Well, after MUCH research and testing (probably around 40 hrs) these are my conclusions.
I’m surprised at the lack of cohesive, intuitive, and modern classified solutions out there. If there is a company that can fill this void they will make big money. Esvon is the solution I’m going with. The only two ‘close’ competitors were e-classifieds and Geodesic.
E-classifies demo is a joke and left me with a bad impression from the get go. If a company only offers a demo site to try out their product, why not make it look good and function well enough so you can get a proper picture of what the software is capable of. Their demo site looks like a student’s project site, and I couldn’t find a place to check out the admin section. Consequently, I spent only about an hour checking out their features and demo site.
Geodesic looked promising at first. It’s feature rich and they set me up with a fully functional site to see how things worked. The program as a whole seems to hold some promise, but at the same time lacks a cohesive feeling to it. The administration features are round about. The templating system is database driven (why??) and I didn’t spend too much time trying to figure it out. I read some forum comments about how it was hard to make seemingly simple changes to the site’s templates and CSS. I also read a comment about slow performance as the site grows bigger. That’s impossible to tell until you try it for yourself, but the impression I got was that the application was put together in an ad hoc manner and I wouldn’t be all that surprised if there were performance issues under heavy loads.
Esvon was the first solution that I looked at seriously. It wasn’t until I had 80% of my site into the system that I decided to test some other waters. The fact that they let you effectively build your site in a live environment speaks volumes about the confidence they have in their product. I ran into several bugs along the way and every single time I emailed support (probably 2 dozen times) I received an answer within 24 hrs. All of the bugs I found were promptly worked out and I didn’t have to commit to buying anything that I wasn’t 100% sure worked. You don’t find that much when buying anything, especially software. The application has an easy to use templating system that separates design from php code. After working with several open source cms systems over the last few years, and learning this style of templating, I don’t want to use anything else. It’s a really easy way to customize the look of your site (take note Geodesic). It’s not the best implementation of this style of templating, but it is pretty intuitive if you have a little more than basic knowledge of CMS systems. The administration is clean and concise and allows easy to use management of listings. It was the most intuitive system I used and the simplicity of it gives me confidence that it is indeed a well thought out, cohesive package. Not just a hodge podge of individual developer’s scripts.
Finally, the deal killer (or maker) was the Member’s Website feature of Esvon. My client already has an order for a linked website on an outside server. He is anticipating several more websites wanting this feature, and this was the number one feature (over the usual listing features, etc…) that he was requesting to have built into his website. We were looking at spending thousands just for that feature. None of the other packages offers this functionality, and I’m just glad it was Esvon that did offer it because I’m the most satisfied with their product.
I don’t like the fact that it’s encoded, but the source code is only another $1000. If you make websites professionally, you understand that $1650 (source code version, without modules) is a fair price for what is offered with this application. Plus, if I find that I need the source code version in the future, they let me know that I could purchase it at any time.
If you want a professional solution to your classifieds problem, I recommend Esvon Classifieds until something better comes along. Some competition would be nice! Right now, they pretty much stand alone IMO. Also, if you want to step up into an even more professionally organized product, check out Adicio. They’re big players, but I checked out their demo site (email them) and it’s very professional. It’s a subscription service though, and you just host the homepage which means you’ll most likely be paying a professional price too! Still, if we take off with this site, I will definitely consider using them in the future.
Hope this sheds some light. I spent many frustrating hours looking for comprehensive reviews and didn’t find too much. Forums were the most helpful.