This one is about the benefits of OpenSource shopping cart for your site.

"Why should you pay for a remotely hosted shopping cart for your small business website, rather than just install a free OpenSource shopping cart on your site?"

Catch it @ http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/articles/software/003397.html

How many of you have used the OpenSource shopping cart? Is it really better for a small business?

I have used the OSC cart for several applications. Its biggest feature is customization to look like or coordinate with your site. There are usually additional fees the hosted solutions add on for online credit card processing which are often marked up and that for a new store $100 month might be significant in a business where margins are thin and sales are few. Additionally you are now tied to their merchant bank vs your offline sales credit processing bank, so you may lose some savings at your bank.

The other neat features you can do with open source are limited only by imagination. I've seen add-ons that make product management meet just about any criteria the store owners have. In open source you can control shipping, pricing, taxation, and other features at the product level while most hosted solutions only allow control at the total order level. Multilevel category, subcategory and cross category options are not usually available on hosted solutions, but are unlimited in Open Source as long as the database will support it.

For a really simple store one could always implement a pay-pal cart and only pay only the merchant fees which are competitive with most bank rates.

All those are very good points, but hosted applications do have their downfalls.

If you are serious about business the biggest is IP!

Intellectual property can add hundreds of thousands to your business net worth. Because you own it no one can take it from you, try selling a company when the main source of revenue could be halted the moment your service is suspended.

On that note, I would never feel safe if my statistics, product info, and revenue model could dissapear if the hosting company goes down and out, and thousands of them do every year.

If you own your site, cart, and supporting software no one can shut you down! And you can use that IP leverage to start other businesses, or revenue streams.

I have just begun research for setting up an ecommerce site. I would like to consider tinkering around with an OSC cart. Can someone recommend a site where I can download it.
Thanks!

You'll find it at oscommerce.com :)

hth

Jax

Thank you I will check it out!

I think it's clear that OSC and hosted shopping cart softwares should be placed in two separate categories. 1. Those who can develop or have a very good knowledge of setting up online stores using code.. and 2. Those who prefer to spend their time developing their business and are better at selling than designing and programming. Open source can be useful for it's customization but are generally full of bugs and most people setting up an online store wouldn't even know how to put it on a server... which they would need to go and pay for anyway.

Welcome to the forum, emanresu! :)

Thanks Robert! :wave2:

I think open source is great and certainly right for the people who can deal with the tech-setup. While hosted is clearly for the less technicaly inclined. The third group needs someone to run it for them.

All of these have possible problems, with the open source you need lots of backup and the connectivity could always be a problem. Hosted has the problems with smaller firms going out of business. The last option is also problematic, if people leave jobs, etc.

I think the basic question has to be what you can and want to do yourself.