North Atlantic Seed Company - Site performance issues?

Breeder's Lab Seedbanks
#1

I like to shop seeds. NASC has a great variety of breeders. But, for me their site performance is a miserable experience.

I literally can’t browse or shop their breeders without my browser completely timing out.

I dropped s note to this effect on my last order and received a CS response with tips on how to optimize my browser, clearing cache etc etc….

I don’t have any issues on competitor-sites such as Great Lakes, DC Seed Exchange, JBC, multiverse, Neptune, Speakeasy……

If you shop North Atlantic Seeds, I’d like to hear about your user-experience.

Thanks

5 Likes
#2

Yeah, it’s real slow on any load up. I think they are in denial that whoever is hosting their website… sucks.

2 Likes
#3

Their site is slower than most other sites whenever I’ve visited it. Reminds me of using dial-up internet, 56kbps.

2 Likes
#4

I could never access NASC from my country …gives #404 error :unamused:

#5

I’m on NASC almost daily (when I get bored, I like to window shop). It used to be horrible for me when I had DSL but has improved significantly since I went with Starlink. With that said, there are pages that still load painfully slow. I’ve never had a timeout issue.

I think they’re in a state of continuous improvement though. I used to go to a specific page to drop a pack in my cart that the main page said was in stock and when I’d click on the strain, the page would tell me it was out of stock. I sent them an email about it, and within a couple of days they had fixed it. It will still do that if the breeder offers different pack sizes and they’re out of let’s say 3-packs, but I can see why.

2 Likes
#6

Yes, they are hosting the site at a local hosting company in Maine that seem to run the WordPress on a weak VPS, probably to save costs. They also seem to skip post processing on images because they are way to big and some takes ages to download. Everything screams low budget WordPress hosting tbh.

Nothing that can’t be easily fixed

Pz :v:t2:

7 Likes
#7

I’ve got gigabit service via Xfinity landline - so ISP shouldn’t be an issue.

It takes forever to return search results.

While most of the time the initial page eventually resolves, the time-outs seem to occur switching from page 1 to 2, or when hitting “next” while viewing a category or breeder.

I really can’t view more than the first landing page for whatever search results are returned.

3 Likes
#8

Yea, I stopped using them a couple years ago, their policy for seeds not popping is kind of shitty and was almost impossible to use the “credit”. The website isn’t that great performance wise either which was annoying when other seed bank sites work fine

2 Likes
#9

Initial pages load great for me, but going to next pages of breeder results are taking 20-30 seconds to load. I agree this is unacceptable on the modern web.

Personally, I highly doubt that this a cost savings measure. My guess is local people working with local people. Great folks if you ever see them at a show and I’ve had great experience with timely and accurate order fulfilment.

7 Likes
#10

I agree. They are by far the best in fulfilling orders quickly. I use them almost exclusively. Order on Monday, in my mailbox on Thursday. Every time.

3 Likes
#11

It sounds like we’re having similar experiences. I think @LonelyOC nailed it. It seems like the struggle is on image load and site optimization and they are using Wordpress.

I suspected they might be leveraging local relationships for hosting or site-design.

FWIW, They seem very nice and I’m digging their “Dirty-Bird” creations.

And although their pricing has started to creep up a bit and they’re a bit more stingy with freebies than say Dragboat Jeff is at GLG, I generally like their service and variety.

I have bought more than a few beans through them. I’d probably buy more, but for the awful site-performance issues. 🤷

1 Like
#12

I don’t think They want to save costs. But their partner is.

A WordPress site is very dependent on the performance of the database and on small business WordPress websites the database fetches aren’t very complex. A large ecommerce site on the other hand, is as complex as you can get when it comes to WordPress, though. Stretching the capability of what the tool what initially designed for.

A simple site’s have to fetch the database for data, 1-3 times, per page load. A huge ecommerce site usually are in the ballpark of 5-10 fetches. That, combined with a cheap web server and a cheap database solution, gives you the following result. I’ve helped too many customers over the years to fix their sluggy sites.

Always the same story, started of with something small and snappy, ended up with something large and sluggy.

Pz :v:t2:

3 Likes
#13

I don’t remember having problems with their site, but can attest that they get orders out quickly!

2 Likes
#14

Agreed on the actual order service. Fast and accurate every time.

3 Likes