First off, a couple updates with regards to Znode…

1. Znode Storefronts has recently changed their pricing structure. They have dropped their Standard edition since my original blog post. Now they have Professional, Advanced, and Server editions. The reason I mention this is because the Professional price is labeled at $995, a $500 jump from the now extinct Standard version. This puts the software in the same category as other popular ASP.NET E-Commerce solutions, and so more must be expected.
2. Znode has launched a Developer portal and Knowledgebase at kb.znode.com. They seem to be off to a good start with that, and hopefully it will continue to grow. A strong developer community and responsive customer support is really what makes a product shine!

As I previously mentioned, Znode has hiked its price up. Two other solutions that are currently set in the same price range of a thousand bucks are ASPDotNet Storefront (ML Edition / DotNetNuke) and AbleCommerce 7.0. In this post we’ve got some great guest commentary from one of our readers, Jim Swanson. He recently had to make a decision in which he looked at Znode, AbleCommerce and ASPDotNetStorefront. In his research he found AbleCommerce to be the most promising for ventures.

Here is what he had to say:

“It is a fantastic thing that these two vendors have competing products. They are really pushing each other to satisfy their customers. If one vendor implements a hot feature the other is forced to follow up. At this point you really can’t go wrong by choosing either.

The 3 things I really like about AbleCommerce are:

Admin design. They really put a lot of time and design effort into making their new 7.0 Admin interface usable and nice to look at. I’m a developer-type so I’m used to engineering interfaces. But the clients I’ve demoed in front of seem to prefer the AC interface. And since they are the ones that will be handling the day-to-day interactions that is important.

Community support. The AC support and community forums are an awesome source of information. People seem very helpful and there is tons of information for many common types of customizations. The AC generated documentation is also top quality.

Standard ASP.NET customization support. In version 7.0 AC switched over to using standard ASP.NET themes and nVelocity for customization.

I’ve worked extensively with both in the past so it is a great fit for me. I tend to steer away from the custom scripting and xml customizations (like there was in AC 4 and 5.5). The new nVelocity gives complete control over almost every facet of the generated UI. I can feel the power surging through my veins

It’s been really interesting to gather information about all these products. You have to shift through lots of bogus reviews and partial information to get to the real content.

Jim”