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Ecommerce Solution For Website With Thousands of Products

Shala

2:29 pm on Oct 13, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Hi everyone,

We've been selling online since 2000 and have grown substantially over the years. Currently, we have close to 2000 products with plans to continue growing. Right now we have a huge problem with our host/shopping cart solution and need to move before our business crashes and burns.

Some of the problems we're having:

Our site is intermittently slow and has been for the last month.

Site is completely down more than I'd like to mention.

They continue to release updates that completely destroy their customers' sites and then apologize and tell us, "they're working on a fix and it should be released soon". Some of us have even volunteered to test the updates before it is released to everyone, but they just keep on.

When we call in about a problem, more often than not, we are told it's a problem with our ISP and we should call them instead.

They never let us know about known problems, so we have to find out for ourselves either from other customers through forums or from low to no sales.

Our provider has just been bought out, which can't be helping things.

There are many other issues that I'm not going to list, but I think you get the idea.

We're losing thousands a day right now and it's getting substantially worse.

Does anyone know of a good hosting/shopping cart solution for a website with a very large inventory? It needs to be flexible, but, most importantly, it needs to keep our site up and running. Thank you so much for your time!

Best regards,
Shala

mattia

5:06 am on Oct 16, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Shala,
Our site has about 4000 products.
We tried 6 differenst carts before using te one we have. We tried hosted solution such as Volusion and also shopping cart such as Magento, but the best solution by far is the one we have now, it is called myEbiz and sold by a company in California that is called myecommerce
They have an incredible service (hosting as well) and for the last 3 years we have not been down one time! NOT oe time!
also their ecommerce solution can support over 500,000 products...

Anyway I really recommend that cart which includes hundreds of ecommerce and SEO features.

good luck to you.
Marc

[edited by: lorax at 12:18 pm (utc) on Oct 16, 2011]
[edit reason] no link drops please [/edit]

Shala

2:07 pm on Oct 17, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Hi Marc,

Thank you for your reply! I will look into the cart you recommend. I looked into BigCommerce last week and fell in love only to have my heart broken by their shipping. Turns out they don't use package dimensions when calculating shipping charges and there isn't any support for multiple ship from locations :( Guess I'm still on the hunt.

Shala

mattia

3:45 pm on Oct 17, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Shala,
The cart I recommended has the package dimension shipping as well as real time shipping (UPS/Fededx/DHL). Although I am not sure about the "multiple ship from" location feature, I guess you would need to contact them for that.

best,
Marc

Shala

2:31 pm on Oct 19, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Looks like we're going with 3DCart. After doing a bit of research and testing a few different companies, 3DCart has all of the features we're looking for and the price isn't bad either.

Some of the features that really caught our eye:

It correctly calculates shipping rates based on which method is selected and whether or not dim weights should be used instead of actual weight.

There is an option to tell the cart if a product ships by itself.

There is an option to select if the product ships in multiple boxes.

I can access the <head></head> area, (it's forbidden in our current cart).

We can set taxes based on where certain products are shipping to.

There are other great features, but those were the ones that were really important to us. We almost went with BigCommerce because they have a lot of great features, too. They just didn't have all of the shipping features we needed.

Thanks for your input, Marc!

All the best,
Shala

mattia

3:10 pm on Oct 19, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Shala,
Thank you for this update.

I am curious and wish to understand what it means when you say:

"the product ships in multiple boxes"

Do you mean the same product is actually divided in multiple boxes?
If so, can you give me an example of such product?

What most good cart (like the one we use) have is that they let you ship an order over multiple shipments an that is because sometimes not all products are available at the same time.

However, i product in multiple boxes for us is still one shipment as far as I know?

And why would it create a management issue if one product has to be packed in several boxes? isn't that same shipment any way?

3DCart looks nice but they are a hosted solution... so once you start with them you're stuck with their features forever and so customization is extremely limited and especially limited to their vision.
See, being able to add in <head> seems like a BIG deal to you.
Well in teh cart we used, you can change anything you want, you have access to the code itself, yes you have acces to the whole code source and you only have to pay one time and you do not have to pay depending on # of products used in our store....

