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Kaon Softwares - Price Comparison Script Review

I purchased the Kaon Softwares Price Comparison Script and worked with it for over a month before I finally gave up! Read my review for more info on this price comparison script from Kaon Softwares!

First of all this script is not for the novice affiliate, it is extremely hard to work with and requires at least some knowledge of PHP MySQL, and also access to PHPMyAdmin. Although your knowledge of PHP MySQL will only take you so far since this entire script is encrypted… so you will have ZERO luck making drastic changes to it…

Now on to the Script itself and how it works… well for me, at least at first it just wouldn't work. The script description at the time said that it would download and import Commission Junction feeds. The script was actually NOT SET UP to work with Commission Junctions feeds at the time even though they said it would… I had to complain to them for a week in order to get the script written to do what it claimed.. They even told me that they had had no access to Commission Junction feeds in order to test it… In other words they assumed that CJ feeds were just sitting there unzipped and ready to import.

The script doesn't really do anything automatically… you have to create thousands of FIND and REPLACES for EACH feed you want to use in order to get the products to match up.. and even when they do match up they are about 20% accurate.. AND there is no way to CORRECT BAD MATCHES… unless you delete the product itself… The Kaon Softwares Price Comparison Script is SUPER TIME CONSUMING and you will probably get so tired of creating FIND and REPLACES that you'll just give up on it… especially when all your work results in a 20% accuracy rate!!!

Basically and I will try to make this short, The script is CRAP.. SHORT ENOUGH FOR YA? I never did get it working properly and I just scrapped the whole project at a loss (for the cash I paid for the script). The Kaon Softwares SUPPORT is located in INDIA and the time difference was a nightmare… it would take 24 hours to get an answer for the simplest questions.. and there were a lot of questions. They also claimed that they had sold hundreds of these scripts without any complaints… when I couldn't find one site that was running this script that wasn't linked to from Koan Softwares.. and all of those domains "could" be Kaon Softwares for all I know… After all they claimed that the script would work with CJ feeds and then admitted to me that they had NEVER EVEN TESTED a CJ feed!! So anything goes at Kaon Softwares!!

The biggest let down of them all… Get this.. when you import a feed (and that takes a long time) your SITE IS DEAD… The CSV/MySQL import process takes up so many system resources that it renders the MySQL database useless and "DEAD" for any visitors… and that is just ONE FEED… if you had 100 feeds your site would be DEAD over 80% of the time in order to do the import process… RIDICULOUS AT BEST and RIP OFF at WORST…

Now you can take this Kaon Softwares Price Comparison Script Review for what it is worth, I bought this script and spent more than a month working with it and sending e-mails to INDIA and waiting for a response… and nothing happens with them on the weekends. I was ready to pull my hair out.. and by the end it was just too much stress trying to get answers and make this script work properly… and it NEVER happened.. I gave up before I waisted any more time… and the DEAD site thing was the biggest let down of them all….!!

I mean if I had ten thumbs I would give this script ten thumbs down… but since I only have TWO I give it two thumbs down!

DO NOT PURCHASE THIS SCRIPT UNLESS YOU WANT TO THROW $600.00 US IN THE TOILET!!!!!

This i the worst script I ever Buy It slow cannot upload a datafeed, It make the Server slow, So I have to take it down, I download it to my desktop, and the file was bad, And I email then for a copy and they block my email address.
All I can say Please do not buy this script it's garbage, They are thief liars robber The worst people I Know,The SCRIPT IS HALF finish Please save your money do not throw you hard working dollar away, People out of the country must hold accountable for sell these crappy software. and just take our money. $600.00US Bad Investment PLEASE Please Please Please DO NOT BUY, Not GOOD NOT GOOD

Hi,
I worked 3 mounth on it and the result make me cry …
You are right…. this script is a crap.
If you really want to work fine with it, You will have to buy add-ons at an extra price (150$ each lol…) or you will lose your time.
Just a scam.

Hi,
Thanks a lot for the reviews, I have been reading a lot about Price Comparison Scripts and I'm in a doubt between Kaonsoftawares script and Pricetapestry. Kaonsoftware looks more complete and beatutiful design, and PriceTapestry in more basic.
Another point is: Kaonsoftware crawl prices from your marchants but after reading these comments I really doubt if it does. Price Tapestry doesnt support a crawler but it has a pretty good support and forum (thing that I didn't find at kaonsoftwares site)

Thank you all guys,
From Neth.

