eCommerce Suggestions

[peavey123]

Hi All,

I am looking for a new eCommerce solution. Currently we're using MagentoGo. Everything has been great until I got an e-mail from them saying they are closing MagentoGo at the end of the year and going open source. So now you can download Magento Community Edition and run that somehow? That seems like a daunting chore atm.

They recommend migrating over to Pixafy. Who I've never heard of...I'm waiting to get into a free trial with them to check it out.

Does anyone have experience with eCommerce? I have dealt with an open-source ecommerce solution years back (the name escapes me), but eventually it became less and less secure as support dwindled. So I'm kind of put off the thought of going back to the open-source route. Plus it was more work.

Our needs are fairly simple. The online store is private and for only one nationwide customer of ours. It is also quite small, we have about 250 SKU's right now. We were paying a small monthly fee to MagentoGO. I don't believe they take 2% of sales or anything like some of the sites do.

Anyone have any thoughts or advice for me?

Thank you!

 

[Stephenedwardgraphic]

We are currently using two different commerce systems. Shopify.com and ecwid.com

The ecwid.com solution allows you to embed the shopping cart directly into your website. Shopify is stand alone. These options are only good for static print items like pre made shirts and decals. I have yet to find a good solution for with an online product builder. The closest I have found is inksoft.com --but you will pay a fortune to get started...

 

[Ditchmiester]

We currently use ProductCart to run our ecommerce store. Very customizable and very user friend interface for the control panel. check out our website and see how it works. www.truxes.com

 

[toomeycustoms]

All of our carts are powered by CS-cart. We tried magento CE, but it is not very intuitive and you have to pay for a lot of the features/mods that come standard with cs-cart. If you are looking for a hosted solution, then Shopify is pretty popular, but I prefer to not pay monthly/transaction fees.

 

[Techman]

Prestashop.
Free open source ecommerce system. lots of themes and plugins are out there.
I think it is as good as WordPress

 

[s.hack]

We are currently using Wordpress With the WooCommerce plugin. I highly suggest you check this out before making a decision. Its free, easy to use and setup.

 

[Team Valhalla]

Another vote for Shopify. You can take a look at our site here... www.valhallaracing.com

I'm no Bill Gates or Steve Jobs by any stretch, but was able to set up most all of it myself. There were a few custom tweeks that I had a guru do for me such as the background image, drop down mega menu, and a few others. I didn't use the Shopify Experts that Shopify suggested - too expensive and they wanted to do all the other work setting up the site. After a lot of looking around, I ran across a company by the name of Go Grow Strategies. They're a digital marketing company and have some really talented people, so they did the coding for some of the changes I wanted.

I'm sure most all ecommerce platforms have these features, but Shopify has some nice tools to let you see how many people are coming into your store, where they're coming from search wise, abandoned checkouts, customer history, customers that sign up for your marketing, etc.

Another plug in that's nice is Lexity Live Web Insights. Lets you see customers that have been or are currently in your store and the items they've looked at. It's also free.

Just a reminder, wherever you look, in addition to the annual fee, don't forget about your merchant or credit card fee - some are worse than others.

SP

 

[peavey123]

Thanks Everyone, I haven't heard of some of these.

Question for the people using free open source eCommerce solutions: What is the maintenance of the site like Security-wise? How often are you updating and how long does that usually take? How much downtime? etc..

I talked to the Pixafy people. They will migrate my existing site for free. Which means like barely any downtime. Which I need because people are ordering almost 24/7 off our site. It's more expensive though @ $50/month. Decisions, Decisions.

 

[VL]

Why not just migrate to the Magento community open source cart. You already have 250sku. That would be a simple transition. Or transition to BigCommerce. My understanding is Magento inked a deal and BigCommerce will transition you over to their platform at no charge. What I don't get is why Magento did not sell their Go service to another company and just keep offering it.

 

[particleman]

Magento is really popular and pretty highly regarded also in terms of cart software. If I was in your position I would either migrate to the Open Source version or if you really don't want a headache pay the $50/m for pixafy. Pixafy looks to me like just managed Magento hosting. So with that considered you might just search around for that "managed magento hosting". With a managed service level you'll pay more but be able to get support for cart related issues/updates directly from your host.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Thanks Everyone, I haven't heard of some of these.

Question for the people using free open source eCommerce solutions: What is the maintenance of the site like Security-wise? How often are you updating and how long does that usually take? How much downtime? etc..

I talked to the Pixafy people. They will migrate my existing site for free. Which means like barely any downtime. Which I need because people are ordering almost 24/7 off our site. It's more expensive though @ $50/month. Decisions, Decisions.

I would think the $50/month would easily offset the labour of manually taking orders, if it results in less headaches and downtime, I would go for that.

 

[peavey123]

Why not just migrate to the Magento community open source cart. You already have 250sku. That would be a simple transition. Or transition to BigCommerce. My understanding is Magento inked a deal and BigCommerce will transition you over to their platform at no charge. What I don't get is why Magento did not sell their Go service to another company and just keep offering it.

Because I don't know how. lol

I would think the $50/month would easily offset the labour of manually taking orders, if it results in less headaches and downtime, I would go for that.

Agreed. Tell my boss that.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Because I don't know how. lol



Agreed. Tell my boss that.

Tell him to open up the wallet!

 

[peavey123]

Why not just migrate to the Magento community open source cart. You already have 250sku. That would be a simple transition. Or transition to BigCommerce. My understanding is Magento inked a deal and BigCommerce will transition you over to their platform at no charge. What I don't get is why Magento did not sell their Go service to another company and just keep offering it.

Thanks for tipping me off to BigCommerce. It's exactly what I'm looking for for and they will migrate my current store over for free and they are almost half the price of Pixyfy. Sweet!

After playing around with pixyfy it's not the easiest to customize. Seems like they are using the MagentoGo platform, but somehow made it harder to customize. They only have two templates right now. BigCommerce on the other hand is pretty darn easy to customize and they have a bunch of free templates and paid ones as well. The support is good too. I wanted a checkout option to use a P.O.# only which wasn't available. The tech support helped me through this painlessly. Check it out if you are looking at an eCommerce solution.

 

[InstantOneMedia]

We looked at Big Commerce, but decided to stick with Solid Commerce. Their order process and update system seemed a little more user friendly.

 

[avidsram]

Im a big fan of wordpress. Woocommerce plugin will simply do everything magento can.