Neededing review of classified software


Hi Everyone
My first post.
Has anyone heard about these guys?

http://www.xcclassified.com/UserFeatures.asp
http://gonafish.com/lc/classifiedscaffe.php
http://www.4u2ges.com/Rapid2.1/

Would appreciate any feedback in these or comparable.
Thanks
Barry

You people are looking way to deep into things.

Geodesic has built a fantastic application. I couldn’t even begin to explain how greatful I am for their efforts and devotion to their product.

There support department has even went through the task of answering support questions from my users. Now that’s customer service. The question was about navigating my site, nothing to do with running their software, but they still took the time to give a good response. I will guarantee most companies or people would have simply said, “the program is working right?”.

As far as the Modules, Enterprise has modules too. Their admin is really easy once you get familiar with it. Heck, I modify my pages using Frontpage. All you do is paste a little bit of code on the page, where you want the module to do the magic, and then attach it to that page. Wham, it’s done.

On the inside of Geodesic, they are continually considering feedback. I will guarantee your site will remain, “up-to-date,” with their application. When I first purchased their application, it had half the features it has now. The last conversation I had on their Discussion board was regarding an RSS feed tool. Someone suggested it, they made it, now it needs to put into Beta on someones site.

The people behind Geo will not leave you stuck. I would recommend them to my own Daughter. There is not one thing I could complain about, the people, or what I bought.

I too was considering some other when I purchased Geodesicsolutions Enterprise. The main factors I considered where return on investment, what people really need to market items and a business, and I paid attention to the companies responses to questions.

Esvon, could care less if I purchased their script. As I recall, I sent in an underlying question regarding being left with a purchased script and no support in the future. Esvon wrote back, such is life (<-exact phrase they used), the script is this much, the modules to do what you want is this much. The total was over 1,000.

Several others did not respond for a week. They where really cheap, but do you really want a financial investment where you can’t get support?

Geo did not respond as quickly as Esvon, but they responded shortly following. Their response was the software did everything I wanted, but required a little knowledge with HTML. They told me there was free Email support for one year, and they have a Bulletin Board as well. Heck, I didn’t even try and use the bulletin, they created the account on my behalf.

As far as installing, they personally installed the ap in no-time-at-all. I didn’t need to run some sort of program. I thought that was much more service oriented than, “here is your program, go ahead and get it running”.

I am bothered to read negativity about them. They are one of the few compnaies I have come across who are honost, devoted, and supportive. You just dont find similar companies today. And let me tell you, I sent some far out questions to them I am sure, as I had no knowledge of the internet or writing programs, html, php, javascript. I just had trusty frontpage.

If you are thinking of adding classifieds to your site, take my word for it, Enterprise is the way to go. There are features on there I havn’t even scratched at yet (Ad voting, API, choices of zip radius - state - or custom made (however you want) filters). They just keep going. Additionally, the last I poked around there, the classifieds can be integrated with the Auction Aps too.

  1. Beware of anything encoded and Evson is encoded. I’m not saying it’s a bad product, but if you want to change things or need to, whether bug or just it isn’t intutiive for users, you may not be able to do so. It is a HUGE issue if you cannot get to most of the source and my understanding is that you cannot with Evson, other than templating.

  2. Having thousands of dollars of “options” can be a warning sign that features normally built into other scripts will cost you a BUNDLE. For example, a simple hack is having a mapquest link to map a location. It is easier than you think. Since you can’t get to the code with Evson, it will cost you $$$ for the “addon.” Should they go out of business or sell it, good luck with any other modifications you will want to make.

  3. At least with Geodesic it is open and you can make changes yourself if things don’t work. That said, their software is expensive and offers a very weird array of features for the “pro” version. “Pro” is a marketing word to say that crap is “professional” and you should spend more. I’m impressed with some features and not with others.

  4. Looking at other packages that are cheaper might actually satisfy your needs, depending upon what you want to do. Almond Classifieds looks good although their support never answers.

Right now almost all the PHP classifieds are crap. The Perl based ones are better, e.g. “Active Classifieds” which is a $200 script that makes the ones above you talk about look quite expensive.

I just looked at Evson – Not only does it cost $500 but you are required to put on a “powered by Evson” on the bottom of every page unles you pay $50 more. At that price I think it is insane to also agree to provide free advertising for them. Ridiculous.

I have looked at them. I’m not sure why you’d want comparable. I’d want something reasonably good.

I entered some information on this forum in August 04 with regard to Esvon vs Geo. Well an update is due.

First off may I say that I have read much of the above since my last posting and to be fair I think that both Esvon and Geo products are ok. However, you must ask yourself what you want from these products. But before I go further, a recap on issues I mentioned last year.

