eBay’s support of Magento Go, the ecommerce solution for small business sellers acquired as part of Magento by eBay last year, has some ProStores users worried they’ll be left in the dust.
One seller who’s been using ProStores since 2005 said, “Late last year, ProStores ended all eBay-related discounts – there had been several available to PS owners as incentive to use eBay. I have to wonder why they ended all eBay financial ties – I do not know of course, but my speculation is that they want to sell PS.” He said he thought they could not do that with eBay incentives tied to merchants/ProStores storeowners.
“That is purely speculation on my part, but it goes together with my observation that eBay no longer pushes PS, or sells PS to eBay merchants or actively promotes PS in any way – unlike Magento,” he said.
“I can tell you that ProStores does not seem to be pushing merchants to Magento,” he added. “We have had no solicitation from PS about Magento.” He said he knows nothing about Magento, “other than they are now with eBay and their pricing structure.”
“ProStores is conspicuously left out of any serious discussion of their new development framework X.Commerce,” said BN.com Ecommerce Marketplace GM Rick Watson, who blogs about ecommerce at RickWatsonsBlog.com.
“EBay appears content for the moment to leave ProStores well enough alone, and even incrementally add to it, but strategically it’s not clear to me what the direction is at the moment vis-a-vis Magento,” he said. “Obviously many customers are invested in the ProStores platform, which makes this a five-year horizon-type decision rather than something that can be done hastily, so over time we will have to see how they weave the story for customers.”
There doesn’t seem to be much discussion about the new platform on the ProStores discussion boards. The ProStores seller said he is “surprised at the lack of comments about the platform – except when it goes down. Then there are a lot of comments!”
He said there was a discussion when Google Wallet came out – about how eBay was being heavy-handed and not letting ProStores sellers – independent merchants, after all – use Google Wallet, but that has died down as Google did not make many inroads on independent web sites.” He added that there are occasional grumblings that eBay/ProStores will not allow Amazon Payments either – but “there is (an expensive) work-around for that (self-coding).”
What do you think the future of ProStores will be? Do you use ProStores, or have you ever used it, and how do you like it?
About the Author
Julia Wilkinson is the author of “The eBay Price Guide” (No Starch Press, 2006) and “eBay Top 100 Simplified Tips Tricks” (Wiley, 2004-6). Her free “Yard Salers” newsletter is at available at YardSalers.net where you will also find her latest ebook, Flip It Again.
