E-commerce and shopping cart software

[KristineS]

The company I work for has been using the same shopping cart software for the last seven years. It's worked well for us, but we're looking to redesign the website and thought while we were doing that, we'd also take a look at what's out there as an option for creating and hosting the site. Right now we're using Nexternal. We're looking for something that would perform similar functions, but might have more or better options for us. Currently, we run an online store, with tons of products, with wholesale and public pricing as well as specialty pricing. We have the ability to offer coupons and gift certificates, take credit cards and Paypal. Customers can review products as well as share orders and products on various social media platforms.

We're looking for options for platforms that can do all the things listed above and perhaps also include things like multiple location inventory.

Does anyone have any recommendations for companies I should investigate?

[Harold Mansfield]

Are you looking for a web design company or a software solution?

Are you doing your own redesign?

we'd also take a look at what's out there as an option for creating and hosting the site.
Do you want to build something on your own hosting, or do you want a company that takes care of all the technical and hosting and you just put your site together on a sit builder software like a Squarespace?

Sorry to bombard you with questions back, but a little more direction is needed.

[Owen]

The company I work for has been using the same shopping cart software for the last seven years. It's worked well for us, but we're looking to redesign the website and thought while we were doing that, we'd also take a look at what's out there as an option for creating and hosting the site. Right now we're using Nexternal. We're looking for something that would perform similar functions, but might have more or better options for us. Currently, we run an online store, with tons of products, with wholesale and public pricing as well as specialty pricing. We have the ability to offer coupons and gift certificates, take credit cards and Paypal. Customers can review products as well as share orders and products on various social media platforms.

We're looking for options for platforms that can do all the things listed above and perhaps also include things like multiple location inventory.

Does anyone have any recommendations for companies I should investigate?

For PHP scripts there's OpenCart, Magneto, and even Wordpress is great with Woocommerce.

[krymson]

Harold's right, there's more to it than just setting up the solution... I work for a large cyber security firm with a focus on compliance mandates. If you're going to use your own hosting and what not you have to think about PCI compliance and keeping track of logs and intrusion detection and everything. You want to make sure you are protected and can quickly remediate problems that can arise.

If you go with a vendor such as a squarespace (one of our customers) or shopify verify that they have these measure in place. I know Squarespace does because we're their security vendor.

Here's my recommendations for both paths:

Self Hosted:
- I would recommend AWS (Amazon Web Services) for cloud hosting for their auto scaleability as the site grows.
- I would recommend finding a good MSP (Managed Service Provider) for AWS to set up everything properly and make sure your instances are set up and you can have backups made they handle all of the heavy lifting.
- Platform I would go one of 2 routes, WordPress with WooCommerce OR, Magento (Owned by Ebay). Both are decent, I stray away from WordPress when I can because it's the most popular CMS out there it is the most targeted for attacks as well as Woo is, I believe, the most popular ecommece plugin for WordPress. Magento is harder to develop for, but it is an actual dedicated ecommerce platform, it's not very intuitive but once you get passed the moderate learning curve it's VERY powerful.
- Compliance, I'm not one to advertise but, for AWS I would recommend Alert Logic's Cloud Defender Suite, it meets all compliance mandates and it's a fully manage security as a service solution with 24x7x365 support.

Service Solution Based:
- I would go with SquareSpace just because I know they meet the security requirements, now I don;t know if their customers get that security built in or not but I know they have it.

[redfirewebsites]

you should look at wordpress as the website platform and woocommerce as the plugin for the shopping cart. There are not only lots of extra plugins available for woocommerce but its a widely used application (1 million + downloads) with lots of tutorial videos and how to type videos on the internet.

[SteveStrait]

If you're looking for a new platform, please look at Shopify.
I have several product lines on there and its one of the best platform out there.
The platform makes it so easy for you. Also, there are numerous standalone apps out there that offer all the features you mentioned.

Extremely scalable. At first, I was worried about the recurring pricing for the platform, but in the long term,
I'm able to run my store without a couple of dev guys.

[congun87]

Correct, I would also look at wordpress with the shopping cart plug-in. Wordpress is SEO friendly to me, so its always my number 1 web designing software.

[BobJ275]

zencart. It's free even

[extramile]

Shopify is worth a go yeah. I've used them before.

[MCMatt]

If you can be a little more specific with are your needs to switch over I can recommend some good platforms. Also as mentioned above are you looking to do this in house or contract someone to handle everything?

[Tranzlo]

WooCommerce is great, thoroughly supported and with many free/premiun extensions.

[Azimuth]

WooCommerce is great, thoroughly supported and with many free/premiun extensions.

Fully agree, WooCommerce is really great. For gift cards and other interesting stuff I highly recommend using soundest.com - it's fully drag and drop, so you will safe lots of money because you don't need to hire a programmer.