ChannelUnity

We cannot emphasize enough how exceptional their service and follow-up are. The customer care provided is not only prompt but also personalized, ensuring that any concerns are addressed immediately. We wholeheartedly endorse ChannelUnity for your store as they have played a pivotal role in our remarkable achievements on various third-party marketplaces.

we have been using Channel Unity for 12 weeks now to link inventory from Shopify to sell on Amazon. So far so good. Excellent support from the Channel Unity team with help & assistance to get the link up and running at every stage. Orders from Amazon appear in Shopify for us to fulfil in the same way as if they had come direct, and most importantly the inventory is accurate across the 2 channels. We are looking to shortly switch on more marketplaces and are confident that Channel Unity is a robust platform to take us forward with growing our business. Highly recommend this app.

We've been using this to sync our eBay and amazon listings for about a year now. The one feature that channel unity has that you will not find elsewhere is the ability to create new product listings in Amazon in bulk. If you have unique products that are not currently in Amazon, normally you have to spend hours or days creating an Amazon upload spreadsheet for each and every product. Very cumbersome. CU solves that problem. The only reason I'm not giving it five stars is that it has started leaving old images in Amazon after you update them in Shopify. Had to go back and manually adjust images for each variant when I thought CU was syncing them but it was not. Highly recommend CU for Amazon especially.

Matt at Channel Unity is professional and knows exactly what to do even with complicated tasks.

I had great experience with this company and very satisfied with the results,

I am now a monthly subscriber and appreciate the service,

Thank You, Respectfully, Inna Gaker

The support team here are some of the best I've ever worked with. Shout out to Matt and Phil especially, who have been on hand and answered all of my queries almost instantly.

The software itself has been excellent so far. Easy to use and meets our exact business needs.

Thanks guys!

Their service and follow up is stellar. The customer care was quick & personal, any issues were resolved immediately. We highly recommend ChannelUnity for your store. We have had great success with our 3rd party marketplaces thanks to them!

I would go as far as saying this app has fundamentally changed our business, our level of orders and our long term prospects.

I must have trialled 10 different bits of software, wasted days and days of my time and completely wrecked my inventory. What I wanted to do seemed fairly simple to me. I wanted to link to ebay.co.uk (which we were already linked to through Inkfrog), amazon.co.uk and etsy.com. I wanted the software to create listings from my Shopify listings, keep stock pricing etc up to date, then ideally import any orders back into Shopify.

All the other products we looked at either didn't support all the channels we neededs, had terrible support, were incredibly, eye-wateringly expensive, were too US-centric or simply appeared not to work.

We are relatively small and trying to grow as fast as possible which can't make us all that unusual. I mention this because there seems to be an assumption amongst most providers of this type of solution that just because you want to sell across channels, you must be taking hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars/euros per month. Are we really the only Shopify user who really wants to get to that stage and sees multi-channel as a key way of getting there?

Anyway, we finally found ChannelUnity and the first couple of weeks were hard. What I learnt from trying other systems is that going multi-channel just is difficult. Amazon in particular are hugely fussy about the information needed to successfully list meaning that you will need to add extra "metafields" to Shopify with certain information like product material (depending on item), bullet points, search terms etc. The support from CU was great during this period and continues to be. They are there 7 days a week and have always responded to online chats within a minute or two. They even made a small change to their coding because I wanted to use Shopify "product types" to indicate the category for the channels and this was done in a few days. After these couple of weeks of work and learning, I came to the point where I feel completely on top of the system and it doesn't miss a beat.

Three pieces of advice:

1) I'll repeat that getting channels syncing is hard and is going to be a massive learning curve for even the relatively technical. This is far harder than just setting up Shopify. Sadly, without paying a fortune for someone to do it for you, there doesn't seem to be a way around this. CU will certainly, in my experience give you all the help they can.

2) Treat yourself to the £50 plan with online chat included. The guys are great and because of point 1 above, you're probably going to need them from time to time.

3) You will need to add extra metafields to Shopify to get Amazon working. I'm using an app called Superfields from the App Store which is perfect for this job.

Absolutely Fantastic service! I have been using Channel Unity to integrate my POD and Physical Stock products to many different Etsy, eBay and Amazon channels for just over a year now and it has been great! I always receive prompt and detailed customer support along the way without any delay from Poppy and Emmet and they are always patient and informative with any questions I have now and again. Once you get your head around how the system manipulates data with the additional use of Meta Fields and their awesome 'Tag Product fields' feature you can start filling all the gaps for each marketplace giving you a serious advantage over other integration systems that only offer you options to fill the main sections. And usually if there are other options available you need to fill them in manually one by one. Channel unity gives you all the marketplace fields you need to make data rich product listings on all channels and with the use of the 'Tag product fields' feature you can build a tag to relate to data you need to be on a certain field in a marketplace and then add the tag in bulk to all the relevant Shopify listings within the Shopify bulk editor. This truly is a powerhouse system that is rock solid. It has never missed an order for me yet either, which is so important when you have multiple channels running. Keep up the great work guys!

