EKM Review

One of the most important things worth considering before signing up for an eCommerce solution is the number of features you will be able to enjoy. EKM has many excellent features that will allow you to bring your online store to a whole new level. Whether you want to enjoy social media integrations or even if you want a simple way to create bulk customizations of your product line, EKM makes it simple. Along with having a large suite of great functions, you will also be able to benefit from an easy-to-use platform. EKM is easy to use, and they also provide each account holder with a dedicated account manager for even more assistance. Overall, EKM is simple to use and packed with tons of powerful functions that won’t let you down.

Ease of Use

EKM is a relatively easy-to-use platform, which makes it enjoyable for beginners to use. With a simple to use dashboard, all of the features are easy to understand, allowing you to set up your online store without much hassle quickly. Adding new products, uploading images, creating categories, and even altering the design layout are all very easy to handle. One of the added perks at EKM is your dedicated account manager, which, once again, makes the entire process a lot easier to handle. If you ever run into issues or need help handling certain tasks, you can ask your account manager for assistance - that’s what they are there for. Overall, EKM is very easy to use.

Functionality

Having a ton of quality features is important if you want to enjoy a top-quality experience operating your online store. Fortunately, EKM excels at providing you with useful features that can truly enhance your online store. Firstly, they offer great perks such as a free domain with every account, a free SSL certificate, and no transaction fees. When it comes to your store’s management, they have great functions such as performing bulk product modifications, automatic stock control, drag & drop editing, eBay integration, unlimited product uploads, and much more. Overall, if you’re looking for an eCommerce solution that is easy to use and loaded with great features, you’re going to love EKM.

Most eCommerce platforms offer a huge selection of third-party apps, allowing you to really make the most out of your online store. Adding third-party integrations also makes it simple for you to easily add functions from other platforms such as Facebook, PayPal, and such. However, at EKM, you do not have the ability to enjoy third-party apps. They do not provide you with any type of marketplace, and their platform was not designed to be compatible with manual integrations. This means you will have no choice but to rely solely on their integrated features. While they provide you with tons of excellent features, it’s still a huge let-down not to see any third-party marketplace.

Along with having a powerful platform that’s simple to use, you will also want to enjoy premium themes. Themes are the backbone of your website - they help create the basic structure of your site, including the design layout, the way your entire store feels, and how it functions. Unfortunately, EKM does not have a massive selection when it comes to themes. They only have around 50 to 60 themes when writing this review, while other similar platforms have hundreds. Furthermore, the quality of their themes is rather sub-par. You’ll have the impression that most of these themes were designed half a decade ago. With outdated themes that run slow and with little choice on which themes to use, EKM is not the best for people who enjoy many different template options.

Overall, having a powerful website is crucial if you want to make tons of sales and enjoy a profitable business venture. Unfortunately, EKM hasn’t provided us with the best results during our testing phase. Their website loading times are sub-par compared to other similar platforms, and they provide a below-average uptime guarantee. However, the number of incidents they deal with regularly is rather low, and their incident status page helps you keep track of any outages. This makes it easier for you to know exactly what’s going on if you ever experience outages. While EKM doesn’t provide the fastest loading websites or the most optimized online stores, it remains a good option that is decent and has the ability to be great with a few manual optimizations. If you’re willing to put in the effort to optimize your website, EKM could become a solid option.

Uptime

Having a solid performance score is highly important for an online store. You’ll need to be sure that your platform doesn’t crash at any given moment. One way to make sure that a platform is reliable is by checking out its uptime guarantee. Unfortunately, EKM offers an uptime guarantee of 99.9%. While this may seem great, it’s actually below the average of 99.99%, which makes a huge difference in terms of reliability. They still have a fairly stable eCommerce platform, but it’s not quite as impressive as some of their competitors. If uptime is a crucial factor for you and your business, you may want to consider a more reliable solution.

