Review: Pros & CONS of Vendio.com Free Online eCommerce Store ProStores + Alternative

Vendio is a new(er) site that is offering users a FREE online store that allows you to sell items, cross promote eBay items and make money through ecommerce with no signup fees, insertion fees, image fees or final value fees...sounds almost to good to be true. I decided to look into it and see what I could uncover.

My first discovery is that Vendio is eBay...so I figured there MUST be fees hidden somewhere...I have been following the eBay phenomenon for years and I have always found that there are fees hiding somewhere, you just have to see through the smoke and peek around the mirrors.

When you begin to compare Vendio versus eBay, ProStores or Yahoo you will find that Vendio offers a lot more option; customizable templates, your own domain with your own provider, complete inventory management, live inventory status, SEO friendly and optimized and full integration with eBay and Amazon. Not to mention that you can list unlimited products...truly unlimited; you will find that with most sites that your site fee increases as your products increase. With Vendio you can list 1 product or 10,000 for free.

So what's the catch? Well, there IS a catch...or ten...and here they are in black and white;

1. They offer a “free shopping cart”, which is very cool. The downside is that the shopping cart only accepts eBay related forms of payment (Pay Pal, etc). I will tell you pointblank; if you want to operate a business and you want to accept large sums of money via Pay Pal; RUN LIKE THE WIND. I kid you not, you will ultimately get so screwed. I cant even begin to explain how incredibly corrupt Pay Pal is. Since Pay Pal operates as a Money Market, they are able to basically abide by their own rules, not necessarily “banking laws”. They are able to do fund reversals for any OR NO reason...they Are even able to freeze ALL of your funds without any prior warning. And, to top it off, they offer zero support when there is an issue. Here is a real life example of how wretched Pay Pal is to use as a “reliable” bank; You ship an item to a customer. Customer emails you to say the item didnt arrive. You look up the tracking number to see the item did indeed arrive and that the customer is trying to scam you. Customer opens a “Pay Pal Dispute”. You provide Pay Pal with tracking information to show the item did arrive. Pay Pal yanks the funds from your account and reimburses the customer. You have now lost your product, your shipping fees, your money, and your Pay Pal fees...when you did everything RIGHT.

Another example; A customer buys an item. You ship it. They try to resell it. TWO MONTHS LATER they still cant resell it so they open a Pay Pal dispute saying it was damaged; Pay Pal may or may not ask them to send the items back; either way, they are refunded. You lose.

This happens over and over and over. I have had International customers pay for something then say they didnt “authorize charges”. Pay Pal then refunds them. I have had Pay Pal freeze my business funds because I ran “too many transactions without upgrading to a Pro account”. I have had Pay Pal hold payments for up to two weeks to “investigate at random” – In the end, people, PLEASE do not use Pay Pal for accepting money for your business unless you are ok with losing the money.

Since switching to a merchant account that has NOTHING TO DO WITH PAY PAL my life has been so much better. I use a REAL merchant account which is ran through a REAL bank. The costs of running each credit card are 50% LESS than Pay Pal. My funds are directly deposited into my business banking every 72 hours. I have NEVER had a problem with a REAL banking institution and if I ever have a question I can call and get help 24 hours a day. I get to talk to REAL people who CARE. I get to speak with employees who can look up my account and provide the true meaning of “Tech Support” – it is FANTASTIC....AND COSTS LESS!

2. The second catch is that its NOT actually “free”! You pay a “closing fee” so to speak on your gross sales. If you use Vendio and you gross $1,000/mo you will pay 1.95% of sales in fees, up to $2,500 means you pay 1.75% in fees and anything over $2,500 a month equals about 1.25% of gross. You only get a real break if you do over $25,000 a month in sales – then you owe 1% in sales.

3. MORE FEES. So you’re already paying 2% or so out of your GROSS just to use the “free” Vendio, now here comes more fees;

a.) Image hosting: $3.00/mo
b.) Photo Zoom; $1.00 PER IMAGE
c.) Image Watermarks; $3.00/mo
d.) Research Tools: $20.00/mo
e.) Stat Counter: $3.00/mo
f.) Traffic Booster; $4.00/mo
g.) Ability to REVISE Listing Errors; $7.00/mo

To get the full package you’re looking at spending $70 or more a month...if you dont use a lot of images. If you do, you’re bill could be hundreds per month if you chose to use “Photo Zoom”.

