We are not supposed to count the chickens before they hatch. But still I think we have a pretty cool application in the making. Its almost ready to hit the limelight. As you know we have a multi vendor shopping cart and a online site builder software.  We have been getting a number of requests from clients on modifying either of it to a online store builder - so that they can offer it as a service similar to yahoo stores,  volusion.com or prostores to their clients.  So this would allow them to be an ASP / or SaaS provider easily. This would a great addition for hosting companies, design houses and marketplace communities.

We have a new online store builder in the making. Its independent of both iScripts Multicart and iScripts EasyCreate. Current plan is to allow the end user to select a domain or subdomain , select a payment plan and create store in that location on your server. he can customize the look and feel of the store, add edit categories, products , shipping etc.from the management panel with few clicks. I am not sure about the name yet. But we have been kicking around the name iScripts GoStores for now internally. I will update you once we finalize.

If you want to be keep posted about this application or you want participate in the beta trial let me know. Contact me at abraham(@)iscripts.com

Aji Abraham

iScripts has been offering online data backup for consumers over two years under the brand Backup2Net. We have decided to enhance our current solution based on all the customer feedback and experience, and make it into a private label service iScripts customers can offer. So if you ever wanted to start a online data backup service similar to the likes of carbonite, mozy, xdrive etc.. for  individuals and small businesses here is your chance.

 New product is tentatively named “iScripts Backuper”. You will receive a white labeled or private labelled client application (its the desktop application for your clients to manage and schedule backups). You will also receive the server software for billing, account management, backup management etc.. Off the shelf, you can start it as a stand alone online data backup service. If you have a another business ( say web site hosting or large virtual comnity) and you want to  offer it as a addon service to increase your revenue, there might be some customization required. We will do the customization for you. 

We are still working out the details of the new product offering and licensing. We will have more info in the coming weeks. We plan to have the new product solution introduced in the next 2-3 weeks.  New versions of client application and server software are in the last stage of beta testing. Our current plan is to offer the white labelled client software for free and can provide unlimited users. If you need private label version, there would be a small addional cost. The server application would be on a monthly license per server, at present it is set at $99.95 per month for the first server.As the software is fairly complex we would install it and configure it for you. naturally this would require you to have a dedicated server or a virtual private server at the least. So the data would be backed up to your server where you choose. So effectively you can start a data backup service for no startup cost and close to $200 per month ( assuming dedicated server for $100 per month)

All of our current products are released as open source ( “source available” for you obessing about the definition of Opensource). As we are battling the piracy of our proprietary software, this one might be encrypted. This is not the road we had in mind, but looks like it is the one  making more and more sense. Please contact us at (312)423-6728 or sales(at)iscripts.com with any questions, comments or feedback about the new product.

 Aji Abraham 

Many of our visitors has been enquiring about version 2.0 for the last few months. I am happy to announce iScripts Socialware 2.0 is finally out of beta and is released . You will find the new version at http://www.iScripts.com/socialware. Some of the main improvements for Socialware 2.0 over previous release are the payment gateway support and audio/video sharing.

Initially when social networking was introduced it was a free community. Over the last couple of years new business models for social networking communities have emerged to make paid membership community a viable option. So if you have an idea where you think members will pay you to join, iScripts Socialware is for you. Your job is to create value to your members so that they will pay youJ of course if you prefer the advertising supported model for revenue generation, Google Adwords and regular banners are natively supported. Another revenue generation avenue is the gift store. You can have either virtual gifts or physical gifts in the store and your members can purchase them with virtual money or real money. If you are making the community portal for your friends and family, you can make it completely free and without any ads. No problem.

Audio/Video sharing support is a natural extension that many of our existing users have been requesting. Your members can upload their audio/video content or link it from other sources like Youtube. The admin can decide if you want to host the videos on the server or you just want to let the users link to other sites or if you do not want anything to do with videos. Most audio/video formats are supported.

Another important improvement is increased flexibility for the administrator to create the unique community experience. Administrator can enable or disable around fifteen different features for the community. You can pick and choose the features to create unique community for your members. We have also added a number of different layouts for the users to select for the site based on the core theme of your community. Overall security of the product is also significantly improved from previous versions. For existing customers, there is an upgrade script for upgrading from previous releases to 2.0 version. New version is free cost for all those who purchased iScripts Socialware in the last one year.

The price of the product is still unchanged and is $99.95 for a limited time. As usual this is the total fees, no monthly/yearly fees. The product is completely open source, nothing is encrypted. So you can make any customizable . We are also available to make any changes to the product. If you require any type of customizing please let us know we will be happy to provide a firm quote.

