In Business Since: 1989

Financial Strength: Very strong. Excel is a billion dollar publicly traded company and is a division of multi-billion dollar telecommunications giant Teleglobe.

Management: Excel's 10 years in MLM, over 1 billion dollars in annual revenue, and reps who are among the highest income earners in the network marketing industry, says a lot about Kenny Trout and his team, and their ability to insure a solid long term business opportunity. For indepth information on the history of Excel, it's management, and how the company got to where it is today, read The Excel Phenomenon, a must read for Excel independent representatives and prospective IR's.

Management Rating: 5 Stars

Online Training & Support: Excellent online support available via corporate website and "Repworks", Excel's representatives only section for news, information, training, and other services. Recently introduced are corporate sponsored, personalized independent representative websites. These websites are invaluable tools for online marketing. Field Training & Support: Available via annual conventions, newsletters, regional events, weekly meetings, and classroom trainings provided by an Area Trainer, an Excel representative that is paid to train other reps whether or not they are in the Area Trainer's donwline or not. Excel has one of the best field training and support systems in the industry.

Motivational Support: Available online, corporate newsletter, regional and national conventions, weekly meetings, and classroom trainings. Excellent motivational support.

Overall Training & Support Rating: 5 Stars

Products/Services: Long Distance Service, Paging, Internet

Product Quality/Effectiveness Rating: 5 Stars

Product Market Rating: 4.75 Stars

Business Opportunity Market Rating: 4.75 Stars

Compensation Plan: The best Frontend comp plan in the industry with coding bonuses, which is essentially an unblockable infinity bonus. Unilevel plan for residual income from services is only 7 levels with no infinity. This is relatively weak, but the coding bonus makes up for it.

Compensation Plan Rating: 4 Stars

Overall Rating: 4.81 Stars

Advantages: Financial Strength, 10 year track record of success, coding bonuses pays to unlimited depth...unblockable.

Disadvantages: Commissions on services is only paid to 7 levels. We'd like to see some kind of an infinity bonus enhancement to this compensation plan.

Comments: Even with its weakness described above, Excel is still one of the most lucrative business opportunities in MLM, and the most powerful MLM/telecommunications companies in the industry.