[SkullDude]

I have been looking at a lot of the cart options out there. And I really like the shopify, yahoo, or volusion carts. I will also add I plan on using a merchant account along with paypal and google checkout.

It seems like the biggest difference between the 3 carts is volusion charges on bandwith usage where shopify and yahoo take 1% and 1.5% respectively as a percent of your sale. Right now percent of sales looks the best to me because I don't want to be stuck with any potential overages in bandwith. Any reccomendations on this or any other advice you would have to offer on these carts or any others out there.

Thanks,

Josh

 

[inkie]

Hi there,

Check out eCrater. The templates make a nice, clean store, very easy to configure, and it is FREE! No monthly charges, no listing fees, no final value fees. Very SEO conscious. No HTML needed. The owner makes his $$ from partnering with Google Checkout and advertising fees from featured sellers (optional.) You can also point your domain to them. Many, many people who are disgusted with eBay have gone over to eCrater.

Inkie

 

[rainbrunn5]

why not install your own script or let someone install it for you. not such a big deal.

 

[tqualizerman]

rainbrunn5 is right,

If you're going to go to the trouble of opening an online shop, and then invest all that time marketing it you will likely want a software package that gives you the ability to open up quickly, but when you're ready to grow so is it.

I can recommend two shopping cart packages very highly:

Zen-Cart: Zen Cart | free shopping cart software - free, community-supported with tonnes of addon modules
X-Cart: Shopping Cart Software & Ecommerce Solutions: X-Cart. Free shopping cart trial is available. - not free, but more robust, many commercial modules

We first began our store in 2006 with Zen-Cart. It is absolutely free, provides a tonne of features and addon modules. You can begin with a basic template and modify it from there, but add-on templates are also available. I highly recommend this software for anyone getting into online business. Most importantly it lets you get up and running within minutes, and the customization is endless.

X-Cart is what we currently use, and its fantastic. We upgraded because we were looking for a few enhancements that Zen-Cart was not able to supply us. While this software is not free it is very well designed, but definitely a little more advanced then Zen-Cart. The addon modules often cost close to what the software costs, but what you get is very well designed software from a number of commercial vendors.

The reason I would stay away from an out-of-the-box site is that you may find yourself outgrowing it very quickly. We began with an out-of-the-box shop hosted on ProStores and within about fifteen days we realized the features were simply not enough. Moving to our own web host (on a VPS too) with our own software keeps us in complete control.

Lastly, the great thing about both X-Cart and Zen-Cart (and many other standalone packages) is that there are an endless number of web hosts who advertise themselves as being Zen-Cart-Friendly, etc. This means they can help you get the software installed and you can get to work on designing and opening up.

Hope this info helps.

 

[rainbrunn5]

brand new player in the market of free and open source shopping carts software. Until some days ago they sold it for around 3000 dollar. They changed their strategy and now decided to do let the community drive the developement. 4th version, rock solid and fast even on budget hosting.

Name ist Oxid Esales. Very famous piece of software in germany. Fully translated to english. worth to read the features.

OXID eSales | OXID eShop Community Edition | Products

 

[lindsayanng]

I like Zen Cart and Oscommerce personally. Zen Cart is great for the begininers, and Oscommece is great for someone who wants a LOT of options on how to set it up.. Both are open source and BOTH require some learning, breaking and fixing of your website.. but they can be AMAZING looking sites if you put some work into them

 

[SkullDude]

rainbrunn5 is right,

If you're going to go to the trouble of opening an online shop, and then invest all that time marketing it you will likely want a software package that gives you the ability to open up quickly, but when you're ready to grow so is it.

I can recommend two shopping cart packages very highly:

Zen-Cart: Zen Cart | free shopping cart software - free, community-supported with tonnes of addon modules
X-Cart: Shopping Cart Software & Ecommerce Solutions: X-Cart. Free shopping cart trial is available. - not free, but more robust, many commercial modules

We first began our store in 2006 with Zen-Cart. It is absolutely free, provides a tonne of features and addon modules. You can begin with a basic template and modify it from there, but add-on templates are also available. I highly recommend this software for anyone getting into online business. Most importantly it lets you get up and running within minutes, and the customization is endless.

X-Cart is what we currently use, and its fantastic. We upgraded because we were looking for a few enhancements that Zen-Cart was not able to supply us. While this software is not free it is very well designed, but definitely a little more advanced then Zen-Cart. The addon modules often cost close to what the software costs, but what you get is very well designed software from a number of commercial vendors.

The reason I would stay away from an out-of-the-box site is that you may find yourself outgrowing it very quickly. We began with an out-of-the-box shop hosted on ProStores and within about fifteen days we realized the features were simply not enough. Moving to our own web host (on a VPS too) with our own software keeps us in complete control.

Lastly, the great thing about both X-Cart and Zen-Cart (and many other standalone packages) is that there are an endless number of web hosts who advertise themselves as being Zen-Cart-Friendly, etc. This means they can help you get the software installed and you can get to work on designing and opening up.

Hope this info helps.

Thanks for the replies.

I definitely want a merchant account and that will require pci compliant hosting, which is one of the main reasons I was looking at the "out of the box" solutions (the hosting is included). If you are using x-cart or zen cart with a merchant account how much are you paying for your pci compliant host?

tqualizerman - Ed Hardy uses Volusion, and they have not out grown it, so I am no sure of your particular circumstances and why you had to switch from pro stores. But I know many many multi million dollar companies that use these out of the box ones.