Okay, having checked with key sources, previewed the BVC 5 online manual and read through countless BVC forum posts, I'm ready to make the switch from SF6 to BV5. Now, I just need to convince our management team that this is worth it. It's a slam dunk in my mind, but for managers of a small company who have signed checks for hundreds (gulp, thousands) of dollars worth of SF upgrades, add-ons, customizations over the years, I'm sure there will be some hesitation.



My question, on top of the $1,000 to purchase the BVC5 software what other fees are involved in order to go live with a store? I understand the yearly server costs (been with Applied Innovations since 2002) and have read that little or no extra software is required since MS Visual Studio Express is free. Are there any other considerable fees that I'm going to be blind-sided with in building the store over the next month or two?



Thank you,



Joe

www.georgehowe.com

Joe,

Having just made the jump myself from SF6 to BV5 and am in the process of getting my store converted and tweaked, I can address that issue a bit. It really depends on if you are going to need help with designing your store theme yourself or need help. If you need help from one of the designers you can pretty much at least double your initial cost for a basic design.

I'm using the VS Express myself and it works great, especially with my Telerik Controls that I had already purchased for navigation. I'm looking at an additional $300 for the Order Export Tool as well. The Migration Tool does a good job of converting customers, categories and products, though you lose your order history and customer address books. you do have to tweak your products some, for example -- if you have Volume Discounts in SF6 they are messed up after import and you need to manually fix those. There may be other tweaks as well -- just getting to that part.


But you won't regret the move -- most of what you need is included in the package, so when you do upgrades, you don't need to worry about fixing a half dozen add-ons.

You can use the stock themes out of the box but most merchants end up using them as a CSS reference for creating their own custom look. It's well worth the effort to make your store's design unique as it builds brand loyalty.

Joe, You'll find a few of us SF6'ers here, and more are coming. The modular design is a breeze to configure, change etc. The forums contain a wealth of info and Marcus's crew is first rate - no kidding here. Night and day compared to SF.

I'd recommend you go through the BV5 on-line manual AND the BV4 manual, esp. the videos. Many controls, syntaxes used for building products, etc. carry over quite well.

If building products from scratch, first create product variations (Attributes) deciding whether to use choices or modifiers or both, then create product types, and type properties before digging into the creation of products. This will set up a solid foundation and make adding products a breeze.

Keep in mind, shared choices aren't the same as SF's attribute templates. (Big difference) Change one, they all change. If this is a problem, make a product template with its own non-shared choices and clone it, then make product-by-product changes if this is what you'll need to do to avoid "sharing" quirks.

Welcome to the bright side, Joe. We're all working hard to make this a great platform - a rising tide floats all the boats.

Now.... if we could get Wallace over here.......