NetSuite Announces Plans to End Promotion Functionality for Site Builder

Existing Functionality to be Preserved Until at Least 2022

A brief history of promotions in NetSuite:

Standard Promotions were the only option at first, allowing basic promotions to be created and offered in Site Builder or phone orders like a % off coupon code. This functionality is pretty basic. In 2014, NetSuite released a SuiteBundle (a free package that users could install in their account) to support more types of promotions – line level promos allowing a single item to ship free, order based criteria, and things like Buy X, get Y free. This new functionality was welcomed and supported Site Builder. Around 2017, NetSuite began offering a new feature called SuitePromotions, with lots of new functionality: Stackable Promotions

Auto-Apply Promotions

Best Offer

Cached Saved Searches

Audit and Visibility

Automatically Add Free Gift to the Transaction The new feature is not compatible with the previous promotions – You can have both active in your system, but could only apply either a SuitePromotion or one of the others to an order, not both. The other major downside is that SuitePromotions can’t be used on Site Builder, where the vast majority of NetSuite companies host their sites. In November 2019, NetSuite announced that they will be removing standard and advanced promotions completely. Any company using Site Builder or an earlier version of SuiteCommerce Advanced (before Elbrus, released in Spring 2017) would have to build an entire replacement for their website in a new version of SuiteCommerce Standard or Advanced (SCA) if they want to be able to offer any kind of promotions after the sunset date, which has not been announced. Early adopters of SCA who built a site in the 4 years before Elbrus was released are also being forced to upgrade, which can be very expensive due to the many architectural changes made to the platform since then. Not to mention they just spent quite a bit of money to build the new site in the first place.

Now, when creating a new standard or advanced promotion, NetSuite users see this warning:

Notice – SuitePromotions

This type of promotion does not benefit from the new enhancements introduced with SuitePromotions. You can continue using such promotions on transactions, but please note they cannot take advantage of these enhancements. For details, see the help topic Promotions Overview (SuiteAnswers ID: 63010).

Customers who cannot migrate to SuitePromotions on their current eCommerce setup should consider upgrading to a higher version of SuiteCommerce. Support for Site Builder customers and customers on a SuiteCommerce version older than Elbrus will continue until 2022 at the earliest.

So What Are My Options Now?

NetSuite is pressuring companies to move off Site Builder, but without risking the bad press of actually providing a drop-dead date. For any company using Site Builder or pre-Elbrus SCA that wants to keep offering promotions to its customers (which is basically all of them, in my experience), there are 3 choices:

Buy a license for SuiteCommerce Advanced ($5k/month) and build a new site on it (implementations run 50-100k+). Buy SuiteCommerce (formerly SuiteCommerce Standard), a more limited version that is $2500/month. This is a new platform but I’ve seen quotes from 20-40k+ to implement. Use a data connector like those provided by Farapp or Celigo and build a new site on a 3rd party platform like Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc. Costs vary widely, starting from $175/month for the connector.

There is a lot to consider when building a new site that your company will be depending on for years to come. I’ll be posting a high level comparison of these options soon. Each company should carefully document its requirements for a web site before evaluating any of these options. Otherwise, the mentality becomes one of trying to make option X work, which can leave out important considerations and needs that could be overlooked until after the contract has been signed.

We Are Here to Help

Our team has more than 15 years of web development each, with a wide variety of platforms. Our goal is to help you find the best solution for your needs, not sell you what works best for us. A new site can often take a year to plan and build, so it’s important to start the requirements process early. Get in touch with us to review your situation with no commitment.

Here is the notice NetSuite emailed to customers:

Support Ending for Standard and Advanced Promotions Your NetSuite Account ID: 3750282 You are receiving this notice because you currently have standard and Advanced promotions set up in your NetSuite account. NetSuite will soon discontinue support for standard promotions and promotions created using the Advanced Promotions SuiteApp.

What is Changing?

Users will begin seeing information banners when creating standard promotions or promotions using the Advanced Promotions SuiteApp. These banners will appear on the promotion form to notify users that support for these promotion types will soon become unavailable.

The promotion codes already setup will keep working for a period of time. You will receive another notice when the end of support date is finalized.

Why is NetSuite Making These Changes?

Standard and Advanced promotions are being superseded by SuitePromotions.

SuitePromotions offer improvements that include a faster and more reliable engine. With SuitePromotions, you can take advantage of enhancements not supported by the legacy promotion tools, such as stackable promotions, auto-apply, best logic, free gift, and more.

For details on the enhancements included with SuitePromotions, see the help topic Promotions Overview (SuiteAnswers ID: 63010).

Recommended Actions

We strongly advise users that all new promotions should be created using SuitePromotions only.

If you use existing standard and Advanced promotions in your NetSuite environment, we encourage you to start replacing them with SuitePromotions now, before support is discontinued.

For information on setting up SuitePromotions, see the help topic Promotions (SuiteAnswers ID: 63003). For more information regarding migrating to SuitePromotions, see the help topic Migrating to SuitePromotions (SuiteAnswers ID: 70348).

Note: Customers using SiteBuilder or SuiteCommerce versions older than Elbrus should consider upgrading to a higher version of SuiteCommerce in order to be able to use SuitePromotions on their web stores. See the help topic Known Limitations of SuitePromotions on Commerce Web Stores (SuiteAnswers ID: 62520).

If you have any questions or if you need further assistance, please contact NetSuite Customer Support.

Thank you,

The NetSuite Team

Questions? Let us know in the comments below.