TulipTools Internet Business Owners and Online Sellers Community

This is just interesting to me.  If you did the OScommerce thingy before, why would you pay about $25 a month to use monstercommerce.  They don't allow full cutomization, and you seem like a smart guy, so why would you pay that for cookie-cutter type templates?????????????????

It seems like T-shirts need to be hip and trendy to sell.  I don't think you'll match that demographic without a custom, quirky website.  Too many other people selling T-shirts, including the bozos at the mall.

V

Quote:If you did the OScommerce thingy before, why would you pay about $25 a month to use monstercommerce.

I pay almost $500 for the Pro-Ecommerce Silver plan, ScanAlert and other add-ons. I used osCommerce for 3 years but my business outgrew it.  Time was a major factor in my decision to switch --- I needed to spend my time running my business rather than wasting hours on osCommerce.

Monster stores are fully customizable with the exception of the new $49 limited feature plan stores.

Is there a big difference between the entry-level Monster Commerce and Os Commerce - taking into account that he's already learned some things along the way with his first OS Commerce storefront?

V

I didn't know there was a $49 Monster until now.  :-[

Feature deficient is my verdict on the new version.  It has half the features of the $99 Pro.
http://www.monstercommerce.com/ecommerce...siness.asp
http://www.monstercommerce.com/shopping_...s_menu.asp

osC beats the $49 but not the $99.

Quote:This is just interesting to me.  If you did the OScommerce thingy before, why would you pay about $25 a month to use monstercommerce.  They don't allow full cutomization, and you seem like a smart guy, so why would you pay that for cookie-cutter type templates??

It seems like T-shirts need to be hip and trendy to sell.  I don't think you'll match that demographic without a custom, quirky website.  Too many other people selling T-shirts, including the bozos at the mall.

HI, Vivian! Thanks so much for your input.

I loved the mods and flexibility with osc. If someone made a mod for it, you could do it. I also loved the fact that it was FREE.

What I didn't like about OSC was the tremendous learning curve, the potential to screw everything up (even with backups), and the hundreds of hours I put into it.

I also never felt like the data was as secure as it could be. I'm sure it was secure enough--I just felt like there could have been an extra layer to protect it.

I also didn't like the pretend-flexibility of the visual part. Pretty much every site ends up with the three-column standard look, no matter how they fiddle with the CSS. When I shop online, I can always spot a store that's using OSCommerce, even if they're highly modified.

So--you may ask why I chose Yahoo, if I didn't care too much for the OSC shape? Mostly because Yahoo was MUCH quicker to configure, set up, and had lots of built-in, logical backend modules that were ready to go. I didn't spend hundreds of hours. I spent maybe 72 hours on the whole thing, including adding 500 products or so.

Time was a major factor in deciding not to use OSC again. I'd actually rather pay and have things go much faster than get it for free and have it take me months. I'm already starting to have consistent fatigue and pain in my mouse-arm (I"m beginning to worry about carpal tunnel). Blehh.

Quote:I pay almost $500 for the Pro-Ecommerce Silver plan, ScanAlert and other add-ons. I used osCommerce for 3 years but my business outgrew it.  Time was a major factor in my decision to switch --- I needed to spend my time running my business rather than wasting hours on osCommerce.

As for the cost of monstercommerce--obviously I haven't used them yet, so I don't know how good they are. They seem to have a lot of good, built-in features and many more optional add-ons. I think they're a little expensive off the bat, but if they turn out to be very flexible--I'm OK with paying extra.

I also think the pages are completely customizable. Yahoo is too, theoretically, except you'd have to build the pages from scratch and plug everything in one item at a time through the backend (no thanks).

But I am also very willing to look at ANYTHING that will work. I'm not married to Monster Commerce, that's for sure. If there's something better... I need a site that makes adding lots of products easy, that makes editing batches of products easy, that offers good shipping calculators, the ability to use coupons & discount codes, many payment type configurations, and more flexibility with the site layout than Yahoo templates, etc.

I don't know much about Zen Cart, but the fact that it was free made me think of OSC. Is it quicker to get going than OSC?

Vivian said:

Quote:It seems like T-shirts need to be hip and trendy to sell.  I don't think you'll match that demographic without a custom, quirky website.  Too many other people selling T-shirts, including the bozos at the mall.

I also wanted to say, yes--I totally agree. It HAS to be full of character, have a theme, or be really different. In order to compete, it will have to.

I think I've got kind of a weird & quirky idea that runs with both the art and the humor. Still working on it.

Looking at TulipHosting, I see that it comes with OSCommerce as part of the Elefante pre-installs.

Do you guys do Zen Cart, too?

Yep, thentavius, they do it all here.  They even install for you.

[quote author=thentavius link=topic=5449.msg27569#msg27569 date=1160846667]

Do you guys do Zen Cart, too?
[/quote]

We do free Zen installs for TT members.  The Zen we install has 41 mods and 12 templates already added.  You have to request it by PM on TT because the versions of Zen, Cube, CRE, and osC we manually install aren't in the Elephante installer. 
details:
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...l#msg19725

Also, TH hosting plans come with shared IPs so if you want to add an SSL certificate you'd need to add a dedicated IP ($1.75 monthly)

Quote:As for the cost of monstercommerce--obviously I haven't used them yet, so I don't know how good they are.

Maggie swears by them.  BBH and I helped her set up her site last year.  Monster is very easy to use.  I'd only use them for the $99 pro plan.  Their $49 plan is crap.

Sneaky uses Volusion, Valley uses Make-A-Store/Heavy Metal, DecorativeDishes and Cranky use ShopPal, Angel uses 3DCart.

If you used Zen or osC at any host (including us) you'd need to apply security patches and any upgrades yourself.  If you use YahooStores or Monster they do it for you. You save money by using an open source cart, but you lose hours of your time maintaining it.

Yea they do Zen too.

A quick comment about oscmax.
Many of you guys have thousands of products and I have a small and limited amount,
so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Time is money and everyone's level of time spent verses dollars is different.
For me ocsmax seems to be ok (so far) and I do like tinkering so.

It took me a couple
of weeks to get with the learning curve but was up and running then.
I'm still tweaking a bit but for FREE and so far after the
initial frustration phase, I'm happy with it...
Other than there is no simple mod for LinkPoint
to just pass my customers on to the gateway as opposed to having to collect all there info.
(I don't have an SSL yet and not sure if I want the responsibility
of safe guarding my customers cc info at this time).

Now ZEN makes your customers have to sign up to make a purchase.
I didn't like that so that's why I went with oscmax.

For me the kiss method seems to be working so far.
No shipping calculators (free shipping)
Only two options of online CC gateways to pay. (PP and LinkPoint).
The price they SEE is the price they pay. (They seem to like that)

The templates that come w oscmax seem to be customizable to a certain
degree and I'm wanting to make a template or three
just for the fun of it that is different and add them as contributions
for anyone to use some time down the line.

I guess what I'm saying is as we all move forward there are so many factors to consider.
Time, amount of products we sell, look / feel of site, navigation, security issues, SEO,
page load times and so many other things I've probably never even considered yet.

All I know is...where I am at now in this 7 year biz. I'm pretty happy with the overall
results and hope everyone finds that comfort zone and continues to prosper.

This is a good thread too BTW..