Hi,
What is the best way to create ecommerce website, should we go for cart software company hosting or get our own hosting for the website ?
Danny
Hello, Danny!
Usually, the hosted shopping cart solutions have rather big monthly fees. If you plan to have your online business for at least several years, you will pay a lot. Also, usually, you do not have the access to the files and if something goes wrong with the company servers, you store may be unavaillable.
get your own hosting for the website. Don’t be cheap:)
I use OSCmax open source (free) software which has built-in shopping carts and numerous methods of payment. I host seperately so that I havent got all my eggs in one basket.
You can take a look at 2 of my sites www.EddiesTeddies.co.uk and www.BestBears.co.uk to get an idea of the free built-in templates. Each of these sites took me a weekend to build, I probably spent most time designing the logos!
If your new to website building I would wholeheartedly recommend OSCmax, its very easy and has a great support forum
Hosting separately is definitely the best approach, while there may be a larger initial learning curve it will put you in a better position going forward and will ultimately cost you less.
I would recommend the hosted ecommerce solutions unless you are more experienced. They are more costly yes but usually run about $50 per month which isnt that much in the scheme of things. This way the provider is in charge of everything for you and there is much less to worry about. Ie they can handle a big chunk of the pci compliance, keeping the site running and optimized, supporting you etc. Will you be able to figure out for yourself how to fix it if your site is down all of the sudden??