Pressero

OffsetStorefront

Well-known member
Looking for any user feedback on Aleyant's "Pressero" web-to-print. I've liked all the stuff marketing has shown me but a real user's opinions are gold to me. Anything you really appreciate? Any regrets? Any oddities?
 
Hi OffsetStorefront,

If you want to sell to other businesses (B2B storefronts) certainly Pressero is one of the best solutions out there. Aleyant has been in the market since 2005 and have had enough time to perfect their solution primarily based on customer feedback and a small but very dedicated development team. Although now with the acquisition of Aleyant by the Volaris group we do not know what will happen to the software of the company. At least in terms of prices, an increase is already noted.
Having said that. If you're looking for a B2B direct to consumer storefront, there are other options to consider. I specially like open source solutions like WooCommerce or Magento.
 
Hi Joseph,
I highly recommend you take a look at http://www.b2cprintshop.com/ as a modular solution for B2C and B2B segments of the market. The company B2CPrint (www.b2cprint.com) operates in the web to print market since 2005 and supporting hundreds of commercial printers worldwide. Will be glad to schedule an online demo and discussion. You can submit a request for a demo through our main site or send an email to [email protected]. Thank you, Best regards.
 
If your goal is only serving B2B, Pressero has a solution. However if your focus is expanding in all Sales Channels like B2C, B2B, Resellers, Walkins, Physical store & offering multiple products like commercial, wide format, direct mail, photo products & so on. Than check www.onprintshop.com
 
Hi Joseph,
I highly recommend you take a look at http://www.b2cprintshop.com/ as a modular solution for B2C and B2B segments of the market. The company B2CPrint (www.b2cprint.com) operates in the web to print market since 2005 and supporting hundreds of commercial printers worldwide. Will be glad to schedule an online demo and discussion. You can submit a request for a demo through our main site or send an email to [email protected]. Thank you, Best regards.

I didn't ask for a sales pitch. I asked for user feedback. Your post is not welcome and probably why this sub-forum is a wasteland.
 
I didn't ask for a sales pitch. I asked for user feedback. Your post is not welcome and probably why this sub-forum is a wasteland.

hahaha I echo your words. But what alternatives do we have? I'm looking for a serious forum that we can get and give honest feedback, any LinkedIn or Facebook groups?
 
hahaha I echo your words. But what alternatives do we have? I'm looking for a serious forum that we can get and give honest feedback, any LinkedIn or Facebook groups?

If you find a place, let me know too. All I've found are vendor-controlled forums (if I'm lucky) and paid user groups.
 
i can provide some feedback as a current user of Aleyant's Pressero and edocBuilder. I am the IT/prepress specialist and therefore fairly knowledgeable about software and technology. Our shop switched over about a year ago and so far the software has been great! Before switching we demoed a couple of different web to print systems and decided on Pressero. Here are the main points that I really like about this system:

1) Look and feel of storefronts are very customizable. Multiple skins and easy to change colors. Very user friendly back end to modify.You don't need to know HTML. If you want to create a site exactly to your liking though and do know HTML and CSS you can create your own custom "skins". It's an extra fee but if you need to do that kind of work, you'd probably charge your client extra or make it back in printing anyway
2) variable data templates are verrryyy flexible.
a) you have a choice of form templates where you type in the information to populate the template or the designer templates which you can give the user much more freedom to add text, add pictures, change colors etc
b) form templates can be customized with scripting to provide automatic logic based on what the user enters
c) I haven't used this but it's a cool feature that they are integrated with a stock images service that users can find stock images to put into their templates
3) The fact that it's a SAAS solution means you don't have to worry about having it on your own servers and worry about updates etc.
4) Back end is very user friendly and has a great UI
5) Imposition templates allow you to automatically impose jobs created from storefront templates
6) New features are released on a consistent basis
7) Their documentation is very very thorough and I think it's fairly easy to find the information you're looking for. They have an excellent on-boarding/training but if you're one like me to go in and play and read documentation, it's great. I probably can't stress enough how important have a good support website where you can read documentation is.
8) Technical support has been very helpful and responsive when I have a question
9) They do offer a good amount of integration if you're interested in integrating with other software, including their Zapier plugin. If you haven't seen Zapier, check it out, it's a really really cool service
10) Honestly, I thought their pricing is very reasonable, especially if you're looking to have a lot of online stores it becomes even more of a home run

