Shopping carts

[Excaliber22]

I have a customer who want to add a shopping cart to the website I am hosting for them. How can I set the shopping cart up with out paying for an outside service.

One of my selling points that has been successful is I run every thing from my own dedicated servers.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ex

[Jaiem]

The only thing I can think of is buying a shopping cart script (or getting a free one).

If you have many customers with shopping cart needs (or anticipate such customers) it would be worth it for you to get a good script.

[Joana]

OScommerce cart (The Exchange Project) seems pretty good. I got alot of users using it and like it more than the Interchange one.

:)

[Design R]

Have a look at Actinic Catalog. It may be worth your while going to there site: www.actinic.com Request the free 30day trial to test the product to see if it suits your needs.

[frankc420]

There is a new cart that I was just told about, you can check it out at: http://www.x-cart.com/ - From what the website says it's fully customizable.... but who knows!

Hope this helps,

Frank

[dibby]

I've never really found a great all rounder shopping cart, but I've looked at actnic before and I'd think long and hard before introducing customers to it.

It may well be worth your time paying for a small development, or even addition to one of the more main stream open source carts for your own purposes.

I think people will pay a little more for a good cart product, maybe introduce a new plan specifically for it? It wouldnt take long to recoup any costs incurred.

[Excaliber22]

Thanks for the help everyone!

[Jaiem]

I agree with Dibby in that there is no one-size-fits-all shopping cart system. Guaranteed some customer sooner or later will want a feature your cart doesn't support.

OTOH, you can't please all the people all the time. Find a cart system that is easy to use and highly configurable and I think you will find it enhance your services appeal.

[bobbishop]

We use 2 carts

Oscommerce.com (free but a pain for customers to configure)

and Miva (yeah, I ponied up the fee for partners, but now I can get a license for $56 bucks. It's already paid for itself.)

[ronhollin]

Is Miva really that good? Why? It comes bundled with my web hosting, but I couldn't figure out how to implement it. The people at Design Extend (http://www.designextend.com/) said that they can get my shopping cart up and running totally for no more $350. What do you guys think?

[bobbishop]

We've had no problems with Miva. It has a lot of features that my clients want (retail/wholesale pricing, custom headers/footers, etc.).

Most of our clients just have us go ahead and configure the store front and add a few products. From there they usually don't have any problems figuring everything out.

[cader]

I found a cart Which lets us design it and give it to our customers via our Site ( login from our site )

have a look

http://www.resellerlabs.com

[ronhollin]

We'll I've been using Miva Merchant since I post in early April. It's been really easy to learn. I add Pamela over at Design Extend. She set me up for a little $ and then I pretty much took over. I have had her install a module or two. You learn something everyday using Miva. It's a really cool cart. And there?s also a TON of modules out there that you can install that will really make running your shopping cart easy. It's very robust.

[webplusbryan]

The one thing about Miva is that you have to purchase modules to get certain features that you or your clients are looking for. I would like to recommend a no investment solution called Web+Shop by a company called Talentsoft. You can visit their site at www.talentsoft.com. They have a no investment reseller plan that is very comprehensive. By this I mean, you will get free updates (both major and minor), Free tech support, full source code, etc.

I would recommend checking them out. Please email bryank@talentsoft.com for further details, questions, etc.

[macman]

I think the best for your clienty [and for you] is to get a custom written cart.

[asm]

as for us we use Hosting Shopping Cart that you can find at http://www.softwareforhosting.com/HSP/ You may check it if you like...

[john2004]

>>
The only thing I can think of is buying a shopping cart script (or getting a free one).
>>>

On my opinion, it's a good decision to use unexpensive carts such as ExtCart Shopping Cart Software (http://www.ext-cart.com) , ShopFactory (http://ShopFactory.com) , 3DCart (http://3DCart.com) etc. You can find more unexpensive shopping carts using Google, yahoo (http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_E...Shopping_Carts/) or visiting special sites as http://www.onlyphp.com/browse-22.html.

If you familiar with PHP I would recommend using Oscommerce shopping cart. Because there are no support except support from community and if you need adjust something you need to do yourself.

John

[trigman]

I like Pinnacle Cart (http://www.pinnaclecart.com). Fully customizable, good features and built using PHP. Plus it has a really easy to use admin area. I think they also offer branded carts for resellers.

[MBspokesman]

Wise people say Zencart is great...Anyway I prefer using good 3pp, as they provide all the services including cart stuff, my one is www.Merchantboss.com

[mark678]

You should try the site http://www.online-store.co.uk/paypal.html its what I use for my estore you can see what mine looks like using the program at www.ultratech.u-wh.com/shop.html

[BrilliantHosts]

I host a few sites with X-Cart and it seems to be the hot setup. It is full featured and has pretty good support.