e-commerce website with register365?

Munster Sports Nutrition

Hi,

I am looking at launching an e-commerce website next month on a tight budget with as little fuss as possible. I was looking at the ecommerce solutions offered by register365.com (link below). What are peoples opinions?

I will be retailing sports and health nutrition so nothing complicated.

http://www.register365.com/ecommerce.html

Thanks.

CoNfOuNd

I'd be concerned that such a package would lock you into using the one provider and if you ever wanted to leave you'd be stuck. For this reason I'd strongly recommend ecommerce software like osCommerce, ZenCart, Magento or PrestaShop since they can be very easily installed on any provider and can be moved between providers if necessary.

Most webhosting providers will offer Installatron, Softaculous or a similar software installer that will allow you to install ecommerce software in about 30 seconds.

Nutri Eire

Apart from being stuck with the one provider what do you think of the package?

CoNfOuNd

I work for Spiral Hosting so my opinion of other webhosting providers and their packages might be a little biased! It's best to Google for reviews of that particular company and see what comes up, or email their support and see whether they reply in 7 minutes or 7 days.

blue4ever

CoNfOuNd: Honesty is a particular virtue.
as, I has to be said, is the honesty in the very big logo under your signature.
So, asking that question is .... pick an adjective.

Zonua

Register 365 hosting - great (although I'm sure Spiralli are great too ).

I agree with CoNfOuNd, and wanted to add my opinion.

I've looked at that e-commerce package Register 365 have recently for someone.

My recommendation was, stay away from it, because, if you insist on going to the effort of learning how to use a 'package', or CMS system, I'd stick to a widely-used package, where you can get support. It will be harder to find an expert to help you for this solution, than things like Joomla, Drupal, osCommerce PrestaShop etc - whether the expert is in the form of a person you can meet, or someone on an online forum. Also, I make websites, (coding from scratch), and didn't find it easy to use. Another thing I found was that updates weren't instantaneous (e.g. a simple html <h1> header took over five minutes to appear).

And P.S. Although making your own e-commerce website yourself will indeed fit your tight budget, it will be anything but "as little fuss as possible", particularly if this is your first e-commerce website.

Good luck with your new business though!

gavney1

I'm not a web-developer. But I've been working on my own website for the last couple of months using Magento.

Have to agree with Zonua - using a CMS package that is well supported and established is a big advantage. I've found Magento easy enough to use, powerful and with lots of great features and ..........FREE! There's probably better supported CMS than Magento, ones which have been around for longer.

You'll spend time getting used to any of these systems. If it's not well supported, you may waste alot of time.

Also, I don't know how the register365 thing works. But with Magento, there are lots of free (and paid) design templates out there so you don't have to design from scratch. I'm guessing with register365, you won't have as many options of templates to choose from.

mneylon

I'm obviously biased ..

If you want to go down the "hosted shop" route then maybe it's worth exploring, but there are other companies / solutions out there with a proven track record that I'd check first

The more obvious option is to use a shopping cart system that is either open source (ie. no upfront license costs) or that you can buy independently.

In either case the basic installation probably won't work that well and will need to be customised and you'll probably need to hire a proper designer ..

business bloomer

Hey,

I design Online Shops for small businesses and I guarantee you can do it yourself without paying a monthly/setup fee and having to hire technicians or paying for third party shopping cart/hosting.

You don't even need to know technical stuff as you create the "add to cart" buttons automatically and then copy and paste them onto your website.

I do not know if it is allowed here to do "advertising", so I will just say you should go with "PPal" and try that out - you don't even need a bank merchant account in order to use that.

If you need further info just drop me a PM, I'd be glad to give you more suggestions.

Regards

Axwell

A full ecommerce system is completely different to sticking a few buy now paypal buttons on a page though. You dont have access to a backend where you can manage stock levels, product categories, tracking, customer databases etc. It depends on the specific requirements of a business when looking at selling online.

And no you arent allowed to do "advertising" or shilling on here but mentioning paypal as an option wouldnt be considered that.

theshamu

Was only looking at this myself last week and have to say some of the templates looked pretty nice. I design my sites using wp but not sure how to add a visa/laser card shopping cart system, I've bought pay pal themes from theme forest that work pretty well with wp.

Eoin

Some of the free packages (e.g. zen cart and oscommerce) are not that secure, and need constant updates and patches. This becomes trickier with osCommerce because the logic and design are quite tightly integrated. So if you've applied a template to their standard look and feel, you might have to edit some of the new pages to apply updates, rather than just drop in updated files.

I'd check out a fully hosted solution like shopify.com and let someone else deal with the updates and platform side of things.

willows

eventually when you take off you will want to "own" your site your code and hosting.

My experience is that people go for hosted products then look to update look feel and are handcuffed becuse there google ranking is caught up in a hosted solution. So for them to change they have to start over.

Start out in a manner you intend to be in 5 years. Easier to change course with 0 customers, 0 products.

Opensource carts are excellent but you need to keep them updated.
Go for one with a good templating environment and a fast code base.

That excludes oscommerce ( no templates ) and magento ( slow and a massive code base. )

Presta shop, zenCart, virtue mart are the favs here in no particular order.

Worked with them all.

07734

hi muster sports nutrition

can i ask what you decided in the end? (or if you've decided yet?!!)

i'm in the same boat as you, but am struggling to decide between register365 or shopify. i'm leaning towards shopify, so i can run it for 6 months or so, and if the idea shows a bit of growth, get a custom site made. (i'm familiar with oscommerce, so i'll use that when the time comes)

best of luck with it!

07734

DashCams.ie

I recommend Wordpress and as another poster said, most hosting solutions will have Softalicious or Installatron.