Yes, there is YouTube for video sharing. Why leave video hosting and sharing left only to big boys. There is significant amount of money to be made from niche video sharing websites. And iScripts want to help you create the video hosting site. You can create a YouTube, Google video, Dailymotion etc.. type web community with iScripts VisualCaster. You want to clone the success a number of video hosting sites, this is your chance without spending big bucks to create something from scratch.

Thank you for all who helped us in the beta phase with your feedbacks. iScripts VisualCaster 1.0 is released this week. It is priced at $49.95 . As with all other iScripts products, VisualCaster is open source. So if you have an idea for a video sharing web site most likely you can use iScripts Visual caster out of the box. If you have some unique requirements you would be able to modify to meet your specs. Or you can contact our development team to make the changes for you.

You can create a video sharing website as a standalone site or as an extension of your existing community site.

Here is some of the main features of the script:

Simple site management - Powerful admin panel to manage all aspects of the site. No need to know programmingEasy to upload and share videos.

Supports Google Adsense and regular banners - Generate revenue.

Video Channels. - You can have multiple video channels.

Message Area. - Community users can communicate each other to increase return users

Groups. - Social networking groups can be created by users to increase stickiness.

Different layouts/themes to choose from.

Favorite List - Users can save their favorite videos into favorite list.

User Playlist Management .

Unencrypted source code for easy customization - You can customize look and feel of the site as well as functionalities. If you are not sure we can customize it for you. .

Friends Management - users can add/edit/invite friends.

User friendly installer wizard.

Free one year support and free upgrades .

Supports all popular video types and image types.

Supports tag clouds.

Copy embed video codes for social networking sites/ forums.

The video sharing site will be working from your server/ hosting account. Not ours. Only special requirement for the server is to have FFEMPG . Just check with your hosting provider if your account supports it. There a number of economical hosting companies that supports FFEMPG. If you cannot find any, ask our support team, we can suggest few options.

If you have any suggestions for new features to add to iScripts VisualCaster. We are always looking for ways to improve our products.

Aji Abraham

We have been getting more and more questions from our customers about hosting. A number of times clients web hosts do not allow specific features of the servers to be used. A key example is the FFEMPG for iScripts Visualcaster and iScripts Socialware 2.0 for video sharing. Number of customers have asked if we can recommend hosting providers. We are trying to be as neutral as possible when it comes to web hosts. A number of hosting providers are our distribution partners. So we do not want to promote some hosting companies vs. others. However it feels a majority of customers don’t care if the host with a third party provider vs another as long as the basic parameters like price, uptime, support etc.. are met.

 So here is the question.  If iScripts products are turned into a Software as a Service model, how likely you would use it vs the current Buy the script and upload into your servers.

 Making the product into a SaaS model have a number of advantages. First of all you as the customer can focus on what’s important to you. No need to worry about the server type, upgrades, backup etc.. All the geek stuff will be taken care of by folks who love those. 

You do not have buy the software. You pay a monthly fee for it which includes your hosting cost. 

We spend a lot of time making sure the software runs on different platforms.  With SaaS model we have controlled platforms. So we need not to spend our time making the product better, with new versions and new features

Piracy is an ongoing issue. With SaaS model it can be controlled very well.  We can focus our efforts again to making the products greater instead of fighting people who tries to pirate our products.

Of course if you require customizations we would be available to do so, even with the new model. I think its a win -win for our customers and iScripts.

What do you think. Let me know.

Aji Abraham

After months of hard work, new version of iScripts MultiCart is finally released. Many of you have been enquiring about the new version for some time. We wanted to make sure the quality of the web application does match your expectations.

This new version is adding to the feature rich iScripts MutiCart 1.1 . In addition to make many of the existing features more user friendly for administrator, sellers and consumers, we have added new functionalities to make this product a unique shopping cart to power online businesses.

iScripts MultiCart now supports digital good delivery in addition to existing physical product. Adding digital goods will enable entrepreneurs to start aggregate businesses to sell ebooks, templates, logos, software, scripts, music , other audio files etc.. This would work very similar to current model of Multicart. There would be a single storefront where consumers can view items from multiple vendors in the backend. Each of the vendors will have their own management panel to manage their digital products, prices, delivery etc.. You as the administrator will be able to control all aspects of the site through a powerful admin panel. It can also continue to power drop shipping and virtual mall type commerce sites.

Here is a comprehensive list of new features added in version 2.0.

• Customizable Fields – You can customize the fields from the admin side say a member registration form fields. The fields can be set as mandatory/optional and also the order for fields can also be specified.
  

• Gift Voucher – Visitors can purchase gift coupons like other products. For each gift coupon there is a unique code, which can be sent to others by email. Persons receiving those codes can purchase items by selecting the payment as ‘gift coupon’ and typing the gift code received in the checkout page. Increase your sales by getting into the gift market.
  

• Currency Types – MultiCart 2.0 supports different currency types.
  

