This question cannot be answered easily. As always with such an abstract question, the answer is "it depends". To answer this question we have to look at the available Smartstore Editions.
Smartstore is available in the following six editions: Community, Professional, Premium, Premium Flat, Enterprise and Enterprise OS. Each of these editions serves its purpose.
First of all, let's make one thing clear - whichever Smartstore Edition you choose, an "upgrade" to a higher edition is possible at any
time, even during ongoing shop operation, because the basic code of the Smartstore Editions does not differ from the open source version
(Community Edition or CE for short).
The Smartstore Community Edition is intended for beginners who want to see what can be done with e-commerce, but also to check if the technologies we provide are sufficient.
You should use the Smartstore Professional Edition if you have answered "yes" to the question above. With this version, which basically consists of the Community Edition plus plugins provided by Smartstore, you are able to run a professional online shop. Further information about this later.
Now let's get to the Smartstore Premium and the Smartstore Premium Flat Edition. Both editions differ only in the amount of plugins provided by Smartstore, the Core (Open Source), i.e. the Community Edition is always included in the base. The Smartstore Premium Flat Edition is a rental solution. Further information on this later.
The Smartstore Enterprise Edition is the ultimate solution and is designed for international brands and retail companies and
those who want to become one. It is flexible and can grow with your business. But again, more about this later.
Now let's go into more detail.
Smartstore Community Edition (CE)
Let's start with the Smartstore Community Edition, and for whom it is suitable. The Smartstore Community Edition is 100% open source,
is licensed according to GPLv3 and is of course free of charge. Again the question is, why do we do this and who should benefit from
it?
This question can be answered relatively quickly. Before you decide on something, you want to check if it is the right thing to do,
because you invest time and money. This is the reason why we offer our work free of charge to everyone without any "ifs and buts".
To make it short. With the Smartstore Community Edition you get a flexible basis with the most necessary functionalities to develop
and successfully operate a state-of-the-art webshop. You can find more information here.
Smartstore Professional Edition
In which case is the Professional Edition interesting for you and what services and advantages can you expect? This edition is only
important, if you want to run a full-fledged online shop using the included plugins. In other words, if you are ready and considering to
invest, you are definitely ready to get into e-commerce professionally. So what can you expect from the Professional Edition?
For example the Mega Search Plugin, which is able to deliver results of millions of products and variants, product groups and
manufacturers in milliseconds. Or the Mega Menu, which allows you to flexibly set up the main navigation structure of the product
catalogue. Not to be neglected, the Content Slider, this offers an unmissable presentation possibility for products and by the
use of own HTML code, for every imaginable content on the start page and in all product groups and much more. More about the advantages
of the Professional Edition can be found here.
Smartstore Premium & Smartstore Premium Flat Edition
You are slowly becoming more demanding. Again the question why should you buy the Premium Edition and what added value does it offer
you? You only ask yourself this question once you have established yourself on the market and now want to optimize your processes. With
the Smartstore Premium Edition we offer you the best return on investment. The keywords here are ROI, e-commerce strategy, customer
lifetime value, option price models, investment planning models. What does the Premium Edition offer you to achieve all this?
For example, the extended MegaSearch + variant, you need this plugin to run the MegaSearch plugin in a multishop environment.
Using the facetted search, your customers will find the products they are looking for quickly and intuitively. But it goes even further.
In this situation, they can't avoid data exchange between different sources and destinations.
As an example with BMEcat, this version offers you import & export possibilities in the common industry standard for
exchanging product catalogues. For the transmission of order data to merchandise management systems, OpenTrans was implemented as an
additional industry standard with which the connection to almost all Inventory management softwares can be made.
The next challenge in this phase of your business is, is my hoster still the right one? Can he accompany me internationally and
protect my online shop effectively against attacks? At the latest now you should think about cloud computing. The Premium Version
is exactly the right tool to master this challenge. We have deliberately chosen Microsoft as the market leader in cloud computing and
provide you with the right tool in the form of the plug-in "Azure BLOB Storage". You can find more information about this topic
in our blog post "Smartstore in the Cloud".
Another issue which should not be underestimated in this phase is speed. For this purpose we offer you the possibility to reach the
maximum speed with the plugin "Output Cache". But what exactly does this "Output Cache" do anyway? At this point it unfortunately
becomes a bit too technical, but we will try to explain it as simple as possible.
"output caching is the mechanism for optimizing performance by keeping web pages which have already been requested at an earlier
time. With page caching, entire pages are kept in stock on the web server without generating them dynamically each time they are
requested. Normally, the web server discards the output immediately after forwarding it to the web client."
This was the technical explanation, now the simple one. If someone before you has made the same search request, the server
saves it and prints it out at the next similarly asked question without searching the database again, making everything faster.
Hopefully this explanation is more understandable.
Of course, we could write more about the Premium at this point, but we will spare you that. You are welcome to make an appointment
with one of our experienced employees and get advice.
