Codisto Alternative
I have several clients on Codisto because of it’s low cost, Free. Codisto just told me they’re sunsetting in 5 days, so I need an alternative. Do any of you have any input on the best feed management app for BigCommerce to connect to Google Shopping?
The short answer is:
Your most direct and robust replacement for Codisto, specifically for BigCommerce to Google Shopping feed management, is a dedicated product feed management application like Feedonomics, DataFeedWatch, or Google Shopping by Sales & Orders, often available in the BigCommerce App Marketplace.
These solutions bypass the complexity of a manual custom build by leveraging the BigCommerce API (specifically the Catalog API for product data and the Webhooks for real-time inventory/price changes) and integrating directly with the Google Merchant API (the official successor to the Content API for Shopping).
This application-based API-to-API connection ensures real-time synchronization, critical for preventing Google product disapprovals and account suspensions due to out-of-date pricing or inventory, offering a stable and cost-effective, high-volume alternative to your current sunsetting service.
The long answer is:
The abrupt sunsetting of Codisto necessitates a swift, technically sound, and cost-effective pivot to a new product feed management solution to maintain your critical Google Shopping revenue stream for your BigCommerce clients.
The core of the solution lies in a robust, automated API integration between your BigCommerce data source and the Google Merchant Center.
Relying on an app from the BigCommerce marketplace, such as those mentioned, is generally the most cost-effective and fastest route, as these providers have already engineered and maintain the complex connections between the BigCommerce Catalog API and the Google Merchant API.
The BigCommerce Catalog API is the programmatic interface that grants secure access to your entire product catalog, including attributes, pricing, and stock levels, which the feed management app uses as its primary data source.
This is far superior to flat file feeds because it allows for high-frequency, near real-time data extraction.
The feed app then uses the Google Merchant API to ingest this data directly into Google Merchant Center, which is Google’s preferred method, ensuring the highest level of data fidelity and compliance with Google’s stringent data quality requirements.
Furthermore, a crucial element for high-performance campaigns is configuring BigCommerce Webhooks to trigger updates for the feed management app whenever an event like an inventory quantity change or a price modification occurs within BigCommerce.
This server-side, event-driven mechanism immediately pushes the update via the Google Merchant API, circumventing the delays and inaccuracies inherent in batch processing or manual file uploads, ultimately solving the problem of maintaining up-to-date, error-free product data at scale while being a clear cost-saver in terms of development time and ongoing manual effort.
These dedicated feed management applications also offer sophisticated data optimization and rule-setting capabilities to map BigCommerce attributes to Google’s specific requirements, a critical step for maximizing ad performance that goes beyond the basic synchronization layer.
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