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Advantage Reviews & Product Details

Advantage Overview

What is Advantage?

Looking for a solution for digital and print? Do you bundle digital and print together and sell the package at a discount? Are your systems for digital and print disparate and it’s difficult or impossible to sell or manage such combinations? Advantage is the solution that manages both digital and print. Whether it’s entitlements, access to content, eBooks, pay-per-view, downloads, or pdf versions of the magazine, Advantage can combine these with the print product and keep the two components of the bundle synchronized and allocate the income however you like. There are numerous solutions for digital sales, including recurring billing platforms, but these don’t handle print products and distribution, and they are a struggle for marketers who want to sell combinations of digital and print products. Advantage does this naturally. And Advantage does much more, including membership management, marketing, sales, order processing, and customer relationship management. AdvantageCS has been developing software for major companies since 1979. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, our more than 80 employees are the most experienced and dedicated in the industry. All work is done by our staff---never farmed out to third parties.

Advantage Details
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Product Description

Advantage helps publishers manage subscriptions, online and digital content, books and other products, catalogs and memberships in any combination.

How do you position yourself against your competitors?

Advantage is the only solution that manages both digital and print equally well. Whether it’s entitlements, access to content, eBooks, pay-per-view, downloads, or pdf versions of the magazine, Advantage can combine these with the print product and keep the two components of the bundle synchronized and allocate the income however you like.

There are numerous solutions for digital sales, including recurring billing platforms, but these don’t handle print products and distribution, and they are a struggle for marketers who want to sell combinations of digital and print products.

Advantage does this natively. Digital and print are both in our DNA.


Seller Details
Year Founded
1979
HQ Location
Ann Arbor, MI
Twitter
@AdvantageCS
237 Twitter followers
LinkedIn® Page
www.linkedin.com
68 employees on LinkedIn®

Daniel H.
DH
Overview Provided by:
Vice President & Chief Product Manager

Recent Advantage Reviews

TH
Tom H.Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
4.0 out of 5
"Advantage has served as our subscription management system for the last 20 years."
Advantage is very flexible. That is one of the reasons we selected them in 2000.
TC
Terri C.
5.0 out of 5
"CS review"
Advantages Online Help Documentation is great to work with
MB
Melissa B.
4.5 out of 5
"n/a"
I've been using it for years, and I think once you learn it, it's easy to use.
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Advantage Media

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22 Advantage Reviews

4.4 out of 5
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22 Advantage Reviews
4.4 out of 5
22 Advantage Reviews
4.4 out of 5

Overall Review Sentiment for AdvantageQuestion

Time to Implement
<1 day
>12 months
Return on Investment
<6 months
48+ months
Ease of Setup
0 (Difficult)
10 (Easy)
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TC
Client Services Manager
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Advantage?

Advantages Online Help Documentation is great to work with Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Advantage?

The complexity of the system that makes it great can also be a challenge Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Advantage solving and how is that benefiting you?

Subscription management Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

NH
Senior Program Analyst
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
(Original )Information
What do you like best about Advantage?

One of the best things about Advantage to me is the stability of the system, the robust feature sets and the solid accounting backbone Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Advantage?

There isn't a lot to dislike. Advantage is a very complex system, so training new users does take some time and optimizing the system for your specific environment can be time-consuming. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Advantage:

I have used Advantage for over 20 years across three different organizations, including my current org. I have found their features to be robust and well thought-out. Their system is flexible, making each instance unique. If you are looking for a platform that is flexible, powerful and well-supported, consider Advantage Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Advantage solving and how is that benefiting you?

Advantage truly is the backbone of our infrastructure. The financial transaction and reporting capabilities, specifically for audit purposes ensure that we are always able to pass audits without any issues. Additionally, the fulfillment processes that Adv offers are flexible and robust. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Airlines/Aviation
AA
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Advantage?

Advantage has successfully supported the various item types in our catalog including integrating with our physical warehouse. They look for trends and are continuously updating.

The employees are passionate about the product and the company as witnessed by the longevity of so many. They are always open to discussing functionality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Advantage?

They substitute system processes for User IDs in the data. Makes it extremely hard to track user stats and errors.

At previous revisions, reporting for average users is difficult. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Advantage:

This is an extremely flexible system and can be used for so much more than just subscription management. It is that flexibility that causes the low mark on Ease of Set up. Their staff is extremely knowledgeable and will take the time to learn your business to better assist in set up and use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Advantage solving and how is that benefiting you?

It very easily supports financial transactions/general ledger postings. Simple to pull detail behind each GL entry. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Hospital & Health Care
UH
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Advantage?

I've been with my company for 41 years so I've been on Advantage since the beginning. I have to say I'm not a huge fan of the current version mostly because of the visual alignment and spacing issues that you've corrected in the newest version. There's also a lag between screens and it sounds like that too has been corrected. I'm hoping we upgrade as the new features look very inviting! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Advantage?

Sorry, I put that in the last box, but my least favorite thing is the poor use of real estate, all the spacing that requires us to scroll. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Advantage solving and how is that benefiting you?

