I didn’t really plan to make this post, that was because I thought Apez was already dead and nobody really cared about it’s dead now, but it seems that there were still some people using it.

Apez Vend was one of the early Vendor and then web marketplace systems SL had, It probably competed with OnRez and XStreet when they still existed, but after Linden Lab’s Anticompetitive purchase of SLX / XStreetSL / OnRez it was clear that smaller companies like Apez were destined to die someday, I never really used Apez, I bought their 3000L$ AutoLease system and used it for 2 weeks until I got really depressed by their all-black and green website design.

Also, going into more conspiracy-theory rumor land… Many people are suspicious about CasperVend’s Transition bundle from Apez, some people claim that there are the same people behind them, both systems are really similar and CasperVend just came out a few months ago, maybe the debts made them run away and start from scratch?  That’s just a rumor, I’m not interested in any of them.

As a business owner I choose the anticompetitively big SL Marketplace for the web, and use hippoVend for Inworld sales, there seem to be some “Administrative Changes” at hippo too, they probably got acquired by a bigger company.
Good luck choosing what to use after these changes, I suggest you to be at the smaller web marketplaces too and try hippoVEND, JEVN or any of the other competitors for Inworld sales, try to look for standalone solutions which don’t need to rely on web servers that are paid by the business owners and may go down sometime when they get bored of paying.

Here are some pics of a store that is basically dead thanks to this breakdown