 cdruGo ColtsPremium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:7 | reply to mythology
Re: Ecommerce options for small business. said by mythology: To upgrade to the new platform requires giving up a percentage of sales which is a huge turn off.
But what do you get for that percentage? And does that include hosting? Are there any limitations on skus? or bandwidth? disk storage? Automatic updates? Complete PCI compliance instead of just a start?
It looks like the most that you pay is 2%, going down to 1% based on sales. With 5000 SKUs, that puts you at the $125/month package with Magento GO. That's the same as sales of $75,000 annually at the 2% rate.
I've used with OSCommerce before several years ago when I was at a different company. I know it's very popular, but I always felt that it was kludgy and dated. There are a ton of packages, adons, themes, whatnot but it was kind of a crapshoot whether they worked with your particular version or with each other. And if there was a update, good luck with keeping everything working if you made customizations. Maybe it was just the setup I inherited, but it was less than ideal and a turn off from a maintenance standpoint.
I looked at Magento for a bit when it first came out. It looked like a promising newcomer to the open source shopping cart scene. However when I looked at it the requirements for hosting were more than what the shared hosting plan it was going to be ran on could support. The CPU and memory requirements IIRC were significantly more then OScommerce or ZenCart so I didn't do much with it.
Are you looking to migrate both the online storefront and your B&M shop to the new system and run transactions from both? Or are you leaving the B&M still on the existing system and run the online store separately with integration?
I can't tell you what cart to use. I'd just recommend don't look at just the price tag. Look at support, maintenance, is someone there and responsible when stuff hits the fan, or are you stuck asking for help in a forum like this when bad things happen... |
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Reviews:
 ·Northland Cable ..
| We are just looking to upgrade the store front and integrate with CPSQL. At our current rate of sales I dont think the 2% is a big deal. If and when sales recover from this economic down turn the 2% of sales would be huge and not justify the cost of the platform. |
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cdruGo ColtsPremium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:7 | said by mythology:If and when sales recover from this economic down turn the 2% of sales would be huge and not justify the cost of the platform. And how much is a solution that doesn't integrate with your backend worth? Or more specifically, how much is having to do all the work manually or some rube goldberg process because your front end and back ends don't integrate?
I'm not trying to convince you one way or another. Only you know what your sales volumes are, what your budget is, etc. But I've integrated several shopping carts with back ends. It can be a real PITA if there isn't compatibility between the different ends of the system. Even though it was economically in my best interest as the developer to do all the work integrating the two, I would have given anything to not have to jump through all the hoops I had to. |
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Reviews:
·Northland Cable ..
| Pretty sure we are going with MagentoGO. 3rd party apps exist to automate the importing/exporting. If we dont decide on one of them we can just modify the sql csv files manually or have a local come in and create a custom script.
Ive been watching alot of Magento videos. My boss is handling the server side of things. I'll be doing the front end, graphics, layout and what you actually see. Looks like I'll be paid to learn some php in the process. Getting a raise out of the ordeal and things are looking up. Got a opportunity to learn a wipespread platform and hopefully get my employer up to par with the competition. Going to look good on my resume.  |
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