Starting a massive e-commerce site, need advice?

I can definitely recommend Magento. I use it myself - seee fitnesslyceum dot com

I also dropship.

Magento integrates seamlessly with a number of payment gateways. I use both PayPal and Authorize.net - you need no programming knowledge, just enter in your email/account number.

What I also love about Magento is the number of available extensions that allow you to add additional functionality to your website, many of which are free.

Magento is also creates very SEO friendly pages and creating specific landing pages is easy.

I use aspirationhosting for my hosting solution. I've never had any issues with this company. While you are developing your site yo can going for a shared option plan (think it's $5.99), then scale up to a $20 dollar shared and them even go for a dedicated server.

If you visit the Magento site you can look at the portfolio of sites that are using it as their shopping cart. There are some very big businesses using it, which speaks volumes about how good it is.

Magento gets pretty good reviews.

misc92,

I had a company design my website for $800. I then purchased about 3 extension (which the software company installed for included in the $800) and these cost me about $150.

Initally, I paid $5.99 per month with aspirationhosting, then moved to a $20.99 plan. AsirationHosting did the move o, I just placed the order and it was done over 24 hours.

As to why I use AspirationHosting, it was recommended as a good hosting solution on the Magento forum.

All in all, you can have a website that looks and functions as well as any large corporation for well under $1000.

Your ongoing costs will then include hosting (which is peanuts) SEO, Paid traffic etc., and that's up to you on how much you spend.

Hope this helps

For my experience, magento would be best for what your looking. Their cutting edge feature offer merchant complete flexibility and control over your store until you get the desired functionality. It also allows multiple shipping address in one order/transaction and can track orders from customers' account, basically you can do anything with magento from design, shopping cart to checkout. And if you need concrete advice actually there is a big community out there since magento right now is at the top of ecommerce industry.