4. Bugs – The most common complain is that the bugs within the Vendio platform can be costly and time consuming to the user. Many users have wanted to throw in the towel but removing all of your products from the site is not just a simple “feed-pull”. – Even users who have been long-time members complain that the site is very “buggy”. Largest amount of complaints; free store takes FOREVER to load and refresh. Plan to spend double the time needed to get anything accomplished.

5. MORE FEES?! Did you know you are billed $7 for each call to tech support? Neither did the users bitching a fit online. Only after Vendio was stoned in the forums did they reply with saying the user could have “emailed” or “used the message boards” as opposed to calling.

6. Broken promises – A BIG complaint that seems to be a common factor amongst almost every feedback (good and bad feedback) is that the site is NOT SEO friendly. In fact, people cant even get their site to appear in GOOGLE for Petes sake!
Besides that there is to-be-expected complaints; people dont understand how to do something or complain response time is slow. I dont take these complaints all to seriously since just about every company of this nature seems to have slow response time and people not being able to figure things out and jumping on the net to bitch is common. But as far as the previous 6 points; those are pretty serious.

So here’s what I propose as an alternative;

I use ; the site has all the features you need for $9.99 a month. Or, if you need more features, I signed up for the Advanced eCommerce Store which costs $24.00 a month. It has worked out fine for me. I will say that you do have to do a lot of work upfront. You have to create shipping tables, list all of your products and so on; but it is very, very worth it. The advantage is that you are able to markup your shipping costs 5%, 15% or whatever you need to cover actual “costs” versus whatever USPS charges. Everything is fully customizable. by far offers the best bang for the buck. There are no hidden fees. You do not pay any kind of fees to list or sell; only the flat rate of the store you pick. You do not pay any closing fees or “percentage of sale fees”. Very basic. You can also get your domain right through them instantly. Its super simple. Now, here’s the deal; if you want to have payments ran right through your site, you will have to use one or more of the 50-70 different payments they allow to be accepted through the site. OR, you can do as I have done; I choose to run my payments manually. This gives me full control over each invoice. Whenever a user submits a payment, it appears to the user that they have successfully purchased the item(s). They receive an email receipt automatically and everything. However, they have not truly purchased the items. On my end, inside Homestead, there is a “pending order” that is waiting for me to “authorize”. So I log in, click on “pending order”, see the customers information and process the payment using a separate program. This is an exceptional way to save money’; first because I am using a very low cost-per-payment solution and second because users are not able to continually “swipe” declined cards (each time a user “swipes” you have to pay about $0.30. You'd be amazed at how many people simply wont call and check their balance. Instead they will swipe 15 times. You just lost $4.50 for nothing). In addition, if a user happens to purchase an item that is not in stock or there is an issue with, I never have to pay for a “charge back”, I just call/email the user to let them know that their order can not be completed and I cancel it. TONS OF MONEY SAVED! Yes, it takes extra time to manually process each order, but it has saved me a fortune. I have just gotten in the habit of waking up and processing orders while I drink my morning coffee – it becomes routine.

Now, another advantage to using is that you are still able to cross promote on eBay, should you chose to do so. Each item you list has a “sell on ebay” function – all you have to do is link your eBay profile to your account.

So at the end of the day, I say “Why pay more?”. My total cost per month is $24 for my store and LESS THAN 2.9% of each purchase to accept the funds that are direct deposited into my bank acct. Thats all folks. I dont have to pay for photo services, inventory tracking, stat counters, etc – its all inclusive. The only bells and whistles I dont have with the $24.00 account is that I cant “renew subscriptions” (which doesnt apply to me) or sell downloadable files (also doesnt apply).

I strongly suggest that anyone looking for a REALISTIC solution to ecommerce checks into using . Be ready to spend time doing work upfront to make your store “perfect” – but remember, once your store is “done”, it is done forever!

But, this is my opinion; if you want to test out Vendio, PLEASE try the Vendio FREE Store Plan. DO NOT ditch your current store! Instead, use the free store for several months and see how things are coming along. If you feel successful using the Vendio free store THEN make the plunge into adding on "extras".


- PS - sorry for the weird banners. They aparrently dont want their name used (keyword bidding). But at least the banners are kinda nifty looking.