I looked at both Geodesic and Esvon and initially decided to go with Geodesic based on the fact that it seemed so customizable. I paid for the software and was then in contact with James with regard to installation. This did not go well as the product was not so compatable with my hosting service. After much trying I dropped the Geodesic product where I received a full refund. I must say that James was great in his efforts.

Next to Esvon. I tried the 30 day demo and found that this would not work with my hosting service. No problem I was by this time getting real heartache with my hosting co so changed to go with http://hostmatters.com . This is a great company and can’t fault them.

So back to Esvon. The install went well and all seemed to work so after a time I bought the full licence, no problem after all I was spending money.

I also purchased the Esvon link removal bit, after all why should market a product I have paid a high price for.
I heard nothing from Esvon about the removal and after contacting them a few times they replied by saying just remove it from the template. Anyone can do this without paying by going to the footer template and removing the Esvon link.

Anyhow, now to customization. What template does what? No problem, I’ll read the instructions! What instructions. Oh yes, here they are, 1 txt file that prints as 4 pages. Is that all? Yes. From Esvon you get no help what-so-ever. The system has been developed is such a way that unless you are a real code wiz your stuck. But not all is lost as with a huge effort you can sort out what each template does. On the part of Esvon, all that they would have to do is provide information as to what each temlate does and how it reacts with others.

My initial idea was to run a classifieds website and this is what I bought the Esvon license for. I decided not to do this due to other business commitments where after a time I thought that I would use the Esvon product for another site which I run.

A change of licence is required so as to be legal and fair. I contacted Esvon and they provided me with the link to the license change section on their site. No problem, I was spending more money with them. I completed the forms and used the new licence domain name and new email address at all times. How long did it take after payment to receive the new license? More than a week. And when I did receive the license I was told that I should read my email as they had sent this twice before. However, they were sending it to the old licensed email address which they were never given on this new transaction.

Basically, Esvon stinks. They will rip you off at all possible points and have produced a product that causes most people to become dependent on thir after sales pay per hour service.

Right, if Esvon is crap then should you go with Geodestic. You need to work this out for yourself. However, I still have a copy of Geo which I agreed not to use commercially as I received a refund on the software. I have complied. What I have done since I changed my hosting service is given Geo another try, not commercially and available to me only. This time, with a better hosting service GeoEnterprize worked a treat and the instructions are superb with a huge effort made by Geodestic to produce a USABLE by administrators product. Also, after reading other previous posts in this thread, I discovered that a user forum exist. No such luck with Esvon your lucky if you receive more than and automated email on problems, unless you pay.

The question has to be asked here. Why have I posted this update? The answer is I was hard on Geodestic in the first place without knowing all the facts to compare Esvon and Geo. So of the problems were down to my hosting company and I though more pre-sale, little realizing how bad Esvon are compared to the real efforts on the part of James at Geodestic.

I am sorry not to have given Geo more time and I am sorry that I’m stuck with Esvon.

Keep up the good work Geo and overtake those craps at Esvon.

Hello,

I just joined this forum to say thanks for this thread. I’ve been looking for info comparing Esvon and Geodesic (objectively) and this is the only place I’ve found anything.

I thought I would share my experience also. At a loss for comparing the two systems based on their specs (both looked very good), I started with Esvon because of their free trial (a big advantage). The installation was a bit of a hassle, but I got it sorted out in a little over an hour, and the system was up and running pretty well. It was full of lots of features, and the admin panel was pretty easy. But things went downhill from there …

The main reason I have been considering these two systems is because of their customization (along with, of course, from needing a more powerful solution than the free/cheap scripts that are out there). So my goal was to see how truly customizable Esvon was when I installed it.

I invested two days in customizing the free Esvon download – they had a big advantage because I had the option of testing and building at once, so had things gone well, I almost certainly would have bought their product! (I was even prepared to pay their obnoxious “remove Powered by” fee.) However, after painstakingly parsing my way through the code of every single one of their @#@$%* templates because there is basically NO documentation, I hit a snag. I was about 90% done with customizing, and couldn’t figure out how to fix a certain section.

I already knew that I would have to wait an entire day for an answer, so I invested a good two hours in spinning my wheels before finally emailing them asking if they could just tell me which file I could find the code for this particular section in. I also let them know in this email that if they could point me in the direction of fixing this one file, I’d buy on the spot, as I was pretty much done customizing. This is what I got in response:

“Please read readme.txt CAREFULLY”

Try to imagine having spent the better part of a day in frustration, trying to figure out a completely undocumented product, and getting this in reply after waiting a day? I would not have minded if they had any kind of decent knowledgebase or even a forum to turn to … but, nothing.

