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SimpleNet Commerce

SimpleNet Commerce's control panel is easy to navigate, but e-commerce integration is not as seamless as in other services.

SimpleNet Commerce has a capable integrated site builder. But because the commerce features are not built in, it's suitable primarily for businesses that want to build their own solution. To that end, SimpleNet also comes with Mysql database access and support for php scripting.

SimpleNet's Web control panel is typical of what you find at a Web host that has commerce capabilities but relies on you to do most of the integration. The service gives you links to configure the included Miva Merchant or osCommerce engines. You then tie these engines to sites you create in your own tools and upload via ftp or the Web-based file manager.

SimpleNet also offers a more wizardlike site-building tool called Site Studio. In this, you start by choosing from dozens of template styles, each available in multiple color variations. Then you add pages from a gallery that includes a variety of content-specific page designs, as well as a few that provide interactive capabilities like user surveys. Like Affinity's Bigstep, SimpleNet has you populate page content by filling out Web-based forms, but it doesn't include some of the status indicators and guidance found in Bigstep. Its online help also is sparser. Site Studio automatically creates graphical navigation bar buttons and can even auto-generate a fancy Macromedia Flash-based welcome and navigation page.

When it comes to building product and category pages, SimpleNet doesn't offer much guidance. Site Studio lets you create product pages with links to third-party Add-A-Cart shopping, and of course you can use the capable Miva or osCommerce to build a highly customized storefront, as you could with almost any hosting provider that offers these tools. But there are no built-in catalog management capabilities or any significant facilities for promoting your site or managing customer interactions, though you can crunch site statistics with the included Webalyzer package.

SimpleNet is comparable with the tool sets you find at standard hosting providers, with the addition of the Site Studio to help walk you through creation of a simple site. But for turnkey commerce integration and store management tools, it can't match the other services in this roundup.