One of the key parts of our Social Print Experiment is a web to print solution. Without it, we’re going to be a bit crippled in being able to get work in the door without feet on the street, something that we are trying not to do and to put our focus into social media as our strategy. With that, we chose four programs to review, ranging in price from a nothing to the mid-five figures. As a startup, I’m not sure how we would finance the acquisition of software since it’s near impossible to get a press financed, let alone a piece of software. So, an ASP or SaaS model was our target.
We narrowed down our choices pretty fast after talking to other people about things they liked, and didn’t like. We also had suggestions from our viewers, but with the exception of one company, we just couldn’t fit anymore demos or web meetings into the schedule. It wasn’t that we weren’t interested; it’s just that we know it’s going to be a 3-4 week implementation and we’re already into week 3 of our experiment.
Our final choices became ZetaPrints; PRS; EFI’s Digital Storefront; and PageDNA. (At the last minute, we got a request to review Online Print Solutions, which we ended up adding to the list.) Here’s a rundown on the each of the packages we reviewed, and what our outcome was with each.
ZetaPrints – Billed as Web to Print for Ambitious Printers, it really does take an ambitious printer to jump into it, especially if you’re doing templated designs. From New Zealand, this system relies on CorelDraw to create templates, a process I was never really ever to get to work for me repeatedly. The upside to this solution was that there were no startup fees; no hosting fees; no anything fees, except for a $1.70 per transaction fee to use their system. I think their model has some promise, but the tedious nature of creating templates steered us away from it.
Webtoprintsoftware.com was another choice for us, which at the time we looked at it had a low “buy in” cost of $99 a month and used Adobe Photoshop templates to create their variable pieces. It looked pretty good but we waited before starting the 14 day trial until our doors were close to opening. When we went back to the site to sign up, the whole SaaS model had changed and now there were professional fees to pay on top of everything else. They are evidently in a transition from the SaaS model which didn’t really work for them to a customized solution. I spoke with a nice guy who ran me through their program features and gave me a ballpark price for it (much higher than the $99 we thought it would be). He promised some other people would get back to us with a statement of work; no one ever did.
EFI Digital Storefront – We were interested in this software package because of the Fiery system we already had in place, and it would have tied everything together real well. I’ve seen countless demos of it, having worked for IKON previously, and already knew what it could do. After trying to get some pricing on it and some interest from EFI in helping us with it, we ended up ruling it out of the Social Print Experiment model.
PageDNA – This was an interesting demo of their technology, and the guy who did the demo for me gave me the “firehose demo” with a ton of information thrown at me all at once. He also set me up with a demo site to place around with, and offered help and training videos from the very beginning. PageDNA has a ton of information available and plenty of training videos to help you figure things out. An interesting sidenote, as I was running through my second demo with him I asked about their company name, as some of the features looked vaguely familiar to another system I used while at IKON for a customer who needed a business cards to print application. It turns out that not only was this the same company, but the guy I was working with was the tech support guy from 2003. Interestingly, that same customer I set up seven years ago was still with them.I requested a price proposal from them.
Our last entrant, and only at the request of someone else, was Online Print Solutions. I heard from the sales guy Friday afternoon and was really reluctant to start a bunch of demos all over again. I asked for a 3-minute presentation that day, and if it sounded good I’d do a full demo on Sunday, my only day off. He agreed, and at 1pm on Sunday I went through an in-depth review of their solution. At the end, I requested a price proposal to look at, and he has since sent one.
So, we’re down to two finalists for the software – PageDNA and Online Print Solutions. We’re still kicking the tires, checking out the features each has to add to our Social Print Experiment, and we’ll do a report on these two solutions early next week after we make our decision. After that, we have just a few weeks to get the software selected up and running and integrated into our website.
We’ll keep you posted.
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{ 1 comment }
Guys thanks for sharing and the ideas. I will be taking a close look at zeta print as we use corel.
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