So, I wrote them back a rather terse email explaining again that I was on the verge of buying their base product and at least two modules – at a cost of around $800 – and that if this is the answer I would get to a simple question, perhaps it was time to chuck the two days of customization and move one. They wrote back:

"We don’t answer questions about customization. You’re more than welcome to request a proposal for customization services. "

Remember that all I asked was the NAME of the file to update for one small portion of the site. I also provided my URL so that it would be patently obvious to them that I had all but completed customizing the thing.

Well, this treatment sent me running for Geodesic. I am frustrated that Geo doesn’t have a trial version – that really is a huge advantage for Esvon, as you can pretty much build out your whole site to get a handle on what you need. On the other hand, Geodesic does install the software for you, and they appear to have really thorough documentation. Plus all the emails I’ve seen so far have been very polite. I’m working with a private online demo now – it’s hard to determine how easy it will be to customize, since I can’t download the HTML and manipulate it efficiently – but I’m encouraged by the documentation.

I’ll post again once I get further with Geodesic.

One last thing about Esvon. I don’t know whether to be amused by this or outraged, but if you read their company description in their readme (which, as you all know by now, I have read CAREFULLY), it’s completely different from the description you see on their site (or perhaps the description that only us Americans see on the site). I make this last point because their current on-site “About” page pronounces in the first sentence how they are a “Christian IT company” – something that has me wondering if they’re just thinking that this is a way to dupe Americans into buying their product. I wonder this because they also have a large section of the site dedicated to the virtues of building a gun site (and apparently even a special module for this). I’m guessing they have the idea that our country is now overrun by gun-toting evangelicals, which on the one hand makes me laugh hysterically, but on the other is very depressing if it reflects what Europeans think of us now. And a smaller point is that it reflects really poorly on Esvon if they’re dumb enough to think that people buy software for these reasons!

Okay, /rant … thanks again for providing the only info I was able to find about these products. I’ll post more later when I’m done working with Geodesic.

To further the constructive feedback on esvon and geo, I have tried both. neither met my needs, but my needs were very specific so i found something else.

As far as support goes, I was really happy with Geo. They responded quickly and they have a forum for customers. On the other hand, esvon was alwaya slow to respond to my questions, no forum for customers and sometimes i would have to email them twice for answers to my questions.

esvon’s admin was MUCH simpler to use compared to geo. geo’s is complex though highly documented. i do believe it would take a few days to get geo configured to meet your needs. I am only referring to their Enterprise version ($799).

if i had to choose between the 2 i would choose geo. i think it can fulfill most people’s needs and if you take the time to configure it to meet your needs, its really powerful. plus, it seems like they are still developing it so you can expect it to only get better.

Hope this helps someone with a decision :slight_smile:

Who Hates Esvon? I should thing that anyone sucked into purchasing their products do. Basically I think that the to called customer service side of things sucks. I think that thay are a bunch of xxxxxxx. Gosh, I’m so good with putting x’s instead of what I thought.

I think that this thread at Sitepoint is great so that huge numbers of people can read the difference between Esvon and Geo. Geo is a great product that just needs a few tweeks to be perfect. One of the down sides to Geo Enterprize is that it is not, as far as I know, search engine friendly. In the case of the first few lines of the header template of Esvon, as shown below

<html>

<head>
<title>Wedding Directory ##title##</title>
<meta http-equiv=“Content-Type” content=“text/html; charset=windows-1252”>
<meta name=“description” content=“##META_D##”>
<meta name=“keywords” content=“##META_K##”>
<meta http-equiv=“pragma” content=“no-cache”>
<meta http-equiv=“expires” content=“0”>
<meta http-equiv=“cache-control” content=“no-cache”>
<meta http-equiv=“Content-Type” content=“text/html; charset=##CHARSET##”>

you can see the ##title##, ##meta_d##, ##meta_k## insets are present. This readlly is a plus for this product as each page created is given its own title, description and keywords.

Please James and others at Geo, incorporate this. I have Esvon and one of my biggest concerns is how much will it cost to fix a fault on a big classifieds section. After all, they have you by the balls.

J

Hi There,

Fantastic reading. I am currently in the position of trying to decide what application to go for. I really find it hard to believe that Esvon and Geo are the only 2 main contenders for a classifieds application?

I have installed esvon and I am finding it a major pain in the butt to modify. I have found many bugs and because of the encryption of the code, impossible to fix up.

The payment system on esvon is crazy as well. Still havnt really managed to figure it out.

When I was looking at Geo, I was under the impression that it was very poorly designed. It looked like it needed to be re-written from the ground up.

