A friend of mine sells candles and wants a website to sell them (she has about 40 varieties). What is the best e-commerce off-the-shelf solution out there?

I've looked at Yahoo! storefront, and that looks pretty good, but what is the best? It's hard to really know what they are like until you actually use them.

Thanks,
WebGrrl

I don't know that there's one best one out there. Are you only looking for hosted solutions like Yahoo's storefront? Would you friend consider using an open source cart and setting it up on her own hosting account.

It might be easier to use something like Yahoo, but in the end you'll get more control of the site using one you download and install yourself. The installs aren't too hard.

Two of the more popular carts are

osCommerce
ZenCart

I like ZenCart better, but I don't really have a lot of experience with either.

I know what you mean about not being able to tell what they're like until you try them. It's part of the reason you might want to download an open source cart and host it yourself. It's not going to be fun to switch to a new cart no matter what, but I think you'll find it harder if you go with something like the Yahoo store.

another free open-source shopping cart based on the OSCommerce code is CRE-loaded

A more robust solution is Miva Merchant. Our Ecommerce Hosting package comes with Miva Merchant.

All other hosting packages come with OsCommerce, Zencart or CRE-loaded. We'll install any of these for free if you mention this post.

To be perfectly honest, I think they all suck. I've used quite a few of them and have found none of them to do what I want to do.

If you want to really learn how to program and to build your skill set to a point where most people can't touch you, build an e-commerce website. You'll learn so much, and you'll be able to customize it however you want. It's not easy, but it can be done and the coding will be a buttload better than any off-the-shelf stuff.

DIY...the only way to fly.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

To be perfectly honest, I think they all suck. I've used quite a few of them and have found none of them to do what I want to do.

If you want to really learn how to program and to build your skill set to a point where most people can't touch you, build an e-commerce website. You'll learn so much, and you'll be able to customize it however you want. It's not easy, but it can be done and the coding will be a buttload better than any off-the-shelf stuff.

DIY...the only way to fly.

yeah no solution is perfect. They do have their pros and cons but webgrrl said "easy-to-use ecommerce"

I wouldn't consider building an entire custom software platform just to sell products online the easy way to go.

DIY is great but the average person now-a-days that needs to put their business online has neither the time, money nor expertise to create a DIY shopping cart solution. An opensource solution is sufficient for their needs.

Also think about how easy-to-use hosted applications such as Yahoo Stores have grown in popularity. There's really no need to re-invent the wheel so-to-speak cause you're just going to invent another wheel.

I just don't see how learning to program your own software platforms is efficient. If I wanted a blog I would use WordPress. If I wanted a more robust CMS site I would use Joomla. I just don't have the time to develop and support my own custom software platform when their are open source alternatives out there that improve daily. WordPress and Joomla have won all sorts of awards and the communities are running strong.

If a DIY custom solution is the best way, why are we seeing this movement towards using opensource and proprietary CMS systems? When's the last time you visited a blog that was running on it's own custom platform? Probably almost never. People use what works best at the time and at this point using CMS and component based software can't be outweighed by the cost, expertise and time required to build your own DIY platform.

It just really depends how far along a particular opensource project is. Some projects still need a lot of improvement.

I just don't see how learning to program your own software platforms is efficient. If I wanted a blog I would use WordPress. If I wanted a more robust CMS site I would use Joomla. I just don't have the time to develop and support my own custom software platform when their are open source alternatives out there that improve daily. WordPress and Joomla have won all sorts of awards and the communities are running strong.

If a DIY custom solution is the best way, why are we seeing this movement towards using opensource and proprietary CMS systems? When's the last time you visited a blog that was running on it's own custom platform? Probably almost never. People use what works best at the time and at this point using CMS and component based software can't be outweighed by the cost, expertise and time required to build your own DIY platform.

It's really simple: perception imparted upon the suggestible. The perception is that the open source movement will someday take over the entire universe and that things like Joomla and WordPress and all of this open source BSCMS software will take over and that we'll all be running our sites off them and that everyone will be able to build sites in about 15 seconds that will make them millions of dollars.

