Lowend Ecommerce Solutions
I have a family member who is interested in getting her small mailorder business online. She has about 200 products.
If you have good lowend ecommerce recommendations, please do chime in. I can fiddle with code up to a certain point. I would definitely appreciate recommendations on eshop solutions, merchant accounts, payment gateways, and any related tips.
Cheers!
Comments
It appears like many people these days are starting with/or recommending Shopify Starter plan to get started: https://www.shopify.com/starter (5€/mo)
Woocommerce is another solution (free with addons/extensions) when using WordPress.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Self-hosted less bloat than Woo, would be OpenCart.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away.
NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh)
I think while Spotify can be really convenient to get started, the larger you scale the more money you will save when going self hosted (woo/oc). Solutions like Shopify are made to bring you in easily then keep you there for an expensive price. Some website builder SaaS services also charge horrendous prices for what is probably a 10MB static site.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
^ Yup, I have clients with 20 or so products, then others with thousands (>1.5GB sites).
Getting harder to compete with the "big boys" though.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away.
NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh)
Over 12 years using ZenCart. Every once in a while play around with newer shopping cart software but haven't found any reason to change.
Have got three live Zen Cart stores each on their own low end VPS, and a bunch more used for testing. Each store sends daily backups to the other two VPS so if one goes VPS experience issues it's easy to get that store up and running again quickly on one of the others.
Expect that new users will find ZenCart clunky and maybe dated but if you spend the time to learn how customize things should be able to get it looking and running great. For me the their forum, helpful community, and lots of plug-ins available make it the best option. The core software and most popular plugins get updated regularly.
I do keep returning to ZenCart, primarily due to its stability, though have never fully setup a live store on it. It just took too long to implement all the near essential modules. I can't disagree with @JDMcPea 's sentiments on it and I should really spend some time reviewing it again.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away.
NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh)
You might want to consider Bagisto (an Indian based Company), it's a laravel e-commerce if you want a self hosted solution.
It is quite lightweight and support many extensions.
https://microlxc.net/
Been using WooCommerce with 600+ products for 2 years. In fact products are 1000+ but I am only displaying them if inventory count is greater than 0 so only 600+ are displayed.
Working fine without any issues. Lots of plugins and customization options available. Hosted on VirMach.
Fast as fuck Core i9 VPS (aff) | Powerful AMD Ryzen VPS (aff)
Laravel=/=lightweight.
Straight HTML or plain ol' PHP is lightweight - no damn 'framework' : don't get me started on composer! Jeez.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away.
NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh)
I'm curious to explore these options, so want to thank you for sharing the self-hosted solutions you all are currently using.
VPS providers to check out:
Winning combo, hear me out... from experience.
-WooCommerce.
-Stripe and PayPal as payment gateways.
No need to redo the wheel.
Don't want to use WordPress?
ok, use shopify then.
Focus on the business not in the software.
This. Pick something that works and focus on the business. Another advantage of going with the big players (Woo, Shopify..) is that clients are likely already "used to" the checkout process and store style. As we can see with cPanel, people like if things look familiar.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Plenty of good advice here! Cheers!
You four are configuring your own merchant accounts & payment gateways. How much are they charging you? PayPal charges me 2.9%. Stripe? You others?
Have you done any example calculation(s) on this? If so, please share the numbers.
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I'm looking at that Shopify Basic plan. Pretty tasty from what I can see. Looks high at $23.20/month (paid biennially), but it allows complete focus on the business, offers a Point-of-Sale system for local/physical sales at 2.7%, online sales at 2.9% + $0.30 (as opposed to 5% for the Starter Plan), has good tools for marketing & pestering people, gift certificates, should allow integration with shipping service SHIPPO.
Thoughts?
I've been using the arguably insane option of only accepting checks or money orders. This will eliminate 95% percent of your potential customers and sales and will have people cursing and ridiculing you. Can do this because of the type of items I sell - mostly second hand collectibles, vintage computers, hard to find electronic parts, etc. There are a certain percentage of people out there who are still willing to snail mail payment, and over the years have built up some trust with repeat customers. There are other people who really really don't want to mail payment but are willing to take the risk because I'm the only one selling what they need, and my costs are usually reasonable.
Never had a chargeback, never had a bounced check. Never got rich. Part of living the Low End life is keeping things low stress.
I doubt this will work for anyone but a select few, so don't recommend it. And - Your Results May Vary™
My clients use PayPal and Stripe. Some have authorize.net. No idea on charges. Others do their own credit card processing and a few still take checks (sic).
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away.
NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh)