Each tool has significant flaws and downsides. Let's cover what I would improve about ChannelMax.
I spent a lot of time actually exploring ChannelMax page by page, and navigating through all the settings (see my video below). I was specifically looking for ways it was both better and worse than NeuroPrice. So what follows are the disadvantages of ChannelMax. (NeuroPrice also has some big flaws, and I'll cover those in a minute.)
#1: Overwhelming number of settings. Once you sign up for ChannelMax and start navigating the settings, it's difficult to not be immediately confused. I found just getting everything set up to be an overwhelming process. This is regular complaint you'll hear about ChannelMax if you spend time in Amazon forums and Facebook groups.
This is the concept that's called "feature bloat": So many settings and features, that it overwhelms the user and becomes worse than too few settings.
An excessive number of settings can be fine, if they are organized for clarity and set up in a linear manner. Unfortunately, I did not see either of those things with ChannelMax.
#2: Inadequate onboarding process. When you sign up for ChannelMax, they dump you into the settings with no guidance. This would a negative experience for any repricer, but with a repricer as complex as ChannelMax, this is especially negligent.
ChannelMax does send some onboarding emails, but as far as any in-app guidance, I did not receive any help navigating the setup process when I signed up.
#3: Entire site is written in broken English: This is a complaint I never thought I'd have about a repricing tool in the US. The ChannelMax site and all the settings are written in poorly-translated broken English. There's some evidence ChannelMax is an Indian company (there is an Indian phone number on their website), which would explain why the English is bad. However, for a company that has been around for 20 years, it's hard to excuse not hiring a translator in all that time.
In many instances, the bad English isn't just mildly confusing, it's totally indecipherable. What would be comical is often a significant disruption to using ChannelMax.
(See my video tour of ChannelMax below, where I come completely unhinged live on camera trying to make sense of the poor English.)
#4: It forces you to only price against the lowest price offer. This is quietly the single biggest defect in ChannelMax (and most other repricers). From what I can tell, ChannelMax only lets you compare your price to the following competing prices:
1. Buy Box price.
2. Lowest overall price.
3. Lowest FBA price.
This means that if you use ChannelMax, you are completely prevented against comparing your price to higher-pricer competitors. For example, you are prevented from a strategy such as "price below the 3rd lowest FBA price by 5%." This inherently drags prices down, and makes ChannelMax a very costly choice.
#5: No option to price based on Sales Rank. Setting prices based on the demand for an item is pretty basic. It's hard to imagine any strategy that doesn't take "best seller rank" into account. However ChannelMax does not offer that option.
Let's take for example two books. One has a BSR of 100,000 and another has a BSR of 10,000,000. With ChannelMax, you would be forced to reprice these exactly the same. Sound crazy? It is.
#6: No option to price based on product category. I did not see the option to set different repricing settings based on the product category. This isn't as serious as the Sales Rank issue above, but still a big blindspot. I think most sellers would prefer to price a category like Toys very differently than CDs or DVDs (for example).
#7: ChannelMax is more expensive. Prices start at $35/month. NeuroPrice starts out at $17/month for the same number of SKUs. Over twice the cost.
#8: Many broken links. When exploring ChannelMax, I encountered multiple broken links to important parts of the site. This led me to believe (temporarily) that ChannelMax was a "zombie" repricer that wasn't maintained anymore. For example, I noticed their YouTube channel hadn't been updated in over five years. I did confirm it is actively maintained, but the abundance of broken links is strange, to say the least.
#9: SUPER confusing settings. This is similar to, but different than, the "broken English" issue explained above. Even when the settings are described using proper English, they are often very poorly worded, leaving no clear idea as to what they actually do. When using ChannelMax, I was frequently left with no idea as to what a setting did. And while most settings had a "tooltip" icon where you could get more info, many do not. And the ones that do are often (again) described with broken English. Some of them display complete gibberish (random letters and numbers)! Since pricing is so sensitive, it's a big red flag when a repricer does not clearly describe their settings.
#10: Biases towards Buy Box pricing. The primary focus of ChannelMax seems to be optimizing prices for the Buy Box. A large percentage of the settings only reference the Buy Box, as though that was the only way to price (and as though you can optimize your way into the Buy Box, which is not how the Buy Box works). Many sellers have different strategies, but the Buy Box bias is stronger in ChannelMax than any repricer I've reviewed.
#11: Pricing blindspots. As with any API-based repricer, ChannelMax is limited by the the rules and restrictions of Amazon's API. This imposes several blindspots. Among them (for example), the inability to compare Used offers to New offers, allowing the possibility of your used inventory to be priced higher than new condition competitors. This is just one example of a blindspot that can cost you money.