which e-commerce software?

15 replies
hi, I am starting a business about buying and selling collectable items. I signed up with Hostgator and am bewildered at the choices that I can find in Hostgator, and I have no idea if I am choosing the right e-commerce software. I have tried OsCommerce but I could find no help files right away and it looks more complicated than they seem to indicate ('user friendly'). I am trying them all and so far Prestashop looks more approachable for me; it has some videos and it looks less convoluted than OsCommerce. I know my way around a computer but I am no expert, so maybe some of the experienced guys here can give me some suggestion? This will be a simple shop with a paypal cart, only a few items with descriptions. Possibly some links to related products from other companies, so I would also be their affiliate. Nothing else, no videos, no fancy stuff.

The choices in Hostgator are:

Oscommerce
Magento
Prestashop
ZenCart
Opencart
Tomatocart
phpCoin

what do you think it's the 'best'? I only earn about 1300 bucks a month so I have to watch expenses very carefully.

What actually happened was that I have a store with Highwire Commerce. They are ok and their store templates are VERY,VERY easy to use....nothing like Oscommerce. But because I sell collectable items in two main price ranges ( one type costs over 1000 dollars, the other under 100 dollars) and because I accept paypal only for the sub-100 dollars items (for the other type of item I accept paypal too in most cases, but buyers have to email me and ask me questions...in other words I feel unconfortable to slap a few £ 1000 listings with a paypal cart where badly intentioned people and scammers can just click 'buy'.

Because Highwire Commerce can only implement a paypal cart on all my inventory, or no cart at all, and because Hostgator does not have that limitation, I thought to transfer my store with Hostgator, but now I am seriously reconsidering as I didn't know that implementing a paypal cart would be so complicated and / or expensive.

So that's my situation, I am mentioning all that as may be helpful for me.

by the way, all that horrible dvd and Iphone image stuff that you get when you first install one of these programs , can be deleted after, am I right? When I installed OsCommerce and saw all the dvd banners stuff, I was horrified....

Magento has less rubbish but has a banner about going back to school. My fear is that, as this stuff is 'free', they can stick that school and Iphone crap on your store front and you can't get rid of it. Am I right in the case of the above mentioned software?



thank you for your input!
#ecommerce #software
  • Profile picture of the author Ralf Skirr
    Prestashop is easy to use out of the box, and it's quite up to date technologically.

    But there's a huge problem: there support forum sucks, many, many questions remain unanswered. If you ever run into a problem you can not count on getting help there.

    Then there are there are harder to use and somewhat outdated shops like zencart, but I find their forum is buzzing and you'll almost always get help with your questions.

    If the basic setup of prestashop is working for you, then it's really the easiest option. If you think you'll require specific changes, maybe use a system with a more reliable community.

    Ralf
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    • thanks for the heads-up, Ralf. Yeah the support actually is more important than anything else, so I'll have a good look at Zen Cart.

      I might even pay if it's worth it..... $ 15 a month budget. Someone suggested Bigcartel. Any others?

      Vielen Dank
      Salvo
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  • Profile picture of the author Hannan2011
    There you can reach the three reputable companies that are leaders in the E-commerce web hosting industry. They fulfill all your requirements to set up your ecommerce website. By using each of them, everything you need for your website is provided in one eCommerce Hosting Package.
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    • Originally Posted by Hannan2011 View Post

      There you can reach the three reputable companies that are leaders in the E-commerce web hosting industry. They fulfill all your requirements to set up your ecommerce website. By using each of them, everything you need for your website is provided in one eCommerce Hosting Package.
      :confused:
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  • Profile picture of the author aa_kusuma
    I recommend Opencart, ive been using for 3 years, and it's free.
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  • Profile picture of the author Christian Little
    You could always just build a basic shopping cart. It's really not a huge amount of work (you can have a basic functioning cart up in a few hours), and that lets you customize it however you want instead of relying on a 3rd party cart program, and it's free that way.

    But if you must stick to the options listed, I would avoid ZenCart since you didn't like osCommerce (ZenCart is an offshoot of osCommerce).

    Also note - the carts listed by HG are just the carts they support via Fantastico. You can install any cart you want, it's just that those specific ones can be installed within seconds instead of doing the standard installation.

    If you are willing to pay, I highly recommend CreLoaded. They took osCommerce, put in hundreds of plugins, ripped out the bad code, and added a ton of custom features. It's one of the best carts on the market today. They're selling the Pro version right now for $50, and if you want them to install it they'll charge you $150, but it's pretty straight forward from what I remember.

    Website: Welcome to CRE Loaded - CRE Loaded
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  • Profile picture of the author windso0
    CreLoaded and AJ Shopping Cart Software are good~~
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  • Profile picture of the author scottallison
    You could also take a look at Ecommerce Software & Shopping Cart Software Solutions by BigCommerce. Not a software but a hosted service. But it is good.

    I have a site with them and it is working perfectly

    Scott
    Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author spearce000
    Install Joomla and then take a look at some of the shopping cart extensions here: Shopping Cart - Joomla! Extensions Directory

    The great thing about building your site with Joomla is if you want to expand by adding (say) a forum or a members only area you can do so by just installing another plug-in or two and the whole thing can run under the same platform. There's a TON of templates out there, too, which I don't think is the case for some of the shopping carts mentioned in the OP.
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    • Profile picture of the author drwatson101
      Joomla, hmm. Haven't thought of that for ecommerce, makes you think a little.

      Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author stanwhisky
      Is Joomla & Drupal SEO Friendly?
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  • Magento would be a good option, it's the leading ecommerce today and they have the biggest community to date so help is just all around. And magento is feature rich, flexible and robust offers complete control over the look and functionality of your online store.
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  • Profile picture of the author gorship
    You can look through this presentation about shopping cart types and its major features Shopping Cart Types So you will be able to compare Magento, X Cart, BigCommerce, ... Shopify. But I think that Bigcommerce is one of the best here
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  • Profile picture of the author zcrafts
    I will suggest you to try Magento.
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