written by CrystalPatterson on 01/08/2016
EKM used to to be a great and very cost effective solution for both small and larger businesses, but these days (August 2016....) EKM has changed and changed for the worse, they are now simply profiteering from their customers and have recently increased their fees by circa 600% without any real additional benefits. This increase has been forced on existing customers despite large increases having also been made only a matter of a few months before and promises at the time that no further increases would be introduced. However following the construction of their own new purpose built £5M offices and staff gyms, games rooms, cafes etc etc etc, they are now introducing even larger increases. I suggest that you look at some of the other alternative eCommerce providers that exist, they offer the same if not better solutions with far more features and features that actually work (unlike many of EKM's features) and for a fraction of the cost. It really does seem like EKM has lost the plot is focused simply on its own profits at the expense of its clients.
written by dannnytoo on 26/01/2014
been using these guys for 6 years. they seemed to be very good and pro in the early days. Now they have got larger and the service has gone south. try another provider if i was searching..
written by on 24/06/2013
We have been having problems for months with the delivery charges section of our EKM website. It's a shambles and after months it's still the same. Problems are: It won't always hold/save the input figures. If we put in a delivery charge of ie £6.95 the system decides to input it as £7.00, or it puts in NaN and no delivery price at all. Needless to say we have had orders without delivery added so it's costing us money!. Whilst EKM support are trying to help they just don't seem to be able to sort the problems quickly and the latest request was for us to import/export the details (don't work)so back to square one. Other problem is that script is doubled on edit (not customer view) and the reply from EKM was that it was a problem with the edit buttons and was difficult to rectify and won't be done for some time! Maybe they don't have the expertise to resolve these or perhaps they are growing too big too fast? If only they would sort out the problems within a sensible timescale we would not be looking to move to another company.
written by on 17/04/2013
I sell on Ebay and was contacted by EkmPowershop on the 14th March 2013. They were very informative and friendly, and seemed to be offering a great web service. The young lady suggested I save a lot of my own time and pay the £99 fee for them to set up my website. I followed the info given and uploaded all my details, images etc. A consultant phoned me for an hour long chat – so he could get a better idea of my site and what I wanted. He said I would be up & running in 7 days. I got an email saying he was out of the office when I next contacted him. Two weeks later I contacted him again, and was contacted by email, he said he was still out of the office. This second person would take over where the first person left off. I went through what I wanted again, by email. He didn’t seem to understand that I had sent all my details and images, and I became frustrated. I phoned support. I spoke with someone support and explained I felt I was getting nowhere. He sympathised and said he would speak with him and make sure things were now developing. Ekm give you a complex and thorough Excel worksheet to fill in, and I had done this in week one. He told me the site would be up in the next 5 working days. One week later I contacted him again, after looking at the site and seeing that my dummy test images were still there, but not the real site. I phoned support again, and asked him to follow up what he said he would do. I am starting to feel very uneasy at this stage, and that is where I am right now with Ekm. I have emailed them again saying that I will upload the images if they do the rest, and I’m waiting to hear back from them as I write. I’ll post another review as things progress, one way or another. I appreciate I may be unlucky so far - and that things can go wrong. I hope they put them right for me. David Lowe Ekm customer. Ekm asked me to review them week 1, which I did - things looked good at that time.
written by on 12/03/2013
I have had a website with EKM for about 2 years and have had problems all the way. The latest is that they recently changed the mechanics behind the scenes and in so doing lost loads of delivery charges. This means I am exposed to losing profit on already tight margins. The new system takes an eternity to add the individual delivery charges and with over 400 products with lots of varients it's going to take weeks to do. Six clicks and 2 sliders to do one addition! Spent over 10 minutes on 0844 premium number (Premium number on support shows they only want your money!)AND THE PHONE WAS NOT ANSWERED so another email requesting help sent. No reply yet and asked for a phone call to discuss. I can only say this is the worst company I have spent my money with and I wish I had never seen them. I am taking legal advice and reporting them to the OFT, anyone who feels the same should do the same. Quite simply a good idea badly run by a bunch of don't cares who are only interested in taking your money. I will be finding an alternative as quickly as possible
written by on 27/11/2012
Found editing to be a headache and minefield, I actually used opencart before and found this quite easy to use and change and edit, but to many ekm elements for my liking, found it very stressful, and although they have a few web templates they are all pretty basic, the ones they show you of customers, are ones they paid to have developed. Price is middle of the road, its ok for beginners, but a bit basic, and yet to see results as still currently using, so if my sells increase or not!!!!
written by on 01/11/2012
Some good features. Many many old templates with just a handful of ok looking ones that clearly have been made more recently. It is ok for people new to e-commerce who don't mind if their site looks like a thousand others. The templates are not as easy to edit as they like to make out. The inline CSS and the overall coding is MESSY! I do not recommend it to any webdesigners or developers out there. There are alternatives out there like Volusion and Superia carts. Or the king of all carts, Magento, which I do not recommend for new users.
written by SuperiorCondoms on 18/04/2012
We spent a lot of time deciding which web hosting to go with, and in the end we chose EKM. We have had so many little problems, which have caused me a lot of wasted time and energy. Every time called them on chat, the chat window had to be displayed - if it was in the background, you never knew when (normally after 5-7 minutes) they would respond. More often that not, I would forget, and the chat automatically closed. They took several minutes to respond to each line of chat. Email responses get answered in 24-48 hours. For a web company I think this is pathetic - 4 hours should be their target. We have requested some very simple changes to their software time and time again but they keep saying they are working on it. One good example is German customers addresses - quite a lot of these have german language characters in them - EKM doesnt pick these characters up - instead replaces them with TWO random other characters - thus leaving me having to second guess what the actual address is I have to send my products to. We had a huge drama with Paypal too - it too EKM weeks to fix that - their server was providing the wrong info to paypal, but they never admitted it, and would not entertain refunding us for a few months fees even though clients couldnt complete their transactions through paypal (credit cards were ok). Seriously disappointed and plan to leave as soon as we are in a better position to do so. A cheap option for those who want something inbetween amateur and professional.
