Shopping Carts & Databases

Off the Shelf or Custom what are the options?

[Munster]

I am looking to create an new online store website and need to know what my options are with regards to the back end system.

I have been quoted for a developer to create a bespoke shopping cart and database for around £5500. However I have seen off the shelf shopping carts advertised for $179. am I missing something?

What is the best option for this, I want a solution that will allow customisation in the future if I decide to open further sites to link into this back end but have I been quoted over the odds?

Munst

[Dreamquick]

Are you paying too much? If you want to know what you're getting for that money ask for a breakdown - if they are able to give you a quote they should by definition know what work they consider is involved, as well as any additional costs they have submitted as part of the quote.

Which one is better? It all depends which features are on offer in the off-the-shelf cart vs. a custom cart - if you need to have modifications made to the off-the-shelf cart then you could still be looking at paying out significant money.

Also bear in mind that you'll own the custom cart when it's completed and can use it as you see fit - limitations of an off-the-shelf cart will be spelt out in their license terms. Given that you're looking to use it on further sites I'd be looking to see if I was buying an unlimited use license, or whether it was a per-site, per-server or per-cpu license etc.

- Tony

[danieljean]

£5500 is not an outrageous amount for a shopping cart solution. I might even charge you a bit more than that :0

I would stay well away from the $179 licenses. If you want to go cheap, check out oscommerce or similar projects. The license is free, and you can ask developers for specific plug-ins or modifications.

You may have to contribute back to the project any changes you make, but this can be well worth it financially. It is better to offer $2000 to the developpers of an open-source project to get the changes you want than spend £5500 on a solution that will do half as much and you will be stuck maintaining by yourself.

Dreamquick is right to point out that it depends on the features you're looking for.

Things I consider when looking at a catalog/shopping cart solution:
-Maintainability: can I change design elements easily? Can I make the html XHTML compliant?
-Internationalization: currencies, languages, date and number formats...
-Security
-Scalability: can we handle traffic surges without the site being very sloooow or crashing?
-Ease of set-up. Will this require me reading a manual and 1 week's work?
-Office back-end integration: can I export all the transactions to my accounting software? will it print shipping labels? etc...
-Search engine friendliness: are the URLs clean, titles easy to generate, ...

Usability has a strong impact on sales. The maintainability of a site is all the more important because of it.