• Template Management – The entire layout of the site can be changed by using some predefined templates. The templates can be changed from the admin panel. A number of professionally designed layouts are included in the product
  

• Shipping Methods – Integrated with UPS website for shipping calculation and tracking
  

• More Payment Gateways
  

  • worldpay.com
    

  • This is in addition existing gateways ( Authorize.net, Paypal)
    

• Digital Downloads – Supports digital products like ebooks, software, video, templates, scripts.
  

• Rating – Consumers can rate sellers
  

• Login Interfaces – Each seller has his/her own login interfaces. The login
  

  • interfaces lists only the details corresponding to that particular seller like categories added, products added etc.
    

  • Product Images – different views of product images like side view, top view etc can be uploaded. The number of images uploaded can be configured in the site settings.
    

• Rss Feed – generate rss feeds for the new product listings. Let your customers know when the new products are added.
  

• Banner Management –
  

  • Banners are uploaded from the admin side. The uploaded banners are resized. The banner size is specified in the site settings. For each banner display the banner display count is increment by one. Next time display the banner that has the least impression.
    

  • Google Adsense – display the Google ads in the home page based on the site settings.
    

• Detailed Reports
  

  • Products Viewed – This report displays the total number of times each product viewed from user side.
    

  • Product Purchased – Displays the product purchase count for each product.
    

  • Customer Orders Total – Generates a report of total order amount of each customer.    
    

  • Gift Coupon – Report shows who purchased the gift coupon, details of products purchased with gift coupon and also displays the gift coupon balance amount.
    

• Upgrade Wizard – existing users of Multicart 1.0 and 1.1 can upgrade to Multicart 2.0 using the upgrade wizard
  

With all these new features price of the iScripts Multicart 2.0 remains unchanged at $99.95 for owned license. You will receive 100% of the source code in a non encrypted format. Yes, its is a PHP web script with Ajax and mySQL as database. So you can make any changes you require as you please. As always we are here to customize the product to meet your specific requirements. If you feel iScripts MultiCart is close to what you are searching, let us know. We can modify it to meet your specific business model. We at iScripts is psyched about the new release.

Let me know if you have any comments for questions.

Aji Abraham

We created iscripts multicart almost 18 months back after 6 months in development. Initially the idea started out as a website for handcraft products. There are a lot of people who makes these cute little things with clay, clothes  and anything you can imagine. Most of them do this as a hobby or side business.  They are good in crafts.  Well… most are.  They never strike me as good marketing folks. So the idea of them managing their own ecommerce store selling these crafts did not make much sense. As a one man/woman show they can either spend time on creating new  beautiful crafts items or doing web marketing. It is a crime to ask them to do the marketing by themselves. if they hire they need fork over most of the money from the sales to the so called experts (including us) for any meaningful results.  It did not make much sense. So we thought wouldn’t it be wonderful if we create a co-op web store for handicrafters? All they need to do is list the products and ship out to the buyers. We would in turn take care of the marketing, technical aspects, payment processing, tech support for the handcrafters. in turn we would charge them a small fee based on the cost. as its a narrow vertical, we can market things well.

After talking to bunch of handcrafters in the summer fairs we created harcraftweb.com. Initially it was working out very well. but it turned out, we are very good in creating web software. Not very good promoting a website. It meant going to all those craft fairs and selling this idea to hard crafters. then visiting bunch of forums and magazines for crafters and advertising. It sounded too much work, in an area where we have not much interest or experience. So the site kind of slowed down.

then we got a call from somebody looking for a multivendor site for baseball cards. He asked if we willing to sell the software and customize it for his site. sure, why not? We did it and their business was doing pretty good.  Then we realized this is a good software for small industry niches, where it does not make sense for individual players to create their own stores. So this offers entrepreneurs an opportunity for creating a one stop shop for that niche. The niche could be handcrafts or baseball cards.  Finally we decided to make the software more customizable and make it an official iScripts product. so we created iScripts Multicart as a multi-vendor shopping cart.

I looked around and did not see many products competing with it directly. So I was happy we came up with something very unique and new.  Explaining this to customers who calls to find out exactly what this software can do for them. Most of them had some business model in mind and wanted to find out if this can meet their need off the shelf or can we customize to make it to meet their model. I used to explain it as a multi vendor system with a single store front. Then folks where confused about who handles fulfilment , who takes care of payment etc..  So to make things clearer we used to explain it as a virtual mall software. So as a mall, you would have a number of vendors selling their own things. But it would be under the umbrella of single entity(mall).  Most of the potential customers called during the time was looking for a business model where individual shops need to manage their payment processing as well as fulfilment. So I was looking for better ways to explain what exactly iScripts multicart do?