I can say this too, it does have a learning curve. EVERY new software or W2P system has a learning curve. All of the companies that sell W2P claim that their system is the easiest to use. But the learning curve for Pressero (in my opinion) really isn't that bad. Aleyant has put a lot of thought into their backend to create the web to print sites and ease of use. I think they've done an excellent job of handling the balance of having a robust system with lots of features and preventing their software from being to complex from a usability standpoint.
 
Thanks for your input Justin, that is super helpful. I've got a couple more questions if you're willing to answer them:
  1. Is there anything you wish worked a little bit better about Pressero? I know no system is perfect but the shortcomings/types of issues you deal with can say a lot about the maturity of the product (or not).
  2. Do you have Pressero integrated with any other systems right now? Do you have any experience using their API for anything?
  3. How often are you seeing them release bug fixes and or new features? Do the bug fixes feel impactful?
  4. Have you run into any edge cases where a customer asked for some feature or workflow that you just couldn't get to work in Pressero?
 
OffsetStorefront:

Great question! I don't mind answering them at all.
  1. Is there anything you wish worked a little bit better about Pressero? I know no system is perfect but the shortcomings/types of issues you deal with can say a lot about the maturity of the product (or not).
    1. This product seems really mature and has pretty much handled any feature that I need it to do. The only only thing that is a little inconvenient is that when an order is placed, each item shows up as a separate order in the job list. So you have to complete each item when a job is complete and you can 't complete it all in one shot. I think they've done this for a reason though and I've worked around it since Zapier updates the status to complete when a job is shipped anyways.
    2. In terms of building templates though, edocbuilder is legit. You can lock down the template or make it as open and flexible as you want.
  2. Do you have Pressero integrated with any other systems right now? Do you have any experience using their API for anything?
    1. Right now I have Pressero receiving shipping data from ShipStation. I've been using their Zapier app to send tracking data and then update the status to complete the job.
    2. I do have experience writing web services using apis to connect to shipstation which is how our MIS system sends shipping information to shipstation. I've done some research to see what it would take to connect our MIS system to receive jobs from Pressero. The company that created our MIS offers a plugin though but we just haven't had enough volume to warrant it. In terms of their API though, you can look at their API documentation without being a registered user. From what I can tell it seems really robust so that you can automate and integrate with Pressero to do pretty much anything you want.
  3. How often are you seeing them release bug fixes and or new features? Do the bug fixes feel impactful?
    1. I really haven't experienced too much bugs to notice when bug fixes are implemented so that one's hard to say
    2. In terms of new features, I have noticed that being released every so often. Probably quarterly. I'm guessing they make updates more frequently than that in terms of bug fixes though.
  4. Have you run into any edge cases where a customer asked for some feature or workflow that you just couldn't get to work in Pressero?
    1. So far I haven't. There's been times when I though I might have but I just had to dig harder into the inventory or put in a ticket with support and they pointed me in the right direction.
I hope that's helpful! Have you done a demo with them yet? Might be worth it. In fact, I'd contact a few vendors for demos and pricing so you can really compare. That's what I did. The only other one that I would say I saw and was impressed by the demo was EFI's solution. Their document builder is definitely robust and it's probably perfect for some businesses but Pressero fit best for us.
 
OffsetStorefront:
The only other one that I would say I saw and was impressed by the demo was EFI's solution. Their document builder is definitely robust and it's probably perfect for some businesses but Pressero fit best for us.

