Forum Moderators: buckworks
I've heard that 'off the shelf' is a good cheap option; I've also heard of situations where you pay a website company to build your site, only to license you their software which means you can never move your hosting though; or getting a freelance designer to build you a bespoke system using web standards compliant code so that it is scaleable enough to allow other designers to work on it in the future. Any advice is gratefully accepted
Building one can be good - it will do everything that you want it to do but it might take a lot time and money
-Corey
Does anyone have any advice on whether it is better to build an ecommerce site using 'off the shelf' software, pay a license to a website company to use their CMS software or get a freelance designer to build you a bespoke system? And how much should I expect to spend?
I'm always hesitant about commercial packages because: customizations are usually more difficult, and support could disappear if the company goes belly-up. I'm sure there are great ones out there, just haven't used them myself.
Open source options are often less-expensive, but aren't free by any means. You'll need someone to develop the site. osCommerce, Zencart, CubeCart are some popular ones.
Developing a platform from scratch is an option, but can be very costly, and makes the task of finding a great developer even more important.
a) a great coder who knows how to build a CMS well - build your own
b) making a site which doesn't matter much - open source or free-hosted blog
c) after a serious and reliable solution - license a fully managed and hosted solution from somewhere serious about support
I saw some other thread you started and my advise for you is: get the cheapest one and see if you can make any money.
Joomla or Mambo should be more than enough for the start. Unless you have big guys with money behind you, always buy what your business can afford.
has anyone else been in the situation/or know somebody where they wanted to move hosting from their development company and couldn't because they didn't own the CMS
It is entirely unreasonable to expect that software which preexists your contract will become your property, such things are clearly assets of your development company which they are licensing to you. If they were to sell them to you then they would not be able to sell them to other customers in the future, nor would they be able to stop you from selling them yourself and undercutting their prices with their own product.
I feel sure that the development company would agree to provide you with Zend compiled and secured versions of the system (if it's PHP) or something compiled and secured according to whatever language is used to write it. That enables you to run your own server and run the code on it, without giving out the source code that would have enabled you to do anything at all without any control of the company.
Don't forget that if the system is the copyright property of the company, even if you did have the full source code and installed it on your own hosting account, if you paid another company to modify it you would be creating a derivative work and automatically in breach of copyright.
I assume that the hosting fees were made clear to you before you started this development, and that the development costs charged so far seemed reasonable to you; if you had not then you would not have started development. What reason then do you have to decide the hosting fees are suddenly astronomical, and to believe that modifications will be massively out-of-line with the costs you have happily paid so far?
