Hi Regic,
Sorry to drag up this old thread, but it is something I have been researching in the past few days.
Do you have an opinion on this issue? Is it an advantage to go with one of these remotely hosted paid carts?
If someone gets suckered into paying a developer a high fee to install the open source program and to add out-of-the-box mods to it, or if they have to spend time adding the mods themselves then a hosted cart like Monster might be a better option for some people than spending the money/time to do it themselves.
If you can get the cart installed for free and have mods added for free it erases almost all of the benefits of using a hosted service.
The big drawback to hosted carts is that 1. you pay a much higher monthly fee than you would hosting a cart yourself and 2. you have less control over your cart (and with some hosted carts there is no option to export your inventory or other files if you want to move)
I'll disagree with 3) support in the article because the open source cart support forums usually provide far more support than the email support provided by many hosted carts.
Quote: Is it an advantage to go with one of these remotely hosted paid carts?
There really isn't an answer, and the positives and negatives of cart on own site vs. hosted cart probably cancel each other out. Whether to go with a hosted cart or one on your own site really depends on each seller's individual business needs.
Hosted carts are probably the easiest/fastest to setup (and some people have had ShopPal carts up and running within 1 day), but once you open the store there isn't any difference in ease of use or time needed to process orders or run your store.
Quote:There really isn't an answer, and the positives and negatives of cart on own site vs. hosted cart probably cancel each other out. Whether to go with a hosted cart or one on your own site really depends on each seller's individual business needs.
Hosted carts are probably the easiest/fastest to setup (and some people have had ShopPal carts up and running within 1 day), but once you open the store there isn't any difference in ease of use or time needed to process orders or run your store.
.
What he said, and Size doesn't matter either
when deciding. The 3 largest sellers on TT (that I'm aware of) all use hosted carts - valley (makeastore), maggie (monster), and sneaky (volusion). However many similar sized merchants use carts on their own web sites. Smaller merchants are the same and go both ways
when choosing.
You should pick your cart based on the features your business require not on how easy it is to install or setup. Installation pain only lasts a short time, but you're going to have to live with your cart a long time.
Thanks to everyone for the info! Think I've made a decision to go with the Zen and just put the time into learning how to use it.
It is really, really difficult for me to wrap my right-side dominant brain around all this techy stuff---you guys are great and make it all seem doable!
Quote:valley(makeastore), maggie (monster), and sneaky (volusion)
Why is goth fairy girl listed before me?
I'm very happy with Volusion
Quote:valley(makeastore), maggie (monster), and sneaky (volusion)
I've outgrown Monster Commerce and I'm moving to Make-a-store.
edit: moving there soon
[quote author=maggie777 link=topic=1501.msg39753#msg39753 date=1168225771]
Quote:valley(makeastore), maggie (monster), and sneaky (volusion)
I've outgrown Monster Commerce and I'm moving to Make-a-store.
edit: moving there soon
[/quote]
Everyone who gives a boink raise your hands.
Hand raised, I care. I'm jealous. I really like make-a-store. I think I'll go play with their demo and pretend I have one.