Written on: 25/04/2012
It's a cheap price matched by cheap product and service. There are better options out there for the same sort of price and far less hassle all round :-) save your ulcer.
Easywebstore is the same pricewise and faster, easier, friendlier and doesn't keep trying to sell you 'add ons' constantly. Hope that helps :-)
written by on 03/11/2011
EKM are the really poor, we used to recommend them but until recently, if your completely non techy they love it, as they can charge for everything!, so really is only good for people with small shops and have no plan to expand in the future. If your a designer they won't help you at all.. although they state its easy for designers if you have any kind of idea on building the shop yourself they don't want to help. or their response to support is 'we will quote for this if you can't do it' I've been asking for help for weeks and nothing.. hence why we are asking our clients to set up their own hosting, it may be a little more expensive in the beginning but at least your not limited to such simple things that EKM can't offer such as having no ability to monitor what customers search on your shop, which is important for a shop or the EKM newsletter- your only allowed theirs as anything else is a competitor. ( their response! ) No 404 redirects! the most basic thing. No ability to manage nested lists on pages unless you hardcode. anything to do with adding PHP or scripts forget it you have no chance EKM Is limited extremely if your serious about setting up a shop, but if your happy with the setup. It's perfect for people who just want a quick small shop though so can't fault that, just beware your end up getting charged for 10 minute jobs.
written by on 18/05/2011
Rude and un-helpful staff.
Good product and works well BUT if you need to speak to there helpline, be ready for NO help.
Powershop will not work on the iPad, iPhone or any pc with Firefox.
written by little Rolf on 26/06/2009
EKM Powershop is a good, reasonably priced system if you have basic requirements and don't mind your shop looking like everyone elses. It can be quick and easy to set up a basic shop using their templates, and their support can be quite friendly and helpful.
On the other hand, I WOULD NEVER recommend to to any serious e-Commerce user. It is NOT 100% customisable as they claim, it is poorly documented, poorly implemented and grossly inadequate in functionality once you scrape under the surface. The UI and programming tags are inconsistent and tedious beyond belief. Managing products is a nightmare and the bulk import and export do not work unless you have a very simple product structure.
There seem to be quite a few customers who follow EKM with religious fervour, lapping up every piece of company propaganda with a naive hunger that remind me of a brainwashed cult. I suspect there are many less enthusiastic customers who either remain quiet for fear of finding themselves ejected from the forums if not the application!
written by on 18/09/2010
EKM is easy to set up, its easy to use and its quite cheap, it's also easy to modify it for SEO.
About EKM's customer service, sometimes its ok, but most of the time they can be obtuse (to put it politely).
All in all, if your not going to sped much time on your site its ok, if you are going to invest a lot of time into it I would go for something else. Basically EKM will have you by the balls because you cant just walk away because they have your site on their server and you cant download a copy. But the same is true of any hosted software like EKM
written by tokenman2007 on 17/01/2007
EkmPowershop is a basic online shop and you're getting what you payed for - don't expect anything amazing here. If you want a professional looking shop with better features then don't go for this product.
written by ewwm2 on 02/07/2004
The EKM website is better looking than any website you will be able to build with their software. The site you get will look outdated. And do not phone the customer support number. They will take your money, then not help you. Mention help/refund and they go as silent as the grave. Do not be taken in by their flashy homepage. I was. And lived to regret it.
Written on: 25/07/2004
Don't know what company this guy has been dealing with but it doesnt sound like ekmsystems. We have found them to be excellent for support.
<br>
<br>Also it might be worth looking at the 'Our Customers' section of their website as that way you really do get to see what can be made using their software and the results are impressive.
Written on: 20/03/2006
A customer's testimonial on any website, especially if it is a commercial site is hardly likely to be negative if they're trying to sell the product is it! Therefore it is a biased testimonial.
Written on: 20/03/2006
Your honesty is all that matters here...this is really what I was looking for...thanks for writing about this as I was just about to go ahead and purchase Ekm powershop. People don't like writing bad points, but a good reviewer will do this!
Do you have a question about this product or company? Simply type it in the box below and one of our community will give you an answer
Once we've checked over your question we will put it live on the site and our strong community of experts will hopefully give you some great answers that you find useful.
We will email you when the question is on the site
Carolw33's Response to SuperiorCondoms's Review
Written on: 20/04/2012
Remember this is just £19.99+VAT per week including marketing help online chat and email contact shop owners need to put in some work themselves as it is their business. Instead of moaning about little things try to make sure your site and shop are working to the best advantage for you and follow all the marketing and links tips given by ekm.