Possibly it is easier to write a whole new product yourself! :S

Anyway, from the people that have posted here, tell me how you have gone getting your site finished and up and running. I would be interested in seeing how heavily you have customized them.

And once and for all, have we decided what the better application is?

what did you end up going with?

Keep looking I am sure there are others you haven’t seen :wink:

Interesting discussion. I have just purchased geoclassified basic and its installation on shared hosting was relatively easy, and this is my first time setting up web site. Offcourse I take a few days trying it on my local server. There was some parse error when installed at the shared hosting like header have been sent and wrote to James for help and it was replied within reasonable time. The use of software has a bit of learning curve but which doesn’t? My site is still under development but you can see it at http://academicbooktrade.net.

I have evaluated esvon, and I think it has good features but I must say I don’t like the encoded script and you may have to beg the hosting company to install zend optimiser.

Geo’s script although powerful is not easy for beginner like me to hack for your own special needs.

Well, well!
More than one year a discussion about Esvon Classiffied and Geoclassified and still nobody knows who is the better one?

I think that both are good and that they have all features you are looking for?

You can change the layout easy and add as many catogories you want.

The problem is, what you as user want to do with it and if you have some knowlegde about making websites.

Nothing is simple, but if you know something about websites it would not make a big difference which one you want to use.

The difference between them is the price. Geoclassiffied has the best offer.
Geoclassified Enterprice
Price: $ 799.00 USD

ESVON
Price: $649.95 *
Version: 3.0 (changelog)

Price includes single-domain lifetime license and 1 year of free access to new software versions.

Esvon is cheaper, but you have to pay for the extra modules and cost you maybe extra a few 100 bucks

I’d use deltascripts’ classifieds in a second. There are a number of people who have put in various modules. Takes a little longer work but I wouldn’t think of paying that kind of money for copy protected scripts that don’t work properly and that you can’t fix yourself. For a bit more I’d hire a PHP programmer and have something that works and access to the code.

Hello, guys.

Good job, good script but i recommended use UTF-8.

So, see also next classified script: http://topclassifiedsoftware.com

Just to add i have read all on this post and wanted to let you know that i have been using geoclassifieds basic and light for three months and have had no problems…

http://www.nwfleamart.com/fmclass/index.php

:slight_smile:

Hi,

Saw this discussion and decided to take part in it, although it’s pretty old. I am using iAuto, the software provided by www.iautosoftware.com. I’m pretty new in the classifieds business and started my website, www.acarowner.com, just a couple of months ago (but haven’t put much effort into it yet, as you may see). Initially I started off with iAuto 2.0.3, but recently upgraded to 3.0.

There’s a noticeable difference in the template structure. The new version uses Smarty-based template management engine, and from the onset, the main difference is that the templates are now in a bunch of .tpl files, and there’s a template folder for each of the modules (a new concept not seen in the previous version). Now I am figuring out what needs to be changed on my offline version, but overall, it’s easier to make the software do what I need it do to than before.

The membership plan feature (stuff everyone’s looking for as far as making money is concerned) is pretty straightforward and it could be better. I’ve actually talked to their support prior to the upgrade, and they are going to drastically improve the membership plans in the next version, so I personally look forward to that.

As far as price is concerned, I bought my original script for $219 (that’s as much as I cared to pay for any script, Esvon and Geo were my other alternatives, but I don’t care to pay that much for a new business venture without knowing for sure that it’ll work out ok), and bought the upgrade to the new version for $50, but a day ago they announced the upgrades are free, so I got my $50 back! For $219, I can afford the risks involved, plus I can always get an upgrade if I need to.

After so long, what’s the recommended classifieds script on the market now?

Those of you who bought the enterprise version of the few scripts, are you happy with them?

I like iAuto (http://www.iautosoftware.com/), although it wasn’t the Standard that I bought, but the Special Edition. There are new minor releases of iAuto out there now, but I haven’t upgraded yet, will probably wait for the next major release. Those guys are adding new stuff to their software and they can do customizations of the code as well.

As far as my needs Not Geoclassified

I tried my best to examine what they offered versus what I needed.
Geoclassifieds did not provide what they state on their site.
Specifically they say
Ads may be set to be approved before display.
Ads may be edited by admin.
Ads may be set to be edited by user.

If you care to moderate before posting, surely you would moderate any changes - Oh No - that is not possible with Geo.

I said OK maybe i can deal with that and just edit any changes myself.
Nope, when you turn off edit, it is off for both admin and user.
To me that is half a–.

They did say it would cost a lot more money to code this
and NO you can’t have your money back.
So for me not no but h no.

Larry