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?

There are a lot of reasons:

1) Focus. Your business is selling stuff, not installing and managing a complicated script. You'll have enough issues running a business that you won't be able to outsource to someone else the way you can with a shopping cart script.

2) Price. Paid hosted shopping cart software's price is inconsequential: $10-$100/month. If that's a significant expense for your business, you need to look into improving your profit margin.

3) Support. While support for ""paid"" business software is included in the cheap price, support for ""free"" business software is pretty expensive. OpenSource and other free software come without any support except forums for do-it-yourself-ers to share ideas. So, you'll end up paying someone to install and maintain it. Or you do it yourself, which costs so much time it's more expensive than paying someone if your time is worth anything.

4) Installation. When you buy hosted software on a subscription plan, installation is already done and support is included. When you have an issue–and have you ever had software that you didn't have an issue with at least once?–you don't have to pay a developer $150/hour to make it go away.

5) Security. Security issues are taken care of for you by the provider–no patching software.

6) Speed. Hosted online shopping carts really do work now, out of the box. You just input your inventory and go. OpenSource shopping carts come with dozens of customization options that will take you hours just to decide you don't need most of them.

7) Peace of mind. The shopping cart is the jugular vein of an online business. If anything makes the blood stop flowing, however minor the cause, you'll feel it fast. If you are the one who has to make sure the blood stays flowing, or if you have to rely on the availability of a freelance programmer, you won't be getting the soundest sleep. Let a specialist do that worrying for you, 24 hours a day.


About The Author


Joel Walsh is a business writer. Try EasyStoreCreator for an easy hosted http://www.easystorecreator.com?%20shopping%20cart%20software [Publish this article on your website! Requirement: live link for above URL/web address w/ link text/anchor text: ""shopping cart software"" OR leave this bracketed message intact.]

Shopping Cart Usability

E-commerce has been around since 1993 under many different names, but one thing remains constant; shoppers want usable web sites. Without a usable shopping cart the sites typically fail from poor performance. To succeed in the world of e-commerce and on t

Does Your Shopping Cart Have a Squeaky Wheel?

Have you ever gone grocery shopping just before a holiday? The aisles are packed with people pushing carts, shelves need restocked, all the checkout lanes have long lines...not a fun experience.

Choosing an Ecommerce Shopping Cart

Choosing an online shopping cart is a big decision. Unlike a traditional brick and mortar business, your website is your only chance to impress potential customers. It needs to project a professional image to capture the trust of your visitors. The shoppi

Choosing the Right Online Shopping Cart

Are you a website owner or a web designer/developer? If either applies, I would venture to say that eventually you'll need an online shopping cart for one of your websites. In fact, almost all new websites today need some sort of ecommerce built-in, for

Shopping Carts For The Weary

The chief criteria for judging a shopping cart is the number of credit card processors and shipping services it supports, and the number of people that support *it*.