Actinic Business v10 review

The now annual refresh of the market-leading Actinic e-commerce family will be of interest to the thousands of small businesses using it to sell goods online.

The changes in Actinic v10 aren't earth shattering, but do address a number of shortcomings and enhance the appeal of this already very popular product.

We used Actinic Business for our evaluation, which is the mid-range version able to handle large numbers of online transactions and mail and telephone orders. Actinic Catalog (£399+VAT) may be more suitable for smaller traders selling online only, but many may still prefer the Business product which comes with additional customer management and marketing tools, plus Sage 50 Accounts integration and optional support for Actinic EPOS.

Actinic Catalog and Business can both cope with up to 20,000 products, but are limited to a single site and just one user. If that's a problem Actinic Business Plus is the answer (starting at £1,249+VAT) as this version can be extended to support multiple web sites managed by multiple users. An Enterprise Edition with SQL Server database integration is also available.

The same core software is employed regardless of version, requiring little more than a desktop PC running either Windows XP with Service Pack 2, Vista or Windows 7. Installation took just a few minutes on our test PC, and upgrading from a previous version proved equally painless. Existing customers who signed up to an Actinic Cover agreement will get the v10 upgrade for free. Others will have to pay £375+VAT.

Hosting choices
As well as the Actinic desktop PC you will, of course, need a server to run your web store. Unlike some e-commerce products, however, you're not tied to Actinic or a specific hosting company. Actinic can host the site for you from £15 per month for a small store, rising to £540 for a dedicated server, but if you already have a favourite provider you can use them instead, or use a web server of your own.

We tested using Actinic to host our store, which guarantees compatibility. But the requirements aren't onerous, and a quick web search throws up lots of providers offering Actinic-specific hosting packages. Moreover, whatever the hosting arrangements, configuring and managing a site should be just as easy with everything done from within the Actinic desktop rather than having to manually upload.

Getting started
On the basis of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it', Actinic has wisely left the user interface alone this time round, having made a number of changes last year when v9.0 came out. As such, we were immediately at home with the new release, although you don't need to be a seasoned Actinic professional to get started, thanks to the quick start wizards and revamped menus introduced in the previous version, plus a really well written manual.

Added to which first timers are presented with much the same sample store, which they can quickly learn to modify and extend to suit their needs.

One of the biggest tasks is setting up the product catalogue. We added our products from scratch but, if you use spreadsheets or have an existing product database, details can be imported from there. Unfortunately you can't just link to an existing database, although SQL Server support is available in the Enterprise version.

Pictures too are easily imported, and we didn't find anything in the product likely to trip up new users. Minimal technical knowledge is assumed across the board, and the only thing required in abundance is time to become familiar with the software and get everything you want uploaded and onto your site.