Considering giving Epik Sitebuilder a shot

I'm enjoying teaching myself Joomla but I'm thinking of dipping my toes into some simple ecommerce and am wondering whether Epik's Sitebuilder might be worth a go. I have some questions, and I think the community might benefit from this thread. Perhaps others have questions I haven't thought of. @Rob Monster or anyone who would like to contribute their ideas are most welcome!

1. Are there any template demo (or live) sites?

2. Is there any time-period commitment when subscribing?

3. I know very little about SEO. Have modern SEO strategies been built into the templates? Is there a way of assessing their SEO efficacy, and if so, how do the templates stack up?

4. What is required of me in order to create a simple ecommerce site? For instance, do card payments go through Epik's payment gateway and merchant bank out of the box, or do I need to find a merchant bank and set up payments myself?

5. "10 menu items" means I can only have 10 products for sale?

6. I'm looking at the Bronze/Silver/Gold packages, and there seems to be little variation in the packages other than GB of storage and number of email addresses. Correct?

7. Can I upgrade/downgrade among Bronze/Silver/Gold at any time?

 

Edit : Nvm. Had wrong item in mind during post.

 

1. Are there any template demo (or live) sites?

We actually license Site.Pro. It is embedded inside of a full cPanel and then we add a CDN and DDoS mitigation. You can see examples here: https://site.pro/Examples/


2. Is there any time-period commitment when subscribing?

It is month to month but you can sign up for longer plans.


3. I know very little about SEO. Have modern SEO strategies been built into the templates? Is there a way of assessing their SEO efficacy, and if so, how do the templates stack up?

I would say it is current though you surely know the drivers are more content and backlinks than tagging and layout these days. We use AHREFS for benchmarking.

4. What is required of me in order to create a simple ecommerce site? For instance, do card payments go through Epik's payment gateway and merchant bank out of the box, or do I need to find a merchant bank and set up payments myself?

The system comes with many gateways. As of today, we don't do merchant clearing. WIth the planned rollout of Masterbucks 2.0, that will likely change.


5. "10 menu items" means I can only have 10 products for sale?

No, you can do more products. This is referring the top-nav.

6. I'm looking at the Bronze/Silver/Gold packages, and there seems to be little variation in the packages other than GB of storage and number of email addresses. Correct?

It is just capacity. Platinum comes with dedicated IP address.


7. Can I upgrade/downgrade among Bronze/Silver/Gold at any time?

Yes, anytime. Months in progress are pro-rated. If you cancel or downgrade, the unused portion is refunded automatically. If you upgrade, you pay the difference.


One point to keep in mind for commerce sites is that there are a tremendous number of Wordpress templates that are commerce-enabled. You might a template that is exactly what you want.

The thing that is probably most notable about our hosting plans is the integration with CloudChase -- the ability to migrate to a scalable cloud.

I would say SiteBuilder is a fine kick-off product but because it is no Shopify so you will crawl, and walk, but if you need to run you are limited by what the engine does.

 

Thank you very much for the thorough reply @Rob Monster. I will take a look at the site.pro examples, and perhaps research the available WP templates.