Hosted e-commerce solutions

[Rosco]

Right, I'm sticking this in here even though it's also software and business/ecommerce related!

I have a client in Greece who I have done work for before.  She's great, thinks I'm brilliant, and is a good payer... but a bit ditzy and disappears frequently and for long spells.

Her latest brainchild is an ecommerce site selling wedding and beauty products... namely dresses, shoes, accessories and 'facial treatments' (fnarr!).  I haven't really installed an e-commerce shopping cart since the early days of osCommerce and to be honest I don't fancy providing an ongoing maintenance service for this particular client, pleasant as she is. I'm thinking a hosted service might be better all round, so that software updates, patches, hosting, bandwidth, payment gateways etc are all taken care of for her.

I recall Haze recently mentioned ekmpowershop so did a bit of research but I'm thinking Shopify is the bigger player in this market.  It has decent staggered price plans and looks to be customisable enough with a decent templating engine.

Anybody got any further experience with ekmpowershop since Haze posted, or has any experience with Shopify or any other hosted solutions?

[Whatever]

Magento do offer a hosted solution I believe and we're recently bout by EBay, but haven't used the hosted version and if it's anything like the self hosted version I wouldn't touch it.

[m00min]

I used Shopify for a project last year and it seemed pretty good. The shop did only have a couple of products though. I'd definitely use it again however.

[familychoice]

I wouldn't touch a hosted system with a bargepole if I had the choice. What happens if the company goes bust, or massively hike their prices? If you do use one make sure you've got a bulletproof contract in place so the client can't claim damages if your 'recommendation' goes bust. I'd set one up if a client was desperate to use it, but it wouldn't be something I'd recommend.

I had a nightmare last year when a site running Trading Eye was hacked. Despite dpivision.com Ltd's best attempts to make matters 100 times worse we managed to patch it up and keep the clients site online. However their hosted service went into meltdown, and thousands of sites were down for weeks.

*shudder* - I'll stick with Cubecart - better the devil you know etc. and at least you can get under the bonnet when something breaks.

[suedenem]

I concur with FC, with a couple of possible exceptions. 

Hosted services typically provide a lower cost and time to market, so are perfect to test the viability of a more substantial, self-hosted, e-commerce development.

They are also fine for hobbyists who do not want the hassle or cost of dealing with developers, payment gateways, PCI DSS compliance, security and that sort of thing for a return of £150/mo.

I'd only otherwise recommend a hosted solution if the system was based upon established and available software and a data export was available.  That would go hand-in-hand with the drafting of a contingency plan, with associated costs should it need to be called upon.

[Rosco]

Thanks folks

I do agree that it's better to host and maintain an app yourself/have an ongoing maintenance agreement in place.

However it's a hosted solution I want to go for as I only want to help the client get set up, design the template, and then walk... until her next brainstorm or she needs some ad-hoc hourly-billed help with something.  I have done two sites for her and quoted another one in the past, as well as quoted for a Wordpress-based site for her friend.  Of them only one site is actually in use.  One was completed and launched but she lost interest in it immediately and allowed the hosting and domain to expire.  The other ideas came to nothing.  As I said she's a lovely person and pays up straight away, but she's not a client you want to spend a lot of time and thought on.  This time next year she'll no doubt have ditched this idea and will be wanting something else... so I'm not getting to grips with and maintaining something new.  She wants something, I provide it as quick as possible, I bill her, I forget about her until next time.  It works for both of us.

Shopify has a bulk import for products, and export for products and orders etc... so that could form a major part of the backup strategy, again it will be up to her how seriously she takes it

[Haze]

So which system did you eventually go for? I ahve someone coming to me tomorrow who was interested in am e-commerce site, but he stillowes me for one job and hopefully it's payday tomorrow. Setting up with the likes of ekmpowershop and their monthly contract means if they decide not to pay then it's their responsibility, but not had any experience of it.....