For designing and managing your store, it includes a variety of third-party tools such as Open Market's ShopSite Manager Lite. This approach offers a lot of flexibility and power but demands more expertise and setup time than integrated solutions. Unlike most of the packages we looked at, Small Business Pack includes domain name and search engine registration with no extra charge, and ten POP e-mail accounts. Aside from ShopSite Manager Lite, you get Microsoft SQL Server, Web Site Creator, and many other third-party tools. ShopSite Manager adds support for 50 products, database uploads, and real-time translation processing.
Setup is somewhat different from that of most of the other products reviewed here.
You start by selecting a hosting package from Netcom Business Center. Next you move to the Maintenance section, from which you can jump to ShopSite Manager Lite to begin creating your site. Along the way you are exposed to a treasure trove of resources. The Client Resources page includes a library filled with information on the Web and Web development, an Internet software toolbox, and a listing of newsgroups and related links, as well as extensive Netcom help. It really requires a knowledge of HTML to get the most out of Small Business Pack, but if you are not afraid to do some hand coding, ShopSite Manager Lite will provide you with more flexibility than template-based tools.