Forum Moderators: buckworks
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[edited by: lorax at 2:24 pm (utc) on Jan. 7, 2005]
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I am not 100% sure, but MonsterCommerce may allow you to do this as well. I know for sure that it offers the ability to set price breaks. It is a good solution, especially for those new to e-commerce.
X-Cart seems to be a good solution as well. I have never worked with it before, but the functionality seems to be pretty good.
There are a ton of shopping cart solutions out there. I recommend taking a look at as many as you can and find the solution that will help you to meet your online objectives.
Good luck!
Jason
1. use them to create modifications as and when you think of them
2. plan it all out completley, give them a FULL and EXACT brief with visuals to work from as well and hire one of their dedicated developers for a week.
2 might be a more expensive outlay but in the long run it is cheaper + you converse directly through ICQ with your programmer so any queries or changes can be done immediatley.
One thing to remember is the time difference though as they are based in Russia and that there may be some language conflicts (but in general their english is excellent) so hence providing them with visuals helps a lot.
Another option you may consider is Merchant Order Form. I have been using the cart on my 200-300 item site for for about 2 years. There is a newer version of MOF that is even more configurable than the one I am presently using. When I purchased the cart, the price was very reasonable. The documentation is complete, but there is a lot of tweeking to getting set up. If you get stuck, hand-hold is offered, but considerably more expensive.
Regards.
>> I am not 100% sure, but MonsterCommerce may allow you to do this as well.
MC is a hosted solution so you are quite limited in what you can customize.
Out of the other cart solutions mentioned so far, I am only familiar with X-Cart and while I have not used it, I did converse with them. They seemed like a friendly bunch and their charge for programming time was relatively cheap.
A few items to bare in mind.
Rocky, your title suggests you're looking for a hosted solution someplace. If that's so then it might be worth looking into MonsterCommerce or a webhost that offers MIVA Merchant or AbleCommerce or some other catalog/cart solution.
If you're looking for a catalog/cart (the rest of the options I've seen here) to install on your own webspace then you'll have a lot more options - and potential headaches as well. Freedom = responsibility.
The trade-off with a hosted solution is analagous to renting an apartment. If for some reason the plumbing breaks (and you didn't do something stupid) then they'll fix it at no charge. You can paint it the way you like, hang your own pictures and even rearrange the furniture but you're not allowed to knock down walls or change the locks! ;)
We now need an ecommerce application to fit within a larger, non-ecommerce site -- basically a news site with a section that will allow visitors to subscribe to different channels, using their credit card. Not a complex ecommerce function, but it's a really high profile site, and we can't afford screwups. Any other suggestions?
-ABertone
Bottom line, Yahoo Store distinguishes itself based on these features:
A) All dynamic pages are generated statically when you publish (you get URLs like this: www.yoursite.com/big-bad-product.html). The spiders eat these pages up.
B) You get 24x7 technical support
C) A lot of valuable tools, such as integrated address verification for credit cards, UPS shipping link-up, easy XML exports for direct inclusion/shopping portal programs, etc.
D) It scales very well from 5 orders a day to 75 orders per day. After 75, you hit growing pains, but third-party order management software is available.
Had I never experienced the power and customizability of Yahoo Store with certain clients doing millions in sales each year on the platform, I would have laughed at someone suggesting it as more than a basic, cookie-cutter solution, but you should definitely consider it.
MM
The more you want to customize it, the more programming you have to do, but none of is necessarily difficult, and the assistance you can get in the forums is absolutely tremendous.
There are carts that have forked from osC over the years that are also very popular: Zen Cart, osC Reloaded, Cube Cart, and others.
-jared
Here are the issues encountered:
1. Affiliate tracking - I use Directrack
2. Interfacing with my Fulfillment program - I use MOM
3. Portablity
I decided to go with my own custom designed shopping cart in PHP - the cost wasn't terrible ($1000) and I got everything on my wish list.
Some things to consider:
1. security
2. merchant account interface
3. Customer service options - do you need your shopping cart to do it all for you or are you going to use other software for fulfillment, affiliate, etc.
Portablity was important for me - I needed to be able to move servers easily - I'm a big believer in "Just in Case"
My programmer did such a good job on this and fell in love with the project that he's going to start selling the shopping cart.
You want flexibility to move servers because you're a believer in "just in case," but I can't tell you how many times a client has come to me because their website (custom built shopping cart and all) has become so successful that they are outgrowing the solution their programmer built for them, and their programmer has stopped servicing them. Even though there are tons of PHP programmers out there, many programmers don't like going into someone else's code and mucking around with it. Every programmer has their own style.
I suggest that before you move forward in aggressively promoting your website, you get the following clearly in writing from your programmer:
1) You have 100% ownership of your domain name
2) You have 100% ownership of the website, and an irrevocable lifetime right to use the program that the programmer has developed (it is standard in software/program development that you don’t own the code, just the right to use the code)
3) If you ever need to move to a different web host or programmer, the programmer will assist you in that move (for a reasonable fee), and will answer any questions posed by the new web host or programmer.
Trust me, having that clearly in writing will give you piece of mind if (and hopefully when) your site becomes successful.
If i'm telling you things you already know, I apologize... but hopefully this will help someone else out there in a similar position as you. As I said, I have seen people really run into trouble here… I’m not an alarmist-type that usually requires everything in writing.
Not sure about switch, I use protx.com as my payment proccesor for my x-cart site so I tend to take the payments on there rather than actually on my site, and as my site is live im reluctant to enable the manual card proccessing feature to find out.
One thing I will say against x-cart is that the demo they show you on their site is the 4.0.x branch which is currently not stable (i.e bugs still exist) which is what I use because the bugs are liveable with and do not affect the customer side (in my case) the current stable branch is 3.5.x which does not have the features that i required (like product variations).
