After reading Pradeep’s article about Open source Shopping Carts, I decided to write article on the same topic but with further helpful information.
Most Open Source shopping cart suggested by Pradeep requires customization and need to be hosted on secure or reliable server. If you do not have technical expertise, you got to rely on technically proficient professionals, which I believe are pricey. Furthermore, Payment Gateway is an area of big concern when it comes to open source. You have to hire experts who can install payment gateway for you. Imagine your online store gets huge traffic, scaling/monitoring your hosting becomes another big issues. Above all, you got to buy expensive SSL certificates to secure your online store so that your customer shops from your online store with confidence.
Let me tell you, all of these comes at a cost and when you sum total the cost + the hassles that you have go through with open source, its much more than you can imagine. My take on this is Open source is definitely not a cup of tea for small businesses who often have little budget to start.
The good news, now you can get all the sophistication of professional e-commerce minus the hassles of open source with a new bread of so called ‘Hosted shopping carts’. Imagine, starting an online store in literally few minutes! All you need is signup online, select pre-designed theme, and select the payment gateway for your choice. Yes, you heard that right. You can now start your e-commerce store in just few minutes without worrying about Hosting, Payment Gateway, Design or any other Technical Part. You just have to upload products, select some preferences and you are done. Boom, you are on your way to start your business.
The best part is it doesn’t cost hell lot of money like so called open source shopping cart.
Here are few hand picked hosted shopping carts that I think worthy of trying.
1. Volusion
Volusion is a decade old company who provides online hosted shopping cart solution. Volusion was one of the few companies who introduced one page checkout feature which is now most essential feature of E-Commerce Industry. Vousion is feature rich shopping cart and great for feature buff users. Getting around volusion can be tedious initially, but if you are a power internet user and know all the e-commerce jargon, you will have great time using Volusion.
2. Shopify
Shopify is one of the know name in hosted shopping cart stores. Like others, shopify provide plenty of features like Customizable Design options, Admin to manage transactions and products. It also provides pre configure payment gateway like volusion. Shopify provides free and paid themes to get started. If you want to use additional features of shopify, they have a marketplace of software that you can purchase by paying additional cost. Moreover, they charge upto 2% transaction above the standard monthly subscription fees.
3. 39Shops
39shops is a next generation hosted e-commerce platform, it comes with 256 big SSL secure one page checkout and well known for its clean and easy to use interface. Like shopify, 39shops offer free designers themes to get started. Unlike Volusion it doesn’t charge for bandwidth or data transfer and it doesn’t even charge a percentage of sales like shopify. The best part is there is no charge to get started, it’s FREE! Search engine friendly clean URL, Unlimited CMS pages are other highlights of 39shops.
Hosted e-commerce is a great way to start online store, with virtually no risk, you can test run your online business without having to worry about technical stuff involved in open source shopping cart. Moreover, these ‘hosted shopping carts’ scales as your business grows. I firmly believe that gone are the days of open source shopping cart. The future of e-commerce is Hosted e-commerce software.
Hosted cart that you can paste the code into any website – see http://www.ecwid.com
A hybrid approach.
Thank you for the list.
39Shops looks good, I’ll try it. 🙂
If you are considering Volusion, I do not recommend it. Check out all the problems they have with their service/hosting/site at their facebook page. Many customers complaint including me. The latest major problem is that we were down for 8 hours just recently, 07/09/12. There were numerous small ones that they cover up ( a common thing the customer support service do… it is part of their culture… ).
Another problem is reported on Internet Retailer. Check out this link below.
http://www.internetretailer.com/2012/03/02/volusion-scrambles-revive-stalled-shopping-carts
If you are still considering…. GOOD LUCK to be hosted in company from HELL that does not care about their customer. Just sharing a fact for those who are considering Volusion.
Great informative article indeed. I like 1shopping cart, but would like to try volusion also as there are quite many good reviews about it. cheers!
The Shopping Cart Software that is easy to use should be appreciable and useful. It is necessary if you build your online store from your web browser with these eCommerce Software Solution. Thanks for useful info.
This is a really good read for me, Must admit that you are one of the best bloggers I have read who provide us so nice and informative stuff. Thanks!
Nowadays online business grow day by day, to need them for better management for their strategies of income resources must be strict and secured. Very informative and useful post. Thanks Author.
No doubt, to maintain our account setup in a well manner for online shopping business is a case sensitive for secured income and to develop trust for the online customers. Thanks for nice sharing on this important issue.
Hi! very useful and trust able three e-commerce platforms you've briefed here. Really a great need for working on online business guys. Thanks!
Thanks for a great post! I wanted to mention our newest version of the software which offers some great new features and makes admin tasks 35% easier to accomplish! Check it out:
http://www.volusion.com/v11/
Great features does not matter if your site is up and down continuously and have many problems. It’s better to have a solid software rather than too many features and have the software kills your company because it is not reliable.
Listen to your customer and hear their pain. Do not cover up and blame on others. Take responsibility. ( I doubt very much that your company can do this now. Volusion was good 7 years ago. Now, it is a joke and causes many hearth aches to client who use Volusion service. Yes … I am on my way migrating to the other e-commerce system after you guys double charge our customers on February 23rd, 2012 – March 2, 2012, and our site was recently down for 8 hours on 07/09/2012)
I would like to say thanks for given great article on here:). Thanks Jaydip.
These are definitely great options to choose from. This will greatly benefit small business owners trying to look for a cost effective e-commerce solution. Your insights definitely needs to be considered.
You may also want to consider another powerful and reliable hosted shopping cart (http://InstanteStore.com) that comes with 30 days free trial, free templates and loads of features.
Hi jay dip, thanks for sharing your great list for shopping cart.
Great Article … Thanks for the share!
I found presta shop while searching for shopping cart for one of my clients. I guess it deserves a look..
Great list of shopping cart.
Will surely help me once I start selling stuffs online 😉
Awesome. These 3 hosted shopping carts look great!
Awesome, thanks
Nice Article. I think hosted ecommerce solutions saves you from all the hassles of hosting, database and other technical parts. There was another argument that there is no data security as your product details are hosted on another server.
Yes Kaushal !
Its really good solution to try with. It saves lot of time, money and efforts for going e-Commerce.
Really this is a great fact to secure online business. Nice guided post. Thanks a lot!
@Kaushal, you have raised great point. Professionally managed e-commerce platforms invest lot more than individual small store owners as far as security is concerned. Security measures in hosted e-commerce platforms are much higher. If your concern is data privacy, most e-commerce platforms mention here have strict privacy and data sharing policies which protects store owners interest when it comes to data privacy.
Hi Jaydip, Thanks for including 39shops in your article. Greatly appreciated 🙂
@Chirag !
Thx for comment. Your solution is really awesome.