BCL Soft, creator of the Barter 21 barter exchange software, posted their year end results on their corporate blog Tuesday. Among the details lay a couple of nuggets: the 10 month old company now claims around 40 exchanges are using the software. They also had this to brag about…

While our feature set is still not 100% where we want it to be, some of the things we have already done set us far ahead of the competition. If you are a barter exchange using a hosted, networked solution such as Barter21, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I have access to a full, complete, and ACCURATE backup of my data anytime I want?
2. What happens if my software provider has its email server blacklisted by AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. due to too many email blasts being sent?
3. Can you get in touch with one of the owners of the company after hours? on weekends? the middle of the night?
4. Does your software provider give excessive lines of credit to some exchanges just to make an extra buck?

By now you must be wondering how a Barter21 customer would answer those questions. Go ahead. Admit it. You’re dying to know. OK, I’ll tell you:

1. Barter21 automatically generates a full backup for you once a month. You also have the opportunity to go in at any time and get an up-to-the-minute backup. These backups are kept securely on our server until you decide you want to download them. They do not go away after one month. They are not just the previous month’s data. It is a FULL and ACCURATE backup. Every bit of information relating to your barter exchange is there for you. We are not even informed that you downloaded it. It is YOUR DATA. Why in the world would we want to keep it from you?
2. When a relatively small number of people click the button in their email program that says “Mark as Spam” or something similar, the email provider can blacklist, or block, the server that is sending the email. That means that if another exchange is sending a lot of email blasts to their members, and they are blacklisted, that essentially cuts off all email from all exchanges using that software. Barter21 has opted to go another route. We have teamed up with a company that specializes in email marketing and keeps their servers clean and spam free. Heck, in most cases Barter21 even pays you back their monthly fee.
3. Sleep is so overrated. Call us. Email us. Ring the doorbell. We’ll answer.
4. Barter21 gives very small lines of credit. The only time it will be increased is if we know it can be paid back in a short period of time. Then it is brought back down to the original level. This keeps the value of the network, which in turn keeps the exchanges trading.

See the original article at http://bclsoft.com/blog/

Barter 21, BCL Soft