It's a great ecommerce solution for business looking to customize their site without giving up a percentage of their sales to the ecommerce giants of the world.
Pros
What I love about Lemonstand is how much is built into their core offering and how customizable it is. I find it much easier to use than Shopify and similar products. And, they charge a flat-monthly fee - no percentages taken from sales.
Cons
Their documentation is pretty terrible but they're supposedly working on it. A lot of their features, though totally usable, feel thrown together just to exist but lack refinement. They've got everything you need but to be effective but it may be a while before the quality is there to make it the most efficient tool.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 8/10
When it comes to e-commence platforms, flexibility (especially with regards to the cart, checkout & payment process), is often something sorely lacking. I've found many SAAS platforms operate on a rather rigid cookie-cutter approach (everything engineered to work and function only their way) leaving one with little leeway to adapt to the specific needs of a business. As we all know, oftentimes it's handy, or even necessary, to be able to tailor a site's functionality to an entity's specific business model. This is where Lemonstand shines! To a very respectable degree the Lemonstand platform allows for the ability to customize and fine-tune a significant portion of the platform's front-end functionality. Like many other cloud-based e-commerce platforms out there, Lemonstand offers up a number of starter themes which provides one with all the essential elements to get a web store up and running quickly. It is true that In order to wrangle the most out of this platform, through tweaking the themes & templates, one may wish/need to enlist the assistance of a developer or simply be willing to become somewhat fluent in CSS / Templating / Twig / and maybe JavaScript. However, if only the customary e-Commerce services and functions are required, then one of their standard templates will likely serve ones' needs quite effectively. Cloud-hosted platforms, like Lemonstand, do offer several clear advantages, such as: ensuring all user/accounts are running off of the most recent and updated versions of their software, ease of update deployment (issues involving varying server configs are removed from the equation), security monitoring, and a host of other advantages. With Lemonstand, new businesses or start-ups can ease into eCommerce through a comparatively modest fixed/known pricing plan. No bandwidth fees, no storage fees, and no gateway fees (beyond what the gateways themselves charge) goes a long way toward making things more manageable for young startups or small businesses operating on limited budgets. As an account holder, I have not yet experienced any system downtime. As a store owner, feedback from shoppers has been very positive with regards to their shopping and checkout experiences. Dealing with customer support has been very good. Overall, responses to applicable service requests have been met with knowledgable replies by staff members who clearly know their product and were willing to help. I feel Lemonstand is a top quality product!
Pros
Flexibility, Versatility, Fixed Priding Plans
Cons
I'm not sure this really qualifies as a "dislike" as its more of a "wish we had em all now"... but it's a young platform and there are still some features that are still being built / upcoming - to which their published roadmap attests.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
I work for one of the largest software companies in the world as a solutions engineer by day and also run my own startup, www.DollarScent.com a monthly subscription service for premium car air fresheners. Prior to that, I was part of the founding team of a successful eCommerce software company for online retailers selling on eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, Magento, etc. When launching DollarScent, I figured WooCommerce could meet our needs. We spent a LONG time fussing around with Wordpress/WooCommerce and after over a year eventually gave up. Most of our energy was spent trying to fix WP all the time and it prevented us from ever being able to grow our business without worry. We expressed our concerns to LemonStand and after some time decided to make the switch. LemonStand was paramount in helping us migrate all of our existing paid subscribers (which no other software company was willing to do). As someone who's been involved in technology for many years, I must say that LemonStand's support, onboarding, and setup has been the absolute most pleasant experience I've had to date. Their engineering and support team REALLY care to see you successful. The representative, who runs Biz Dev, was our go to contact the whole way through and helped to facilitate a smooth transition. We are now up and running for several months without any worry and have since then focused our energies on sales and marketing. We are excited about our partnership with LemonStand and we plan on staying with them as we continue to focus on growing our subscriber base. If you're a subscription box business or just a general eCommerce retailer, give them a shot... I promise you won't be disappointed!
Pros
- Support
- Onboarding
- Flexibility of platform
- Out-of-box Integrations
Cons
- Missing a way to "gift" a product (on their roadmap)
- Missing an easy way to do a referral program
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
Pros
I like the LemonStand site. The Customer service is fantastic. The price is incredibly low comparatively plus there is no transactional percentage charged which is really nice. The themes are readily editable IF YOU KNOW CODING OR CAN HIRE A PRO.
Cons
I had read that coding was necessary but one review said it was comparable to coding in Shopify. Unfortunately, I am a novice and while I did a great job with my shopify site (to include implementing custom coding) I was not successful with LemonStand. At this time I cannot hire a professional and I get frustrated trying to get my vision across anyway. So, because of my own limitations in both knowledge and funds I cannot proceed with LS. Oh - there is also only ONE theme that's already set up for Subscriptions. That was *extremely* disappointing. Other themes can "be made compatible with coding"... Bleh.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 5/10
Pros
Easy tiered pricing structure
Utilization of existing, well-tested libraries already know to developers
Ability to rapidly launch an e-commerce platform.
Excellent customer support, including, and especially from C-level and other equity holders, who would not normally be expected to involve themselves in support.
Great starting point for subscription websites.
Cons
Low-level documentation is missing and/or hard to find ( i.e. makeup of objects, available custom filters, how frontend twig functions interact with backend is left for developer to sort out via trial and error ) [ company is aware and working on it ]
Some disjoint between payment processors and internal ( admin area ) functionality, causing some business management to be forced outside of the system.
Only one currently configured subscription-based theme [ this is being addressed/extended ]
Lacking ability to have child-themes, or other means of receiving theme updates once a theme has been selected and copied into the system.
Most of these Cons are either being addressed, or likely to be addressed by this team. They are being listed as they are/could be current "cons" at the time of this being read, and for someone looking to use the platform today. They are all items, where being a developer, and seeing the upside of this platform, are items able to be overlooked and waited out.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
14-day free trial (no credit card required)
Starter: $19 per month
Growth: $69 per month
Professional: $199 per month
Premium: $399 per month and up
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