ONLINE SOFTWARE REVIEW: Winweb. By Nigel Harris

I agree with Jason.

In my opinion Winweb's two best features are:

a) the 24-7 online help system which I have always found very quick, efficient, polite and friendly - no hanging on a phone for hours, or paying extra for support

b) the fact that Stefan and his team actively go and ask accountants and other users what they want from Winweb - and then act on it!

I'm heartened to read Nigel's review and hope it will encourage more accountants to look at Winweb.

M

I have been looking actively for an online service to offer my clients for sometime and in fact I lost a client last year because I didn't have one.

I have looked at Online50, which would be the easy route.

Pros - we know the product (no training required); we know how to import the data into our accounts production software; we can recruit staff with experience; many of our clients know it; stable product; relatively easy to return to local network if system does not work/perform/suit/they go bust; they are able to host other software.

Cons - Expensive, an annual fee of at least £2000 in the first year and £1000 thereafter plus monthly user charges starting at about £60 for Line 50 this is expensive for a small practice and smaller clients; their pricing structure is quite complicated; they are at the mercy of Sage's licencing policy which has already seen one hike.

It will be interesting what price Sage themselves come into the market at.

I accept that Line 50 is not the ideal product, but as a basic package it does a reasonable job. My problem with the competition - Twinfield, Winweb, Liberty all look good - is what security have we that there will not be a shake out in this market as it matures leaving some users in a complete mess? The problem with this move is that the clients won't really care greatly which offering we use (provided it fulfils their needs) but they will blame us completely if it goes wrong - so there is an element of minimising the downside even if it results in not maximising the upside.

But still in a dilemma, which way to jump?

Neville,

Your concerns are valid.

We chose to go with winweb after I talked at length with Stefan about the issues you raised, what if you cease to trade etc.

I was not only pleasantly surprised at the responses but totally taken aback with his openness and honesty, which is why I decided my practice would move forward with winweb.

Winweb as Nigel has pointed out is not perfect, not yet, but they are working with their users to ensure the product is not far from it.

How does it compare to Sage, well I have clients who used Sage and now love using winweb, they are now telling me about the things they didn’t like about Sage like poor support, high price, ceasing support for older versions, company attitude and lack of ease of use are what I am hearing, surprised me, but hey, we now use winweb, we also use it for our own accounts.

Which ever choice you make Neville there will be pros and cons.

Jason
Holden Associates
The Small Business Blog
sbqaforum

Nigel,

Thank you for this review. I agree with your niggles and they will be dealt with when our release 3.2 hits your monitor next week.

As far as our help is concerned, we have 24 hour 7 days a week live online help. This has to be the best help system there is, at least our clients think so. Our knowledge base and forum, or our e-Book about AccountsOffice can be used. It worries me that you did not see that. We will try and address that in our next release.

As most of our client's use Sage line 50 I would be interested to know if anyone knows how Winweb compares to the Online50 service (Sage online) which we have looked at in the past but decided was far too expensive.