Is there a service that connects everything (ecommerce)?

[edacsac]

Like a shopping cart to amazon to ebay to etc? I won a customer over someone who was pushing such a service. I've been writing code too long to fall for any great service that would connect completely heterogenous venues together with easy management. Problem is, customer wants this from me and I keep telling him "pipe dream".

So, does such a grail exist? I'm setting up customer on Zencart after trying 4 different opens source cart softwares. Zencart, with a good following thinks I'm nuts to suggest such a service.

Also, with this "service", whatever required code needs to be set up first, or ahead of time if you plan on using it. Which is another reason I don't believe it.

[piatkow]

Never tried it on eCommerce but had snake oil salesmen offering the same thing in another area. We wasted months because management believed them. The whole thing ended up in the hands of m'learned friends.

[jwolthuis]

You mentioned three platforms (Cart, Amazon, eBay), and each has its own pricing formula. The cost of doing business on Amazon or eBay is much higher than running your own cart. Does your customer understand this?

It's not as simple as publishing a feed from the Cart to Amazon and eBay. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. I'd develop a few simple product examples for the customer, illustrating the additional costs and limitations that kick in when using those two platforms.

Another point to hammer home: Neither Amazon nor eBay are "carts". You can't "checkout" with 6 of "these" and 4 of "those", get the quantity discount, choose the upsell promotion, and ship to one of 100 countries worldwide. (I'm not considering their hosted store platforms... that's a totally different discussion, not relevant to the OP's questions).