We will now move on to the Premium Flat and what benefits it can offer you. The Premium Flat was developed because customers
requested it. We also call the Premium Flat our "all-round carefree package". It differs not only in the amount of plug-ins included,
which add an additional value of 2,482 €, but also in the services Smartstore offers you. The most important part of the Premium Flat is
our Platinum Support contract. This offers you a response guarantee of four hours, phone support, emergency support in case the
online shop is not available and support for in-house developments. In addition, it also offers you the initial installation, an update
service for hotfixes, an update service for version updates including backups before updates and the installation and updates of
plug-ins. Just an "all-round carefree package".
Smartstore Enterprise Commerce Edition & Smartstore Enterprise Commerce Open Source Edition
We will now proceed with the supreme discipline, the Smartstore Enterprise Commerce Edition. As you have noticed at this
point, this edition is called Enterprise Commerce and not Enterprise E-Commerce. What difference does it make if you leave
out the E before commerce? Well, that' s quite easy to explain. The most common use of e-commerce is to refer to the online sale of
goods through an online store.
E-business or commerce is only spoken of as an overall term for a number of business processes which are handled in
companies via information technologies. Apart from selling articles, these could be e.g. the controlling and accounting of machines
(IoT) or the rental of tools, bicycles or electric scooters and much more.
Again, there are no limits to your imagination, in the great combination between Smartstore and the Azure Cloud services provided by
Microsoft you are able to implement almost any business process. Since it would go too far at this point to explain all possible
combinations between Smartstore and Microsoft Azure, we will focus on a few core elements for international brands and retailers.
Nevertheless, you can find a little more information about the topic here.
What is Enterprise Commerce and who needs it anyway?
Smartstore Enterprise Commerce Edition has an enormous range of functions - a complete listing here would go beyond the scope of this
blog post. At this point, however, one can also speak of a commerce framework or a construction kit. With Smartstore Enterprise Commerce
Edition you are able to map individual requirements quickly and easily, for example Order Management, Business Intelligence,
Marketplace, ERP, PIM or CRM, whatever you want, without having to touch the actual core of the software.
Manage millions of products. We decided to make no compromises in the Enterprise Commerce Edition right from the start. Since the
industry has to process millions of pieces of information, it is important to fulfill this wish. Our Enterprise Commerce Edition
therefore includes Lucene as a full text search, this works with indices and is used for example in Wikipedia or Twitter. In 2010
the Apache Solr search server was integrated as a sub-project in Lucene.
Since you seem to belong to one of the more ambitious companies (otherwise you wouldn't be interested in the Enterprise Commerce
Edition) you may have thought about Redis. If not, you should do so. But what is Redis and who needs it? Redis is a fast, in-memory,
key-value data structure memory. Here you can learn more about Redis and how Smartstore handles it in its Enterprise Commerce Edition.
The next topic which should be important for you as an ambitious company is Enterprise Cloud. Why is Enterprise Cloud
important for growth and internationalization? Because more and more leading companies are moving beyond hyper-convergence and moving
towards an enterprise cloud strategy to bring the flexibility, simplicity and economics of public clouds to their data centers. To learn
more about Smartstore's approach to cloud technologies in the Enterprise Commerce Edition, you can read more here.
Another, yet important topic are so-called Extract Transform Load processes, in short (ETL). At this point, of course, you ask
yourself, what is this and how can I use it? ETL solutions enable companies to extract data from different applications and merge it at
a central location. With the help of ETL tools, these processes can be completely automated. This saves time and resources compared to
manually exporting data to the data warehouse. And this is exactly where the Smartstore Enterprise Commerce Edition is the right choice
for you. You can also find more information about this topic here.
One of the biggest problems in the enterprise sector is the procurement process (PunchOut), and we have a solution for this
problem. PunchOut technology enables you to use product offerings from different suppliers within your system landscape. Large companies
are already making extensive use of this option, for example to purchase office supplies, furniture or spare parts. In order to coordinate
and control the purchases of many employees, either in-house software is used or our plug-in PunchOut Connect with OCI and cXML for the
e-procurement industry is used.
Another very important topic, are statistics. Again, we help you to turn data into knowledge and knowledge into action. Use Power BI
to make your analyses available to your entire organization in a targeted manner. In the Enterprise Commerce Edition we have integrated
the Microsoft Power BI cloud service. With Power BI from Microsoft, you can access data stored in different source systems in a
targeted manner. This allows you to derive insights into user behavior. With generated reports including their graphics, you can then
share them with other employees via your own company network or via the Internet.
For more information on how Smartstore deals with Power BI, click here.
A further edition for your growth is our Smartstore Enterprise Commerce Open Source, i.e. our completely open-source
software for your business use. Since an explanation about this version would be too much at this point, we have dedicated a blog post
to the possibilities of this edition.
Perhaps it is worth noting that unlike competing applications, Smartstore Enterprise Commerce Edition does not require you to budget
hundreds of thousands of euros or more per year in licensing costs. This is less expensive than you think, give us a call and let us
advise you.
Ready. Sell. Grow.
Ready to get started?
Contact us or try Smartstore for free. Contact sales
https://smartstore.com/en/contact
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