situation as well. At the time, Microsoft said it had no desire to compete for the hosted exchange market, that it was offering a solution that would help to solidify and add to the product’s popularity in the market and that the best market opportunity for Exchange resellers was to offer an Exchange product differentiated by value-added features (Blackberry support would be an obvious example).
There is, certainly, a community around the customization of Miva Merchant software, and Wilson says in the Practical Ecommerce interview that the company isn’t out to compete for the business of its hosting partners.
“If a merchant comes to me who is using our premier hosting partners and says, ‘Hey, I’m at ABC host over here and we know they’re one of the best Miva hosts. Should I switch to you?’ The answer is no. Stay where you are.”
He also says (not antagonistically) that a host that might take this cue as an impetus to look for another comparable provider of shopping cart software will find that all of them offer a hosted version (this is true as far as I was able to discern through an admittedly limited amount of looking around), and that Miva Merchant is actually pretty late to this part of the game.
Miva Merchant is offering hosted ecommerce sites in three varieties, priced at $59.95, $89.95 and $129.95.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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