These guys are fantastic. We have worked with the company for the past 3 months and it has been an absolute pleasure. Ben and Michael have done great work for us and are very quick to provide support. All of this comes at a great price too. Thank you!!!!!

Hi Support,
I am going to write a review and I thought I should send it to you first so that you can prompt me with anything I may have missed. I genuinely believe you have done the best you can for me. I feel there should be more advice for beginners like me when considering using Channel Unity.
Case: 3 person team, 1 beginner, managing Channel Unity for linking shopify to ebay UK and amazon UK (other countries have been disabled due to the pitfalls of beginners experience)
All comments are intended to be used as constructive advice for those looking to use Channel Unity with beginners experience.
Summary: pay someone to use Channel Unity for you as you won't have the time to figure it out.
Initially, I was sold this fantastic product with the understanding from the salesman that everything was easy and self managing. I am sure this is true for those who are experts in eCommerce and understand how everything works. The team were very helpful in the beginning to help set up basic use. Support continue to be helpful under time restrictions (offer little examination of core issues) and with up to 2 weeks delayed response. We tend to go around in circles over the same problems that keep coming up. Advice is worded for like-minded experts who have a strong understanding of eCommerce so it is not suitable for newcomers (unavailable time is spent trying to act on advice). N.B pay an expert to manage it for you.
Ebay: These points will be obvious to experienced eCommerce managers but are not currently illustrated anywhere I can find for beginners. Everyday 100's and sometimes 1000's of listings have to be deleted from eBay as they are flagged, 'fix required'. If they are not deleted, listings loose their link and you will miss the orders as they won't we sent to your 3rd party tool (eg. shopify). This makes it hard to build trust with customers. Some of the 'fix required' are explainable through changing (developing) products in shopify (unavoidable through ebay listing restrictions). Advice: create listings as a finished product rather than with changes in mind as there's no room for error. You can delete products manually from Ebay as you go but you're often pulled away on other operational tasks and loose the thread of that particular task. Also, check each platform directly, everyday to monitor missed orders as you cannot rely on Channel Unity to send all orders to Shopify if you have made changes and forgotten to delete them from eBay. Deleting listings means that every time you relist them they loose their metrics (history of successful orders) and the listing goes to the back of the visibility cue. I had to find this out the hard way. N.B pay an expert to run it for you
Amazon: Listings are created in ways that are hard to search for, find and use in the competitive market. Listings loose their links so you have to look at amazon everyday to make sure you don't miss orders. Inventory management is difficult when links are lost as it's hard to filter unlinked listings from linked listings.
Amazon's way of doing things often clash with ebay's methods. For example, Amazon cannot cope with many variations per listing. So, if you are using one source (Shopify) to link to ebay and amazon there's a lot more to consider when designing your website N.B. hire an expert
Conclusion: Channel Unity are the only stitching service that link shopify to Amazon so, 'like it or lump it', if you want to link to Amazon. However, shopify do provide this service in America and are looking to enable it in UK. There are alternative stitching companies that generate more turnover, provide a more user friendly/ easier to use interface than using Channel Unity to link with Ebay.
I hope this feedback will help your development and marketing team
Kind Regards,
Sam
Fixaball