All of this comes despite open source's biggest flaw, and the major reason why running a commercial site of any significance will almost never work: open source code is available to anyone, including people who will try to hack what they perceive to be successful open source software and sites. This is something that gets overlooked way too often, but is something that is extremely important: you may be giving away far more than you intend to. Do you really want to expose your business like that?

Look at it from another point of view. Let's say there are two alarm companies that you have to choose from. One of the alarm companies publishes its wiring diagrams and all of the details that go into every alarm. One of the alarm companies keeps their alarm details a secret. Which one would you go with?

And yet, most people ignorantly and blissfully expose their businesses on a daily basis, using things like osCommerce. Why? Because it's easy. But just because something's easy doesn't make it good.

Not only that, most of the cart software isn't sufficient for most businesses' needs. It's rigid, it's inflexible, it comes with a number of design and architecture errors, and it takes longer to fix those errors than it does to just do it properly from scratch in the first place. Every business is different, every business has different needs, and a good designer/developer will recognize and understand that. The ones that don't really don't get how business operates. There may be packages that fit certain applications, but by and large, it's useless, and a good programmer/coder/developer will have built better things him/herself over time.

People need to learn that the open source "movement" isn't ever going to get relatively far, and certainly won't be the dominant movement in the web design marketplace. It's not all "bad stuff", but it has its limitations and applications like everything else does.

We may be "seeing a movement", but it's like a lot of things online...it gathers steam from a bunch of people who can't think or do things for themselves, hits its zenith, and then fades away into a semi-comatose state where a relative few people still try to use the stuff and make millions off of it and fail miserably.

Yes, I use WordPress for my blogging platform, before you decide you want to go there. Before I did, however, I was contemplating building my own. The only thing that stopped me was that my clients wanted me to figure it out so that they could figure out what it could/couldn't be used for. In relatively short order, I found what most people eventually find with it: it's limited. Very, very limited. It's not bad for the blogging niche, but it's limited if you want to do other things and go in different directions with your blog/site.

Open source has its place...but it's not a big place, nor should it ever be. A good custom solution will always beat a good off-the-shelf solution in terms of overall value (cost vs. benefit).

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Look at it from another point of view. Let's say there are two alarm companies that you have to choose from. One of the alarm companies publishes its wiring diagrams and all of the details that go into every alarm. One of the alarm companies keeps their alarm details a secret. Which one would you go with?

This is not entirely true. Look at the Microsoft vs Linux debate. Microsoft keeps their code a secret while Linux code is available for download from just about anywhere.

Now you tell me, which is more secure... a Microsoft or Linux environment?

In reality opensource is more secure, there's history to prove it. How many viruses and forms of spyware cause problems on Linux systems? Now what about on Windows? I can bet as a whole there's more downtime on Windows networks primarily due to exploits to their systems. Keeping the code secret sure didn’t seem to help Microsoft when it comes to security. Microsoft's 'secret' has been revealed and it's secret was it has tons of exploits. At least with opensource exploits there's an entire community of users working on a solution.

The Linux operating system uses a component based architecture which you now see Microsoft leading towards. Now if only this component based concept would trickle down to the application level for web design purposes. It already does as far as asp.net is concerned.

I'm not saying Joomla or Wordpress or even the next best opensource project is going to take over the universe of web design but opensource projects backed by a strong community will thrive. It'll always be a constant battle "CMS vs DIY" just like "IE vs Firefox", Microsoft vs Linux, PC vs Mac, PHP vs ASP, MySQL vs SQL... The list goes on an on.

Nothing's going to take over completely. Each will have it's own stake in the market.


You're right about OsCommerce though. I'm not really sticking up for them. Their community has pretty much died with the birth of Zencart and Cre-loaded and even those are lacking.

I guess it just really depends on the type of software. Joomla's a solid CMS platform with some room for improvement which is well on it's way with version 1.5

I just think you shouldn't shoot down opensource all together. It does have it's misfits but the concept has a proven track record.

Although I agree with Adam that DIY is the best way to go, I'm afraid for the newbie I'd say use Yahoo, Amazon or eBay and focus on the business of selling and not worry about having a stand alone website until you have the online business off the ground.

Why I say this is you won't know today what you really need and you'll be able to pick a better ecommerce solution down the road that fits like a glove and avoid all the potentially incompetent webhosts and bad online store products in the meantime.

Good luck.

I always love that argument of "Windows is less secure because there are more problems." I'm not saying it's secure....it's not. But I refuse to accept that Linux or any other operating system is secure until it reaches a point where it's got enough market share for people to want to attack it. If and when Linux/Microsoft have an even or better market share (meaning Linux or one of its distributions becomes the dominant OS), let's compare. Until then, it's a silly statement which can be neither proven nor disproven. The "history" in this case establishes and proves nothing.

The other problem with the argument is that nothing in the world is secure, and this goes for both online and offline. Every alarm has a breakpoint/disability point/hack of some sort, every lock can be picked or broken, and every piece of security-related hardware or software has some means of being able to hack into it.

It's the same thing with Open Source right now. No one has seriously tried to attack any of the Open Source stuff...yet (there have been attempts). It's not worth it to most people to even tried. The software simply does not have the market share to make any statements about it that way one way or the other.

Now, let's say Joomla or WordPress or (insert open source package here) gains a significant market share (25% or higher, just for the sheer sake of picking a figure). Let's say Hacker X discovers a script hole that allows Hacker X to scrape the content directly the database that the package draws from and use it (not just on-the-page content, either: usernames, passwords, emails, etc.) That's just an arbitrary example of something Hacker X could do: make up your own problem.

What needs to happen before the hole is patched preventing Hacker X from pulling off the same stunt again?

1) Developers need to know about it...and Hacker X probably isn't telling.

2) Developers need to fix it...and here's where things will eventually fall apart. Open Source developers are generally volunteers, and as volunteer projects grow in size, they eventually either have to go commercial, in which case the developers will want to be paid for fixing a for-profit project (and rightfully so); or they become a giant disorganized mob mentality rule mess like most volunteer efforts do (see DMOZ for a classic example of something volunteers run that's been completely destroyed).

3) In the event that an volunteer developer finds the fix, that developer needs to be willing and able to share that fix with the rest of the community (the whole pay it forward thing).

If you think that's going to happen every single time an Open Source script has an issue, you're hitting the crack pipe way too hard.

On the other hand, the commercial closed source model is usually backed by paid developers. Yes, those developers can suck, but there's a lot more motivation for a paid developer to find a fix (i.e. their *** is on the line) than there is for a volunteer. The same argument could, theoretically, be made about commercial open source as well, but it still doesn't address the issue of the code being freely (as in openly) available to anyone that wants it.

That's another reason I build my own carts, actually...I know what goes into them, and I do them in such an unusual manner that the odds of anyone even trying to hack the cart are significantly reduced (since any hacks the hacker would use would only specifically apply to that one cart, and I don't share 99% of my code with anyone). I also don't want something where I'm not smart enough to fix my own issues with the cart and site; I want something I can deal with when I need to deal with it.

Does that mean my own personal DIY method is hack/foolproof? Hell no. I'm not stupid or naive enough to suggest it is. But there's enough of a fence around my non-Open-Source cartyard (pun intended) that it really isn't worth anyone's while to try. They can go ahead if they really want, but they're not going to find a lot that's of any use.

It's also one of the reasons I couldn't care less that there are $10 an hour web developers out there.

Originally Posted by IncrediBILL

Although I agree with Adam that DIY is the best way to go, I'm afraid for the newbie I'd say use Yahoo, Amazon or eBay and focus on the business of selling and not worry about having a stand alone website until you have the online business off the ground.

Why I say this is you won't know today what you really need and you'll be able to pick a better ecommerce solution down the road that fits like a glove and avoid all the potentially incompetent webhosts and bad online store products in the meantime.

Good luck.

Actually, I'd agree with something like that. Once you learn how to sell online, then you'll learn what fits you and your business online.

I'd just disagree with eBay. You put your content on that site, you are bound to get screwed over.

if you want to easy to use ecommerce means do transactions low in your profile or give your works as projects to others...........

Bill those the online carts are probably easiest, but every time I see one all I can see is how limiting they're going to be within a few months. I figure why not at least start with something on your own domain.

But I agree they're probably the easiest to use.

And welcome by the way.