Ah, my favorite soapbox: we're actually a current EFI Digital Storefront (aka MarketDirect Storefront) user and are trying to escape to (hopefully) Pressero. EFI's DSF has a lot of potential and their document builder is definitely a strong selling point, but very few things actually work like you'd expect them, their defect backlog is in the thousands of cases, and the DSF product manager described their development cycle for bug fixes as taking 16-24 months. Bugs that have severely impacted our workflow and operating from when I first started working with it have remained unresolved for years. Sometimes their Support just closes the case because it's too hard to replicate. You'll hear the same story on their user forums too, so it's not just us. And it's like 2x the price of Pressero, lol. [/soapbox]

I've done a demo with Pressero and looked through their API documentation and have to say, everything looks mature and stable but we thought that too about EFI's offering and that was a very expensive, very painful surprise. Hence my questions about "what do you not like" or "any crazy bugs?". Your honest feedback says a lot more for us than any polished demo does - thanks.

If anybody else has any input to add about Pressero, you are re-invited to post as well!
 
Ah, my favorite soapbox: we're actually a current EFI Digital Storefront (aka MarketDirect Storefront) user and are trying to escape to (hopefully) Pressero. EFI's DSF has a lot of potential and their document builder is definitely a strong selling point, but very few things actually work like you'd expect them, their defect backlog is in the thousands of cases, and the DSF product manager described their development cycle for bug fixes as taking 16-24 months. Bugs that have severely impacted our workflow and operating from when I first started working with it have remained unresolved for years. Sometimes their Support just closes the case because it's too hard to replicate. You'll hear the same story on their user forums too, so it's not just us. And it's like 2x the price of Pressero, lol. [/soapbox]

I've done a demo with Pressero and looked through their API documentation and have to say, everything looks mature and stable but we thought that too about EFI's offering and that was a very expensive, very painful surprise. Hence my questions about "what do you not like" or "any crazy bugs?". Your honest feedback says a lot more for us than any polished demo does - thanks.

If anybody else has any input to add about Pressero, you are re-invited to post as well!

Good to know! I only know what I've seen in demos so you're right about getting user feedback. In that case, sounds like we've made a good choice then lol. Well I can honestly say I've only truly experienced 1 bug and it was sent to development within the week. It's been several weeks since being resolved but I get an email every week consistently with updates or just to say that they didn't forget about me and the dev team is still working on it. This particular bug wasn't even their fault, it was somethign with the adobe pdf library or something. I didn't realize you already had DSF and we looking for alternatives. I was merely trying to inform that we are happy with Pressero but it's good to be aware of what's out there because not every solution is perfect for every company.
 
OffsetStorefront:
The company that created our MIS offers a plugin though but we just haven't had enough volume to warrant it.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of volume are you running through Pressero? Do you have a rough estimate of monthly number of orders or line items?

Also, another one of our staff wanted to ask you: is there any ability to add custom scripts to some of the variable templates? Sometimes our clients want things like "auto-incrementing unique serial numbers" or their information pre-filled and we often try to pre-fill form fields with that information using small JavaScript scripts or something. Run into any of that?
 
We are a small shop and we're still trying to boost the volume to web to print orders. I'd say we have about 5 active customers on our system and maybe 40-50 products in total. It's not like we get a huge amount but most of it is business cards and letterheads which are easily customizable with Pressero and saves us time in typesetting. I've definitely run into scripting. There's 2 options, HTML or VBscript. HTML is really a script but you can use fields with HTML to combine fields how you want and change fonts or colors. With VBScript you can do a lot of stuff. I autopopulate information all the time. A lot of templates that I end up setting are for customers with multiple locations. In that case, I create a dropdown with the different locations and change the addresses and/or phone numbers based on that.

The other option to populate information is response sets which allows you to create a dropdown that allows you to populate fields with specific information as well. That requires no scripting and is really easy to use too.
 
Relatively New Pressero storefront user.
I was wondering if there are any Pressero Edoc Template or Website builder users with past experience that are currently contracting themselves out for hire.
 
Relatively New Pressero storefront user.
I was wondering if there are any Pressero Edoc Template or Website builder users with past experience that are currently contracting themselves out for hire.

A competent graphic designer could build eDoc Builder templates in InDesign using Aleyant's plugin. You can pay Aleyant's Consultants to build templates and I think the rate is $125/hr, but check with your sales rep. They also sell blocks of consulting hours at a volume discount.
 
