ChannelAdvisor is one of the oldest players in the feed management space, especially when it comes to marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
Feedonomics is our product feed platform of choice for both feed optimization and marketplace order synchronization.
Pricing
One of the biggest barriers to using ChannelAdvisor is their expensive long-term pricing. When you’re starting out from scratch, it is less expensive, but it typically starts at $1k/mo plus a percentage of revenue between 1-2%. That means if you’re making $1M in revenue per month, it will cost you between $10k-20k per month.
Long term contracts
Another issue with ChannelAdvisor is the long-term contract you’ll have to sign. As you scale your revenue, your monthly fee will also scale because it’s a percentage of revenue.
We use Feedonomics for optimizing feeds for channels like Google Shopping and marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart primarily because 1. Feedonomics doesn’t have long-term contracts and 2. the pricing is a set monthly fee that is not tied to revenue, and lastly 3. The optimization rules are far simpler, yet more powerful.
Title Too Long Feed Example:
Lets say we want to create 3 different title variants based on 80 character limits
- Brand + V-Neck Plaid Dress
- Brand + Plaid Dress
- Brand + Dress
In Channel Advisor, this rule is incredibly complex and looks something like this:
IFTOOLONG(IFTOOLONG(IFTOOLONG(CONCATENATE($Brand,” “,REPLACE($NameTrim, ” Dress”,””),IF($Version=”BRAND”,” BRAND”,””),” Replacement “,IF(CONTAINS($Category,”Dress”),”V-Neck Plaid Dress.”,”V-Neck Plaid Skirt”)),80,CONCATENATE($Brand,” “,REPLACE($NameTrim, ” Dress”,””),IF($Version=”BRAND”,” BRAND”,””),” Replacement “… (hard to follow, right?)
In Feedonomics this same rule looks significantly simpler.
if: true
then: title = brand ‘ V-Neck Plaid Dress‘
if: strlen(title) > 80
then: title = brand ‘ Plaid Dress‘
if: strlen(title) > 80
then: title = brand ‘ Dress’
Querying raw and transformed data
While ChannelAdvisor lets you see and query raw data, there is no ability to see or query your transformed data, meaning you need to download your optimized feed to excel every time you want to see your transformed data.
Feedonomics lets you see and query both raw and transformed data.
Read More Comparisons of Product Feed Platforms