Anyway, different approach, different advantages.
With a cart of your own where you =have access to the code, you can change anything you want. and so if they don't have a feature you like then you can always add it or have it added.
With a hosted solution, you have to put up with what they have.

best,
Marc

Shala

3:24 pm on Oct 19, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Hi Marc,

This cart gives me access to all the code as well. I can change anything. As for your question about the multiple boxes. For example, we have a scale. The base is very large with box dimensions that must be taken into account and the weight indicator is very small and goes in its own box and uses actual weight for shipping charge. The multiple box feature allows shipping rates to be accurately charged and it shows in our records that the shipment contains multiple boxes. This cart also gives me the ability split orders if the products need to ship at different times. They also have 24/7 support and tons of other features that we love. I did look into your solution, but they just didn't have enough information or a good way to contact them. I couldn't find any info through searching their company either. I am very glad they work well for you and your website, but they just didn't seem right for us.

Best regards,
Shala

mattia

5:03 pm on Oct 19, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Shala,

Hosted solution carts do not let customer alter the code source of the cart. It is a well known fact that customers using this kind of solution accept. If you were able to modify the code source of their cart, then they wouldn't be able to support you anymore.

That said, it looks like they have nice templates and a complete list of all standard ecommerce features, so you should be OK with not having to have to build a new one.
I like the fact that they give you a free SSL certificate, but I hope it is not a shared one.

best,
Marc

MisterT

9:34 pm on Oct 21, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

We have 1000's of products and host our own shopping cart. (licensed software)

Our websited used to be a bit slow, so we increased the RAM etc.. on our web servers. If you have 1000's of customers and are getting good web traffic, you're going to need some pretty solid hosting.

Website speed counts, and can increase conversion. A slow website can cost you sales, and Google rankings. - my $0.02

Shala

9:39 pm on Oct 21, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Hi MisterT!

I'd like to host our own site, but we just don't have the knowledge or man power to keep that up and running. Someday, when we have more than six employees, that might be what we end up doing. Thanks for your input and I totally agree.

enigma1

3:25 pm on Oct 26, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

It's all matter of customizations no matter which cart you choose. The difference with proprietary vs open source carts is with the first type you get stuck with the company who released it. And they aren't MS. With the open source ones it's easier to find people who know the framework and customize it and often way cheaper.

I used osCommerce for years and tested it with 100's of thousands of products. Without customizations the cart will not function well but doing modifications it offers excellent performance. And it's tiny. That's another important factor. The more the bloat and code, the more you spend to customize it (effort, time, money etc).

And then it's the hosting. I have seen cases where merchants were on a dedicated server spending thousands annually and page loading was taking ages. So it's not only the server but the port the host allocates and how many other boxes go through it. You need to be on top of things all the time, change host or inform the host about problems when necessary.

mattia

12:16 am on Nov 18, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Everybody, please say NO to these store that will never ever belong to you,

EVEN if you pay a rent for THIRTY years!

[edited by: lorax at 2:01 am (utc) on Nov 18, 2011]
[edit reason] edited for context [/edit]

Vishal

1:22 pm on Nov 18, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

+1 for Magento.

jakab

5:24 am on Nov 21, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Hi, I would recommend ZS Cart which is the best hosted ecommerce shopping cart software solutions provider to create your online store.

mchowdhary

5:58 pm on Nov 23, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

If you are doing well and looking for a complete web based multi-channel ecommerce suite as oppose to point solutions, you can checkout GoECart 360[GoECart.com ]. It's not inexpensive but it is totally integrated. You can also check out NetSuite along the same lines.

GoECart 360 is an All-in-One SaaS Ecommerce Suite that contains:
1.Advanced Ecommerce Platform
2.Multi-Channel Order Management System (WebStore, Call Center, Marketplaces like Amazon.com, eBay etc.)
3.Inventory and Warehouse Management
4.CRM

Shala

8:09 pm on Nov 23, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

I really appreciate everyone's input and I'm sure this thread will help out a lot of people looking for an eCommerce solution. We've decided to go with 3dcart. So far, it's everything we need and sooooooo much better than our previous cart. Their support is great as well. Happy Turkey Day everyone!

Strilets

11:14 am on Dec 8, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Demandware solution seems to be reliable and well developed...there are also many partners who can help to implement it for your business

mattia

4:59 pm on Dec 8, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Demamdaware is nice but you have to get your support from a 3rd party company

AND!
you have to pay for support EVEN if you do not use it!
(let alone the very high cost of that support)

Sounds familiar?
Sounds more like the support that you have to pay when using the Magento Professional & Enterprise versions (other version Magento are not supported oter than by the Forum YIKES!)