Yahoo! Small Business

Author: Kalicia Bateman

Yahoo is one of the leading domain registrars, e-commerce, and search engine companies online. They were founded in 1995, helping start the Dot-com revolution. Yahoo does provide SSL certificates and their hosting plans are some of the best within the industry. There are many powerful tools and gadgets that you can get in addition to your e-commerce platform, such as apps that let you run search engine optimization of your online website.

View Best eCommerce Software Companies

Top Ranked Companies

#1 Etsy chevron_right

6.1 Overall Score

4.4

star star star star star_half

(106)

View Profile View Profile

#2 Selz chevron_right

6.1 Overall Score

4.9

star star star star star

(25)

View Profile Visit Site View Profile

#3 Shopify chevron_right

5.6 Overall Score

4.1

star star star star star_border

(62)

View Profile Visit Site View Profile

thumb_up

The Good

• Advertising
• Bandwidth
• Support
• Payment options
• Third-party apps
• Free trial

While Yahoo's place in the search engine world has slipped in recent years, we found that they offer a lot of features with their small business e-commerce solutions.

Advertising

One of the things that sets Yahoo apart is the number of advertising tools that they offer. Each Yahoo offers $450 in free advertising credit for each of its e-commerce hosting packages, including:

• $200 in Yahoo Shoppingworks credit.
• $150 in Yahoo Gemini ad credit.
• $100 worth of Yahoo Bing search ad credit.

With most of the products in the e-commerce industry, we couldn't find many resources available for free advertising credit. Yahoo can do this because of their ownership of many different online advertising mediums.

Bandwidth

Another thing that we liked about Yahoo's solution is that there is not a cap on storage or bandwidth per month. With Yahoo, all the service levels, with the exception of the "Lite" option, you get unlimited storage for your e-commerce store, as well as unlimited bandwidth for your new and returning customers.

Support

We found that Yahoo also has mobile support for both the business user and the customer. All of Yahoo's online storefronts are optimized for the smartphone experience. Also, there are multiple apps available through the Yahoo store that let you monitor your search engine optimization, control your advertising campaigns, and more. Additionally, Yahoo has social media support as a core component of its e-commerce services. One of the things that we saw right away with Yahoo was that live chat is included with your e-commerce store. Yahoo's e-commerce services include both web-based and mobile chat so that you can better interact with your customers.

Payment Options

There are also multiple payment options available with Yahoo e-commerce. If you want to sell items and merchandise to your customers, they can pay with the major credit cards (such as MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and Discover) or PayPal. This makes it very easy to sell items online.

Third-Party Apps

While Yahoo doesn't list the third-party apps that work with their e-commerce solution, they do provide API access for most third-party applications. This is a useful feature if you want to integrate CRM technologies and other resources into your e-commerce store. Also, Yahoo has 30+ backend apps that let you run your business's marketing, sales, and office apps. In fact, these apps can be installed with a simple one-click feature.

Free Trial

We also felt like the 30-day trial period was fair. You are not charged for your free trial period. After your trial period, your account is deleted if you prefer not to continue with Yahoo e-commerce.

thumb_down

The Bad

• Transaction fees
• Apps
• Support options
• Lite edition

There were a few things that we didn't like about Yahoo's e-commerce solutions.

Transaction Fees

The first major concern that we had was with transaction fees. Yahoo's subscriptions are pretty pricey, yet they charge a small transaction fee for each service level:

• Basic: 1.5% of each transaction
• Professional: 1% of each transaction
• Premiere: .75% of each transaction.

Apps

We liked the fact that Yahoo includes 30+ apps with their solution, but we couldn't find a complete listing of these apps on the website. We also wanted more descriptions about the social media support offered by Yahoo e-commerce. We couldn't find out whether the support was "buttons" or simple Facebook page integrations to promote your business.

Support Options

We also wondered about support options for the lower-end accounts. Each Premiere account comes with a dedicated account manager and dedicated phone support. However, Yahoo's e-commerce is a little bit expensive, we'd like to see more support options listed for the lower-end subscriptions.

Lite Edition

We also felt like the Lite edition was a little bit limiting. You can only store up to 10 products, as well as only get 1 GB of storage. With other providers, we found more rewarding entry-level subscriptions.

gavel

The Bottom Line

Overall, we recommend Yahoo e-commerce. They were one of the few platforms that we saw with app tools that let you manage your e-commerce store from your mobile device. Even though some of the features of the service weren't demonstrated, we felt like Yahoo's Basic and Professional subscriptions were a great fit for small- and medium-sized businesses. We also liked the $450 worth of free advertising credits. In the industry, we didn't see a lot in terms of free advertising credits. These make Yahoo's e-commerce service pretty outstanding to use. Moreover, we also appreciate the free 30-day trial period. We would like to know a little bit more about the social media support offered by Yahoo, especially in terms of social media marketing campaigns. Finally, we would like to see transaction fees go away. We found other providers in the industry that did not charge transaction fees with slightly better prices.