BVC is much easier to customize. In particular, the front-end that comes with the product is much easier to change without breaking and the store libraries are much easier to use if you want to make custom UI widgets (RSS feeds, custom product displays, etc).

WillB,

I was checking out both platforms as well -- BV5 and ASPDNSF -- both have nice test drives and a rich feature set. The latest addition of the Ajax Shipping Estimator to ASPDNSF was a big draw to me -- but I opted for -- and just purchased -- BV5 for a couple of big reasons you need to think about:

1. BV5 was built FOR ASP.NET 2.0 -- ASPDNSF was not -- it has been modified to make it work. As such, I think the demands on your server will be much less for BV5

2. The community -- there seems to be a greater community of users and developers for BV -- I spent some time on the ASDNSF forums and posted messages and received no replies. That was discouraging. Their sales staff was very responsive, but you will soon find that the forums will be your fastest and best source to find help. I experienced that with another ecommerce platform that has since "lost its community" and has no company participation at all. That's the big reason I am now here.

Here is a link to some BV5 sites (I had the same question)
http://forums.bvcommerce...lt.aspx?f=80&m=43956

cliff,
looks nice. several pixel white space to right of usernavmenu - ie6

Scott Mech

WillB, I originally was setting up my store in ASPDNSF VB and eventually gave up. I had tried both their C# and VB versions but prefer to work in VB. Their programmers build in C# and then port the code over to VB. Point releases were coming out every few weeks because they did such a poor job of debugging. I got tired of hoping for a stable version to come out. I also didn't like the "philosophy" behind ASPDNSF. The product relies on very complex configuration categories stored in tables in the SQL Server database. Almost every upgrade required running upgrade stored procedures to update the underlying configuration. I found it scary to see SQL Errors pop up after running their update stored procedures and then find that some features no longer work. From my perspective the database should get set up once and then only be modified when absolutely necessary.

Then I started building my store using BVC 2004 and eventually waited until BVC5 to finalize my store because I didn't want to customize things twice. Overall I am VERY impressed with BVC5. The administrative back end is much improved over BVC 2004. I've been able to easily add the customization that I needed for my site.

My only comment about BVC5 that you might have picked up from reading other posts on the forum is that the initial release candidate of BVC5 wasn't really a final release it was really a Beta product as evidenced by the number of bugs that had to be fixed in SP1 and the upcoming SP2. While the BVC5 doesn't crash (like ASPDNSF did for me) there are missing features and errors. I think that SP2, which is due out soon, will be a solid release so it's definitely a product to look at now.

Rick

Thanks for all the feedback, very useful!

My developers are giving it a thorough going over but it is good to have some other peoples perspectives.

Rick,

If you've got any suggestions on features that are missing/different from ASPDNSF I'd like to hear about them. I hate to think that we're not meeting our customer's needs to the best of our abilities.

Angela, regarding #4, it isn't silly at all; visual first impressions are just as important as the product itself. :)