Incident Frequency

Along with requiring a high uptime score, you should also look into platforms with few incidents regularly. EKM provides you with an incident status page, so you can keep track of recent outages, maintenance, and other such tasks that could result in downtime on your website. One of the downsides to their status page is that they only keep reports for 7 days. So if you wanted to go back a few weeks to see how stable their platform has been lately, you’d be out of luck. Nonetheless, we have been keeping track of the EKM status page for quite some time now, and they seem to be a fairly reliable eCommerce platform. Overall, it would help if you didn’t experience too many incidents regularly when choosing EKM.

Speed

Having a fast website is crucial to having your online store succeed. You’ll want to be sure that your visitors have a positive experience when they visit your website. This includes being able to navigate from one web page to another rapidly. Unfortunately, EKM hadn’t provided the best results when we tested some websites hosted on their platform. Few optimizations were in place, making most of their web pages loading quite slowly compared to other similar platforms. When choosing EKM as your eCommerce solution, you should be prepared to perform several speed optimizations yourself to benefit from fast-loading websites.

A solid customer support team is crucial when running a business online - every time you run into an issue that you can’t seem to resolve on your own, you’ll want to have help right around the corner. Fortunately, EKM provides you with a dedicated account manager, which, right from the start, makes issues a lot easier to handle. Their support availability isn’t the best. They are only available during business hours. However, they do have fast response times, and the quality of the assistance provided is amazing. If you’re looking for an eCommerce solution that has solid support along with 24/7 availability, this isn’t the platform for you. However, if you plan on needing the occasional assistance and want the added benefit of having an account manager that can handle all of your inquiries personally, you’re going to enjoy using EKM.

Support Availability

Customer support availability is crucial when operating an online store. You’ll want help around the corner at all times. Fortunately, EKM has a ton of customer support channels. You can contact them via email, live chat, or even by phone. Customer support is provided 24/7 via multiple channels. This makes it easy for you to handle pressing issues if they happen at night - you would not be required to wait until the next morning. Overall, EKM has a great number of support channels.

Speed of Response

The amount of time it takes to respond when you need assistance is crucial for smooth business operations. If you want to make sure that you always get the help you need when you need it the most, you’ll want to opt for an eCommerce platform that can provide you with assistance rapidly. We tested the various support channels at EKM, and they all had average response times. When contacting them by phone, it took just a few minutes to get connected to an agent. Via live chat took roughly 10 to 15 minutes, which is just about average, and by email, it took a few hours, but it never took more than 6 to 8 hours. Overall, the speed of response at EKM is decent.

Friendliness & Helpfulness

How helpful the answers are when you do contact their support team is also very important. You’ll want to ensure that the support team provides quality support, not just great support availability. We contacted them a few times with questions of varying difficulty - with simple questions, we got answers to our questions almost immediately. More complex issues were a hit or miss - we either got the answer we needed, or they couldn’t provide the support we needed. One of the nice touches at EKM is the dedicated account manager, who can personal provide you with assistance - this makes the support at EKM one step above all other platforms that don’t offer this service - it was delightful having just one point of contact.

Telephone Support

Telephone support is one of the most important support channels for online stores. You’ll want to be able to speak with a support agent immediately when your store goes down, allowing you to resolve issues when they arise quickly. Unfortunately, EKM does not provide the best phone support available. Their phone support agents are available for a few hours per day (8 am to 6 pm on weekdays and from 9 am to 5:30 pm on weekends). This makes it difficult for you to get immediate assistance by phone when pressing issues arise. Overall, if phone support is essential to you, you may want to consider choosing another eCommerce platform that can provide 24/7 support by phone.

Live Chat Support

Live chat is available at EKM, which is a huge plus since not all similar eCommerce platforms offer live chat support. However, just like with their phone support, it’s not available at all times. This makes it complicated to get the answers you need when issues arise during the night. Other than the live chat’s availability, this remains a solid support channel that can provide you with answers to basic inquiries. If you run into basic questions or assistance for simple procedures during their business hours, you will almost always be able to get the answers you need within minutes simply by contacting their live chat team.