Not really sure how to answer that, we use it for fulfillment of AMB, Circulation and Pro products and every aspect of that business. We don't currently use Cider but I would love for our company to adopt that process. I feel we use too much 2nd and 3rd party software which makes the integration a challenge. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

MB
Trainer/Quality Assurance Analyst
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Advantage?

I've been using it for years, and I think once you learn it, it's easy to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Advantage?

Right now we are on a 2019 or 2020 version and we have a lot of open white spacing, and it doesn't fit nicely on a laptop screen. There's a vertical and a horizontal scroll bars Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Advantage solving and how is that benefiting you?

not sure how to answer this. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

TK
Director of IT
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Advantage?

The Advantage software is quite flexible and new features are being added all the time! I also like that there is an option for an integrated web solution. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Advantage?

Sometimes with lots of flexibility comes complexity, the Advantage software can be complex, particularly for those new to the product. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Advantage solving and how is that benefiting you?

My publishing organization uses the Advantage software for managing customer transactions, tracking product metadata, and hosting our public website. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

canus p.
CP
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Advantage?

The big number of options and settings to fit our business, the integration with the e-commerce platform, the continuous features and the support service. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Advantage?

The cost can be expensive for a small publisher like us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Advantage:

The Advantage software may seem complex at first glance, but it was designed, in my personal opinion, to handle all types of situations. This is why we find a very advanced configuration as well as a very large number of options in the software, but in the majority of cases the configuration remains ‘basic’ and we rarely use all the options. One could cite the French adage “qui peut le plus peu le moins” to reflect this: if you can do many big things, you can also do simple ones.

Another advantage of working with ACS is the fact that they are open to your requests, that is to say that if you have a specific request related to your core business, they have the ability to develop and to integrate it into Advantage, which makes the Advantage tool very flexible.

As for the AdvantageCS company itself, they are always forging ahead with new software modifications every year. For technical support they are always available, and there is always someone there to respond very quickly and solve the problem. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Advantage solving and how is that benefiting you?

We have been using the Advantage software from AdvantageCS for 10 years now, and are very satisfied.

Our use mainly consists of managing paper subscriptions, digital access and mail order sales.

The choice of this software is essentially based on the fact that everything is customer-centric and contains all the tools we need; there is none better on the market.

We recently implemented the Cider e-commerce platform, also provided by the company ACS, which is directly tied into the Advantage product. This is a real asset for us because we did not need any integration (very often complex and very time-consuming to set up) between the customer system and the e-commerce site. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Connie H.
CH
Business Analyst
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Advantage?

The support team -- from tier 1 to project managers to implementation specialists are very helpful. Our Account Manager is always willing to step in and help work through challenges. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Advantage?

Configuration is very complex. There is a lot of documentation, but not very helpful in terms of configuration. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Advantage solving and how is that benefiting you?

Inventory management, books and subscription fulfillment, access to digital products. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AS
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Advantage?

They have listened to our business needs and been flexible to help us customize workflows where needed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Advantage?

There really aren't things I dislike as much as the version we are operating is somewhat dated which makes reporting on occasion a challenge. But as I mentioned above their support team has been very helpful in creating work arounds if needed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Advantage:

I would suggest that you not limit yourselves to the out of the box offering as Advantage can do a lot of customization's in case your business has unique needs. And with Advantage continually rolling out enhancements based on the feedback of their clients and users I would think they will be able to meet your needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Advantage solving and how is that benefiting you?

Our biggest challenge was to allow our clients to be able to self-register for access to our online content and then manage that access automatically. So if that client ever expired or canceled their access would terminate immediately. This has been a huge time saver and created urgency for our clients to renew on time. Also we recently brought our advertising clients into Advantage and we are using their installment billing for monthly, quarterly, semi-annual billing plus using their auto renewal feature. This has been a big help with spreading out client payments and eliminated a lot of manual work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Suzanne E.
SE
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Seller invite
(Original )Information
What do you like best about Advantage?

I've worked with this subscription management tool for over 20 years. I have to say there are two things I like best: 1. is the flexibility in the application to solve any business need, and 2. the company that runs this application is one of the best vendor's I've ever worked with in my career. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Advantage?

There are few things I dislike. I had a tremendous relationship with this business and we worked through issues easily. Obviously there are areas of the application that are challenging but for the most part those areas are negotiable by knowledge and understanding of how to use the application. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Advantage:

Spend time to implement correctly. Build team of knowledgeable administrators. Take advantage of the features and functions within the tool. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Advantage solving and how is that benefiting you?

We solved many problems with using this application. It's built for a publishing business and it supports that type of business well. We use it for subscription management, memberships, conferences, product delivery, Auto Delivery, List Management, Customer Service, Access Management, etc. It handles multiple currencies, multiple payment processors, multiple languages, taxing rules, many business owning structures, rules and order processing integrations, and many other functions, all in support of domestic and international publishing businesses. They continue to expand the software to support all of these areas across the globe and they listen to their customers about enhancements and integrations to the software, Their customers also have the opportunity to contribute to it's direction through strong relationships. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.