Hosted vs Self-Hosted Ecommerce Platforms?

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Looking for some opinions on self-hosted vs hosted ecommerce platforms.

Example of hosted platforms:
  • Volusion
  • Shopfiy
  • Magento Go
  • Big Commerce
  • etc
Example of self-hosted plaforms:
  • Magento Enterprise
  • osCommerce
  • Zen Cart
  • etc

My concern with all-in-one hosted solutions is that my business is based upon another service and their decisions. For example, Magento decided to discontinue their GO solution. Pro Stores is another service that decided to discontinue their product recently. If your store was hosted with their services, you are now forced to migrate to another plaform...

Vs with self-hosting your own platform, you have to be slightly more of a tech guru, manually keep your platform up to date etc.

What's your take on this.

Keep in mind, I'm currently a eBay/Amazon seller with 10,000 skus and listing daily, eventually will be up to 50,000 skus. I'm currently working to expand to our own website as well and looking for a good solution.
#ecommerce #hosted #platforms #selfhosted
  • Profile picture of the author agmccall
    Go with a solution that has been around for a while

    In the past I have used both Network Solutions (formerly Monster Commerce) and 3dcart. Both with great success and they have been around for 10 years or more

    al
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    "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." Thomas Edison

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  • I recommend Self-Hosted eCommerce solution because you will have full control over your source code and customization is very fast and easy.

    In hosted solution what you will do if they discontinue there service like Magento Go just did, and as a result you need to move to completely different platform which is quite confusing and you need to learn most of the things to use a different platform!.

    I just want to say if you have self hosted solution then no body will stop you to grow online !!
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  • You're right - it has a lot to do with your comfort level tinkering in the back-end development and maintenance of a website. If you can afford to hire someone (sounds like you may be able to), then Magento Community is excellent. If not, (or if you want something you could customize yourself), Shopify and Bigcommerce are great. The multichannel inventory software I work for, ecomdash, integrates with each of these platforms, so we trust them and know our clients really enjoy using them.

    Tiana with ecomdash
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  • Profile picture of the author htsashok
    Of course. In my point of view it is better to use self hosted source code for ecommerce services, because the customized scripts will helps to manage the entire features in single source and also it is helps to perform a custom settings and enables the service in all browsers.
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    Best ecommerce script for your B2B needs.

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    • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
      I guess when it is said and done, do you want to sell products? Or do you want to build websites?

      I rather spend the time marketing, building back links and setting up newsletters that drive customers versus updating plugins, making sure my site is secure and trouble shooting downtime, SSL certs and connection issues.

      Unless your cart needs to do something special, most of the hosted solutions will work for 80% of the people out there. But like anything, you just need to choose the right one.

      I also think to many people spend so much time wondering, do I do open source, closed source, hosted, un hosted when in reality it should be, which 3 carts provide me the tools I need for my store, keep my customers PII secure and allow me to spend the most time marketing. After you do that, then you make a decision on your choices.
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