Email Support

Email is one of the most reliable support channels available at EKM. While they take a little longer than live chat and phone support, emailed questions will occasionally be responded to even during the night. We attempted to contact EKM via email on numerous occasions, and most of the time, they answer us in 1 to 4 hours. However, we were even lucky enough to receive answers to our questions during the night, making it one of their only support channels that provides 24/7 support. If you need assistance during the night, send them an email, and you should receive a response before live chat and phone support becomes available the next morning.

When you choose an eCommerce solution, you’ll want to get an affordable option that won’t have you spending thousands of dollars per month to run your online store. Fortunately, EKM doesn’t cost too much, but it’s not the cheapest solution compared to other similar platforms. Their pricing plans are slightly higher than the alternatives, and they have an expensive “managed” plan. While they don’t have any transaction fees, they do have a type of alternative, which causes you to pay more if you sell more products. Overall, EKM isn’t too bad for pricing, but there are definitely more affordable options out there.

Plans Pricing

The cost of your eCommerce platform will essentially take away from your overall profits, so you’ll want to be sure that you don’t overspend to operate your business. EKM has good pricing but remains a more expensive solution when compared to other similar options. In the lowest pricing places, you only get to list up to 500 products, but you can enjoy unlimited products as you pay more. This causes you to have to upgrade to a higher pricing plan right from the start if you have many products. Furthermore, you only get to enjoy 1 user per account with the lower plans, so if you need multiple users per account, the cost will drive up once again. Overall, they have more expensive plans than their competitors, but all-in-all, it’s not that bad - we’ve seen more expensive eCommerce platforms.

Transaction Fees

Fortunately, EKM does not have any transaction fees. Some eCommerce solutions still have transaction fees, which means they take a fee every time you make a sale. However, at EKM, you won’t have to deal with this fee. On the other hand, they limit the number of products you can sell with their lower plans, causing you to have to pay more if you sell more items, making it a type of transaction fee alternative.

Other Fees

EKM does not have any additional fees for you to worry about. However, they have a pricing plan called EKM Pro, which provides you with a full team to help build and manage your online store. If you wish to enjoy such a luxury, you should set aside a larger budget, as it’s quite steep in price.

Based out of Preston, UK, EKM is one of the fastest-growing eCommerce solutions on the internet. They stand out by offering dedicated account managers to each and every one of their customers. Not only is this rarely seen in the all-in-one eCommerce platform industry, but it’s also an incredible way for beginners to get through issues without having to reach out to traditional customer support channels.

Established in 2002, they now have over 75 employees and provide their services to over 80,000 businesses online. EKM is a very well-respected solution for merchants seeking a way to sell their products online. It has a near-perfect score on TrustPilot as well as most other user-review databases on the internet. This, along with numerous rankings in the top eCommerce platforms by well-renowned review sites.

EKM offers a unique touch called “Evolution Mode”, which means your website is always up to date and boasting the best features in the industry without having to perform any updates manually. Loaded with tons of excellent features and functions, it’s easy for you to get EKM working flawlessly with your online business.

Whether you’re dropshipping, building a brand, or selling your own creations, EKM is ideal for all business models. Their mobile-friendly designs allow you to keep up with current SEO trends, and their powerful analytics allow you to track everything with ease. EKM is definitely among the great up-and-coming eCommerce platforms worth keeping an eye on.

EKM is a great platform for UK-based merchants who want to get started with their first online store when it comes down to it. It’s also a great option for small enterprises who want to easily own an online store without having to put in too much effort due to their managed “EKM Pro” plan. EKM isn’t too bad when we look at pricing, but it’s far from being the cheapest option. They make up for this by not having any third-party apps. They have a ton of built-in features that should be more than enough for any small business. Performance isn’t the best at EKM - they have average website loading times and a below-average uptime guarantee. However, for small businesses and merchants with very few customers, this shouldn’t be much of an issue. Overall, EKM is a decent option that you’ll want to consider if you’re based in the UK, but otherwise, you should definitely opt for some of the other leading eCommerce solutions.