I have been using Simvoly for a couple of years now. I purchased it about two or three years ago in a black Friday sale. I didn’t use it for about six months after buying it because I did not expect the system to mature.
When purchasing lifetime deals such as this one, you are investing in the future on the product. Therefore hope that the software company follows through with its promises. I took a punt on Simvoly and their roadmap and purchased the eCommerce software.
What is Simvoly?
SamCart is an e-commerce platform with many built-in features, including a website builder, landing page builder, membership system, email marketing, and checkout pages.
My Initial Thoughts on Simvoly
I quickly noticed that Simvoly was not as mature as Clickfunnels or Samcart. On the other hand, I thought the interface appeared to be professional. However, the platform was confusing when navigating the interface. Perhaps that was because it was quite different from other eCommerce software I had used in the past.
My thoughts may have been hampered a little from using many other eCommerce software platforms over the years. Simvoly was quite different.
As I began to use it more and became used to it, I understood the methodology of the interface and Simvoly’s reason for designing the interface the way they did.
The Interface
Some parts of the software platform seem to be a little overengineered. Many software companies suffer from this issue when making a platform to suit all of their users’ needs.
The Website Builder
Simvoly comes with a website builder to build your own website. There is also a landing page builder. The website builder and the landing page builder are promoted as separate items by Simvoly. However, they are pretty much the same thing. I can see why Simvoly separates the website builder and the landing page builder, though. It seems like the market these days sees websites and landing pages as two separate systems. They’re not.
The funnels that have been heavily promoted in recent years are simply a series of web pages tied together.
Honestly, I did not like Simvoly’s website builder. I found it a little clunky and temperamental, mainly when using the mobile feature. I did not think it was worth the effort. So I used WordPress for the website and used Simvoly for the payment checkout page and for the membership area. I found that to be a great system that worked perfectly.
To use WordPress and Simvoly together, I just created the website on the domain, as usual. I then added the payment checkout page and membership on the subdomain: academy.startupandscale.com.
The Checkout Payment Page
The checkout payment pages are great! Out of the box, they look entirely professional. They work great on mobile devices as well. As there are several checkout pages already available in Simvoly, you will not face the same issues as you would when using the finicky website builder to build webpages – including making the equivalent mobile checkout page.
The other features, such as one-click upsell and bump, work perfectly and are very easy to configure.
I created a checkout page for a client using Simvoly. It works great. I set up PayPal and Stripe as the payment method, and it was incredibly fast to do so.
Adding products in Simvoly is a breeze in the account area, where you can easily save the description, price, etc. There is also a nifty little ‘on special’ feature that notifies customers that the product is discounted.
The ‘on special’ feature works hand-in-glove with the countdown timer that you can add to landing and checkout pages to give customers a sense of urgency (about the specials or other availability).
The Membership System
I only recommend using Simvoly if you want a basic membership area. I mean, it works well. However, you spend a lot of time creating the menus, which you have to add to each page. Again, ensuring all of the members’ area pages appear consistent can be a struggle.
This is the members’ area that I built using Simvoly.
It doesn’t look too bad. However, remember that I have been starting online businesses for about 15 years, and I have a lot of experience in eCommerce. So if you are a beginner, I cannot recommend using Simvoly for a membership website solution.
Other website systems do not require constructing each page within the members’ area. For example, Kajabi and Simvoly will build out the pages from templates (that look very professional) without building each page and menu item in the platform.
Simvoly’s Support
Support is critical – especially with eCommerce software. I must say is that support is fantastic. They have a live chat for all support issues. The team are incredibly responsive and if they are not available, will get back to you as soon as they are available.
The support is especially important – especially with eCommerce software.
Advantages and Disadvantages
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Simvoly Pricing
Starting at $12 month, paid yearly ($18 month-to-month), Simvoly represents brilliant value considering all the features it packs in one system. On that entry-level plan, you can make one website and one funnel with 20 pages and send 1200 emails per month which is plenty for those starting out.
The Verdict on Simvoly
The eCommerce website solution will be satisfactory if you are a beginner and use one of the templates. However, Simvoly will not be as good (and can be frustrating, despite the brilliant support) if you build a custom website. Simvoly will just take too long, in my opinion.
As mentioned earlier, I opted for using WordPress for the website and used Simvoly as the checkout payment system. This works great!
Also, if you have more than a few products, Simvoly will not cut it.
More than about 5 products, I recommend BigCommerce because that e-commerce giant has better shipping, tax, and other calculations.
Simvoly will be perfect for digital marketers who want to sell digital products, such as PDF and audio files.