Relatively New Pressero storefront user.
I was wondering if there are any Pressero Edoc Template or Website builder users with past experience that are currently contracting themselves out for hire.

Give us some impressions of the system once you've gotten your feet wet!
 
Related to;

[*]Do you have Pressero integrated with any other systems right now? Do you have any experience using their API for anything?
[/LIST]

I work for SmartSoft, we develop and market a Cloudy SaaS-y-ish ( monthly service fee ) PrintMIS called PressWise. We have many customer who use Pressero as their front end ( Storefront that injects orders into PressWise ) - Pressero makes use of our PressWise APIs.

Pressero also has a connection to our new Pricing Engine tool, where they can query PressWise about products with certain attributes ( think substrate choices, inks, press selection and finishing tasks like coatings, corner rounding, ect...)

We find them to be very advanced and great to work with.

I don't work for Aleyant, but I have access to a test system so we can troubleshoot if something is not working as expected - sometimes it is a Pressero set up issue, sometimes a PressWise set up issue...

Hope my post is not viewed as 'sales pitchy' as we have integrations with many others ( like PageDNA, Marcom Central, Zazzle, Shopify, etc.. )

https://kb.presswise.com/api/order/integrations/pressero/1-setup/pressero-and-presswise-integration
 
Good morning. I wanted to let you know my thoughts on Pressero, overall, as well as it's integration with PressWise, specifically.

I work for a commercial printer and promotional products company. For the print products, Pressero really excels. Our company has been using W2P for a very long time, now. We have been through multiple different products, during out journey.

We began with MyOrderDesk, which was a terrific product to get started with. It had some glaring issues, which I'm certain have been corrected over the years, but it was a great start.

Next, we moved onto HP's SmartStream product. It was in it's infancy, at the time, but we chose it because we are a HP Indigo shop, and their software tied neatly into our workflow. By using their InDesign plug-in, we were able to do pretty much anything we could do in InDesign, including the imposition through their plug-in. We dropped it after just a year because their were a ton of bugs. Although HP was able to address some of the bugs, many went unfixed for months at a time, and new bugs kept being introduced. It just wasn't sustainable to continue using their product.

We then moved on to Online Print Solutions. OPS was actually a pretty solid product. It lacked any sort of plug-in for InDesign, which was a downer. All templates had to be created in Adobe Acrobat. Then you had to create the logic for all of the fields in their web app. It had the ability to do PURLs, as well. Although we did have some customers take advantage of that feature, it was few and far in between. Ultimately, we were looking for a product that would integrate with our internal system, as well as one of our largest customer's system, and couldn't get it done with OPS.

About 4 years ago, we moved to Aleyant's Pressero product. We were impressed by it's modern web interface, including mobile support, it's inclusion of a plug-in for Adobe InDesign, it's solid integration options, and their terrific documentation. Getting setup was a bear, but no different than any other W2P product offering, to be honest. We use SmartSoft's PressWise product to handle our internal production, and as Michael Jahn spoke of above, the integration is very solid. The only thing that I would really like to see is full, two-way communication between their products. Pressero does a fine job of passing the orders into PressWise, but there is no automated status updates or shipping updates. You must manually ask for updates within Pressero.

Where Pressero really lacks is with apparel products and shared inventory. Pressero maintains inventory per site or store. If your shop wanted to sell apparel, and you are trying to maintain your inventory in Pressero, you are out of luck. There is no master inventory that multiple stores can pull from.

The template system is powered by another of their products, eDocBuilder. It is actually very polished, and pleasant to work with. There are two types of templates available, forms, and interactive designer. Most of our templates are forms, where the customer has little control over the template other than entering information and uploading images. Interactive designer allows much greater freedom to the end-user. You can literally give them a blank canvas to fully create their own document, or lock down as much as you like.

Their support system is top-notch. You can either create a ticket, or use their chat system for more urgent cases. Bugs happen to all software...it's unavoidable. Pressero does a fine job of addressing bugs in a timely manner. With the exception of one case, Pressero typically addresses bugs within the next cycle. Of course, they have recently switched to rolling updates, which means the bugs get fixed even faster now.
 

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