Hi,

I also purchased that script for Germany. At first I was surprised about the functions. Nevertheless I had to switch to an OWN server (shared servers would be a mess). So I'm (still) using an own Server (Duo-Core, 1TB space etc.). There were some bugs, which were fixed by Kaon (for my behalf) quickly (I agree to the time difference, same problem for me). I also talked to the guy(s) over there by phone. I assume my english isn't so bad, but … I could not understand Pakistan english, sorry. So it ends up in emails …

The datafeed function worked ok for me (once I understood, how the script works - nevertheless the backend is crypted in Ioncube, no way to get to the source to make changes by yourself )

I had around 100 feeds running, as a daily cronjob. It worked ok, but server settings had to be adjusted. I really had to install addons like Sphinx (for MySql), EAccelerator OR XCache (last one worked fine for me) to speed up the frontent (I had MANY vistors, but who wants to wait 30-45 seconds for a search result?).

I have (or maybe "had" in the future?) around 4.5 Mio products … On top you have to import the pictures, too. You need space … much space

There are SO MANY scripts inside that package, which are either not described or mentioned by Kaon (Google-Sitemap, is ok, works fine - Import Pictures as separate job - etc. etc.)

The scripts says it's multilingual. Mmmmhhhh - yes and no. I THOUGHT I could do an INTERNATIONAL price comparison and translated the whole stuff into german and french … BUT: so far for me no way for Frontent-Users to change the language to another one …

You should ALWAYS match products, which you import, by PRODUCT CODE (mainly mentioned as manufacturer code in that Script).

So my conclusion: you CAN work with it … You CAN change frontent to your demand (not crypted) - the rest …

100 % !!!

dont touch this script !!!! after receiving money the support goes to min. 3 days !!!! no money refund !!!

spend ours to get it to work ! files encrypted ! bad templatesystem ! slow ! to much to list …. !

@ pricemaster
ne alternative gefunden ?

I am also using price comparison from them. The support is slow because of time difference i guess. When I am working they are not and when they are then I am not. But this i have to compromise for a $600 off-shore solution. Locally developing such website will huge budget. But I must mention that they are helpful. Did make several screenshots to explain me and also did minor changes for me for free without fuss :)))

import is not slow at all nor it hangs the website. I am on a 1GB VPS and have over 4 million products and 500 merchants. I have their multi tasking enabled. i am using their latest version 6.1.

product matching is the most difficult part. there are so many options and so many features in the script that are not just well documented. you really need to play with it to understand and ask their help. also if you are matching by product name then it is no luck. coz every feed has different names and it is really hard work just to match products. i figured and started using EAN codes and then it was easier to match products. But i dont think we can blame them for this. Feeds are a mess generally and there is little any program can do on it.

as pricemaster said, you need a vps atleast or dedicated to use this script. you need to install softwares like sphinx to improve your search speed. you need to enable multi tasking for fast imports. otherwise the default settings wont let you cross 200,000 products.

Also setting cronjobs is tricky. every cronjob should be setup. like downloading images cronjob, daily cronjob, import autofeed cronjob.
They guide you to run as lynx -dump cronjob but i run them as php admin/script.php cronjob. That way the script dont timeout in middle as lynx is just a unix internal browser.

My conclusion: You can SURELY WORK with it. It is a good script but need sometime as there are so many features and options that you just cannot learn in a week.

@pricemaster:
The multi-language flags are commented in their template. Edit the header.tpl.php and uncomment then the visitor can select language by clicking on flag and change.
Why they keep that flag code commented beats me. lol.

(BLOG EDITORS NOTE::::: SURE we could work with it for months and try to figure out what isn't documented (and there are a lot of things that aren't documented) we could have them make adjustments to it AT A COST.. and maybe just maybe it will work someday. —- The bottom line is this::: This script is way to complicated, very little is documented, support is two to three days away ALWAYS… when importing large feeds (10,000 records or more) it lags and stalls the entire site- making it impossible for visitors to view, and there are waaay too many quirks to actually list here… My advice is to stick with pricetapestry.com or ANYTHING but Kaon Softwares Price Comparison Script!!!)