ANSI Store Review — Standards Documentation Comparison (2012)

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) provides standards for US companies in several fields. Adherence to these standards, often federally mandated, promotes workplace safety, consumer health and protection of the environment.

The ANSI Store sells copies of these standards for download on the web. The ANSI Store sells standards by over 100 different publishers including:

• International Organization for Standards (ISO)
• International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
• American Society for Quality (ASQ)

There are several benefits to shopping at the ANSI Store including:

• The ability to purchase all the standards your business needs in one place.
• The ability to download your standards documentation immediately upon purchase.
• The ability to search for standards by keyword or document number

• The ability to order standards individually or in packages, as well as to purchase site licenses and NSSN packages.
• Unlimited download is available with site licenses and NSSN packages.
• The ANSI Store has compiled a list of standards on their website that improve productivity, increase efficiency and reduce cost.
• Standards packages are available by industry
• The ability to track documents to receive emails when they are updated.

Tech Street is a competitor company to the ANSI Store. Both Tech Street and the ANSI Store offer standards documentation by major standards publishers. However, Tech Street charges more for their downloadable documentation. ($58 for a copy of ASQ document B1-B3-1996 at Tech Street vs. $40 at the ANSI Store.)

Tech Street does sell hard copies of documents, which the ANSI Store does not. The same document would be $67 plus shipping and ships in 24-48 hours.

Both Tech Street and the ANSI store offer subscription packages. However, it is impossible to compare them. Both sites require you to call for more information on subscription availability and pricing.

The Tech Street website offers more tools than the ANSI Store. Tools such as:

• Techpoint rewards gives you points for each dollar you spend to trade in on Tech Street merchandise.
• Free trade publications matching your skills and interests.

The Tech Street tools are only available with subscriptions. This would only make it worth using Tech Street if they are close in price to subscriptions from the ANSI Store.

Since ANSI Store charges less for its downloadable documents, it is the place to go if you need a PDF. If you want a hard copy of a document, however, you have to use Tech Street, since the ANSI Store does not offer them.

As a member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) member, the ANSI Store carries quite a few documents that pertain to my business. The ANSI Store website carries all the documents published by ASQ and over 100 other standards publishers.

It is relatively cheap to buy documents at the ANSI store. Just one document was $18 less for a downloadable PDF at the ANSI store than at a major competitor. The ANSI store even offers package discounts on standards as well as subscriptions.

The biggest problem I saw with the ANSI Store is that they do not sell hard copies of the standards documentation. If you want anything other than a PDF you must go elsewhere to purchase it. However, as cheap as the ANSI store is, printing the document yourself from the PDF is probably the way to go.

Some benefits of using the ANSI Store include:

• The ability to track specific documents and receive updates when they are updated
• Receive documents immediately via web download
• Online videos
• Member discounts

The ANSI Store is a great one-stop-shop for companies that need to buy several standards from several publishers. You can order all the standards you need, and then download them from your account page as needed. You can also use your account page to view previous orders, and re-download documents that are still available to you.

The bottom line is that the ANSI store is a great resource for downloading standards. It’s prices are better than the competition and while the site isn’t fancy, it really isn’t worth paying loads extra for documents just to shop on a prettier site.