Last week when I was explaining the software to a potential customer for this script, she asked  if it works like the new Amazon.com. Well it is.. It was an interesting realization that Jeff Bezos settled on the same  business model for Amazon, as we did for handcrafters.  The only business model which made any money for amazon after all these years. If you notice lately(2006-07) amazon is not just selling products under their brand. They push cistomers to other vendors, even competitors, who does the fulfilment.  Only difference is amazon used their super weight brand to attract customers and then push to other vendors for almost everything under the sun. In teh case of handcrafters, we were focusing on a very small niche.

There a number of factors coming together for the breakdown of barriers to entry for industries. For web hosting industry it came with three aspects.  They were affordable servers and bandwidth, automation software, 24×7 technical support partners. Now it’s even easier to start your own web hosting business with iScripts AutoHoster.

iScripts AutoHoster is standalone application to help you start your own web hosting business. This application provides account management and billing service for your web hosting business. It has an integrated online site builder application. This allows your users to create professional looking websites in minutes and publish them to their hosting account. Another important capability is an integrated helpdesk application to provide customer support to your clients. An integrated affiliate program is also included to help you market your new hosting company.  iScripts AutoHoster allows real time domain name registrations for the hosting accounts. This is accomplished through integrating domain registrar enom.com api in the application. More domain registrars are expected in the coming releases.  iScripts AutoHoster is priced at $199.95 and it includes full versions of iScripts EsayCreate and SupportPRO SupportDesk integrated. A lite version of Autohoster is also available without either EasyCreate or SupportDesk for the existing webhosts with helpdesk or site builder application already exist.

If you run a small service business you know the difficulties associated with client management and billing. For non-service businesses, the clients and hence billing aer homogeneous. But for you different customers get different types of services. Even for same service, they get different type of billing. Some get billed every month. Some pay flat fees. Some customers pay different rates for the same service. Service businesses are at a disadvantage when it comes to invoicing and client management due to these complexities.iScripts Easybiller offers a cost effective solution to offer web based online billing and collections for service businesses. This is ideal for businesses like web hosting companies, ISPs, tech support/maintenance companies, web designers, graphic designers, child care facilities etc…. Pretty much any service company that want to offer online billing for recurring or one time services. iScripts Easybiller can be installed on your own server or hosting account. So you know the sensitive information will not be in somebody else’s servers. It can be integrated with your existing website.Some of the main features of the program are:

• Plan Management : Through the plan management you can add, remove or edit service plans. You can also provide custom plans for specific clients, which are not visible to any other clients. 
• Invoice Management : You and your clients can view the details of current and past invoice
• User Management:  Clients can self register or you can add them. Users  also provide other  relevant info you require.
• Integrated Helpdesk :Through the built in helpdesk software will enable you to provide better support to your clients, whether you have 4 clients or 40000 clients.
• Complete Billing Automation: Once its set up, it will charge your clients credit card automatically without any action from your client or you.
• Supports Recurring and One Time Payments : Your plans can be monthly bi-monthly or annual recurring or just one time payments.
• Built in Affiliate Program : Give your marketing plans a jump start through the built in affiliate program.
• Multi Payment Methods : Your customers can pay online through credit card, pay pal or offline check, money order methods
• Secure and reliable: We understand how important these information to you and clients. So we have taken steps to ensure they stay secure.

It is developed with PHP and mySQL. As with every other iScripts product, it is open source. It means you can customize it to meet your specific requirements. Of course it be used off the shelf also. iScripts can provide with a firm quote if your require any customizations.

iScripts Easybiller is priced at $99.95 and is available for purchase at iScripts.com

How do know, what somebody want? Ask them. It’s that simple. But ask yourself, how often you talk to web customers? How often you ask their opinion about the products you have? And about the products you don’t have?

Here is a small, yet powerful script for you to ask your customers, your site visitors what they want, how they like something, and what else what they want.

This script is called iScripts.com EasyWebSurvey. It allows you to create unlimited number of surveys. You can have any number of questions in the surveys. Any type of questions, only limited by your imagination. Once you finish create the questionnaire you need to contact your potential audience. You have two options. One provide a link from your web page requesting your customer/ potential customer to take the survey. Or you can send the survey by email.

You can import your mailing list from a database, excel spreadsheet or cut and paste. You send the survey to your mailing and ask them to take a survey. They can respond and submit from their email client itself. No need to login to your site for doing so.

You can have one mailing list per survey or share the mailing list from survey to survey. Once the survey is completed, you, the administrator will have the aggregate information in very nice graphic reports. Of course you can drill down to more details, with a click of a button.

There are a number of hosted survey solutions in the market field. They charge you for each survey. Why pay every time to talk to your customer? After all they are your customer.

iScripts.com EasyWebSurvey software is a free software supporting unlimited surveys. As always, the software is open source. So if you want to make any changes, you can do it yourself. Or we will be happy to make any customization you need for a very small fee. It is a PHP software with mySQL database.

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