Hi Sam,
Thanks very much for sending across your review prior to publishing. There’s clearly a lot of thought and time gone in to that and it’s extremely useful having that kind of feedback. I suppose that my main goal is to ensure that we respond appropriately to this kind of feedback by focussing on how we ensure that customers who start in the position that you did do not end up feeling as you do now. You starting point is quite a rare one, your product set is relatively large, at the more complex end of the spectrum as far as marketplaces go and your own knowledge was of a beginner, as you describe. Whilst it’s rare, it’s still my goal to ensure that we suitably cater for people in that position by giving them the heads up on how much there is to learn and a suitable alternative to needing to do that if they would prefer to pay us to manage the account for them.
Some of the points that you’ve raised have obvious answers that we can get in place in very short order, which I’m sure will help customers that start where you did. Some of the points that you raise, I’d like a bit more clarification on before determining how we can best respond to them. I’ve just detailed these key points and discussed in an improptu Support Team Meeting:
1) You make a general point a number of times that for someone in your position with time limitations it may be best to have someone managing ChannelUnity for you. We’ve already started offering customers managed setup/ongoing managed services and part of that onboarding process is now to determine whether a customer would prefer to learn about marketplaces for themselves or to engage us to manage their marketplaces sales.
2) You didn’t have access to enough material detailing some of the marketplace specific information that would have prevented some of the issues that you’ve had. This is great feedback and as a result we’ll be putting together beginners guides for each marketplace, to be completed and highlighted to customers at the point that they connect a new marketplace. I won’t detail them all because this email will be long enough as it is but you’ve given loads of great examples which we can document so thanks for highlighting that.
3) You note that support continue to be helpful but offer little examination of core issues due to time retrictions. Could you give me a bit more detail about what you mean here? The support time expectations of smaller customers is one of the topics we discuss internally most frequently, but we’ve not yet put any kind of limit on the amount of ChannelUnity support which is available before additional support payments are required. I gather than in some cases the support that you have required is not with ChannelUnity but with the marketplace itself, an area where we would draw the line at the moment although as I understand it, it may only have been this week that you were offered the opportunity to pay for additional support if you’d prefer our team to complete something outside of the scope of our support.
4) You mention up to a 2 week delay in reponse from our support team which doesn’t feel right, is a million miles from what the average CU customer expects/receives and doesn’t seem fair in your case when looking at the stats - your tickets have been responded to in an average time of 1.5 hours. Could you give me some more info as to what you’re referring to here as I’d really like to understand it more?
5) You note that you feel that support responses are worded in a way that is beyond what the average beginner might be expected to understand, and that as a result you feel like the same issues keep on coming up as they are not properly resolved. Could you give me some examples here please? This is so far from the feedback that we get from other customers in your position that I’m struggling to reconcile it and having had a look at a couple of your tickets at random I’ve not seen any sign of what you describe. You mention that you are pushed for time, I wonder how much of this is related to the time that it will take you to follow the advice is given and how much is the advice itself? Really I just want to understand this one more, with specific examples where appropriate.
6) You mention that 100s/1000s listings fall into ‘Fix Required’ on a daily basis and that if not resolved these become unlinked. Isn't a fair reflection for the average customer but I do understand that this has affected you given some of the things you’ve been changing (which have been prevented with these guides). I understand that the issue that keeps cropping up in relation to this is that you are changing variation specifics, which eBay will not allow so hopefully we can cover that in the guide and also create a ChannelUnity warning when this is attempted so that the results are understood. I also understand that during your time with ChannelUnity to date there was a specific issue which created more problems here which has subsequently been resolved. The de-linking of products is something that should never happen and we are not aware of any examples of this on either Amazon or eBay. Do you have a ticket reference that I can look into further? Items falling into fix required will remain linked indefinitely so I can’t reconcile your report in relation to products become unlinked and would like to look into this further.
7) You report that you need to check Amazon/eBay daily for orders which may not have been processed. I can’t understand this one. Regardless of whether a product is linked or not, we will receive order data from the marketplace and try to pass to Shopify, where this is unsuccessful in being processed for any reason an error automatically logs a ticket informing both you the customer and our support team of the issue. This is frequently reported to us as a key benefit of ChannelUnity over other competitors so I’d really like some more info on instances in which you have needed pick up orders that haven’t been treated in this way so that I can look into it further.
8) You mention that Amazon listings are created in a way that are hard to find/search for. ChannelUnity will list them in the way that you ask it to. If you map a product title that is hard to find then it will be hard to find. I think that there’s a big benefit to adding some information on Amazon search optimisation to the Amazon Beginners Guide that we’ll produce. For customers who have the time and want to do their own research to optimise their listings this would help them, for those that want to pay ChannelUnity to manage that on their behalf we have the managed services I’ve previously mentioned. Had those two options existed do you think that would have given you a suitable way forward with this one?
9) Your conclusion is factually incorrect, ChannelUnity is not the only stiching service available. You are correct that Shopify has released its own integrations. Over 50% of our customers are based in the US, the vast majority of customers using Shopify have not deemed the Shopify services to meet their needs, those that have tried it out have moved straight back.
10) You mention the need for a more user friendly interface. I totally agree with you here and work is in progress at the moment to complete the next phase of our interface development, intended to dramtically reduce the amount of ‘clicks’ that a customer need complete and bring more error reporting into ChannelUnity before errors are received from the marketplaces.
11) You mention other stitching companies that generate more revenue. I’d love to understand what features you feel are responsible for that. It always useful to know where others may be ahead of where we are.
Thanks again for the feedback. I don’t want to take your time up needing a written response to this. Would there be a good time to catch up on the phone quickly on it which I’m sure will be much quicker.
Thanks
Matt
Chief Executive
ChannelUnity Limited