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Which e-commerce platform to use?
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wonderfield
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I've worked with Shopify in the past, and have at least spent some amount of time with Magneto. As far as 'turn key' e-commerce solutions go, Shopify's a good platform, but I found its constraints significant enough to warrant building my own platform. If you want X feature and Shopify doesn't have X feature, you're either completely boned or you come up with some sort of hack to make it work, and that can get unpleasant. Shopify is useful, however, as they handle the complexities of PCI compliance by providing their own checkout and processing scheme. If you intend to accept 'raw' credit cards, this does significantly ease things at the expense of not being able to fully customize and brand that aspect of the checkout process.
Magneto, on the other hand, is just an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink platform. It's not something I would actually recommend to anyone for that reason: what you want is something that's focused toward what your goals are and with the least amount of complexity in achieving your goals. Shopify is simple and straightforward, but at the same time generally malleable enough for most uses.
If you're at all competent, though, rolling your own platform that accepts payment via PayPal/Google Wallet/Amazon SimplePay is actually not all that difficult. These are lower-friction payment options for customers than credit cards, anyway, and a much lower-friction integration path than raw credit cards.
Magneto, on the other hand, is just an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink platform. It's not something I would actually recommend to anyone for that reason: what you want is something that's focused toward what your goals are and with the least amount of complexity in achieving your goals. Shopify is simple and straightforward, but at the same time generally malleable enough for most uses.
If you're at all competent, though, rolling your own platform that accepts payment via PayPal/Google Wallet/Amazon SimplePay is actually not all that difficult. These are lower-friction payment options for customers than credit cards, anyway, and a much lower-friction integration path than raw credit cards.
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My guess is OP doesn't have that experience level, otherwise he probably wouldn't be asking here.
I've used Shopify in the past, and for turn key solutions I wouldn't not recommend it. But like wonderfield stated, if it doesn't fit your needs exactly, you're pretty much screwed.
Magento is probably over kill if you only have a small handful of products. I've never used it myself but a coworker has just recently. His was another small shop - only selling a few items. Total over kill. The templating system is really elaborate, and it's intended for shops that have a lot of products.
I'm not familiar with ecommerce in Word Press, but I'm sure there's a few decent options out there.
If you're already familiar with Drupal, I'd recommend Drupal Commerce. I've setup a few shops with it, and while it's theming system can be complicated, the community is pretty helpful, and if you install the profile they provide it basically has everything you need already setup - products and all that can be customized from there.
I actually do web development for a living so I have no problem rolling my own. This is for a client who doesn't want to spend a lot of money. They already turned down an offer from somebody else to build their site for $4k. If they want to do this on the cheap, then I'm going to use what is already available.
I still have to meet with the client to discuss what their needs are. I think Shopify would be the best for them, because they're only selling nuts and candies.
I might give osCommerce a try. So far, that looks the most promising.
I still have to meet with the client to discuss what their needs are. I think Shopify would be the best for them, because they're only selling nuts and candies.
I might give osCommerce a try. So far, that looks the most promising.
King Icewind
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If you want something real basic and easy to setup then get shopsite pro.
Otherwise I like zencart, but it requires a lot of tinkering and know how. Its free, however, you can buy fully built zencarts.
Otherwise I like zencart, but it requires a lot of tinkering and know how. Its free, however, you can buy fully built zencarts.
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Unless its gone though major changes I'd stay very far away from OSCommerce. That app is a nightmare to maintain. It's very easy to break your entire site by just installing a security patch.
Same goes for Zencart, which is a spin off of OSCommerce.
Same goes for Zencart, which is a spin off of OSCommerce.
RyanLucier
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My friend, if they want an e-commerce site for $4k I suggest you run. Run as fast as you can.
I am a web developer and I'd charge $40,000+ for a properly done e-com site, if they want it for less than $4,000 they're going to be EXTREMELY picky, have ridiculously unrealistic expectations, and expect this site to outsell amazon. They'll probably also constantly hound you once it's built and it doesn't sell a fucking thing because they have no advertising or marketing in place to actually drive traffic to the site. They will probably have the if I build it they will come mentality... and it isn't true.
Avoid the dreamers bud, all they'll do is drag your business down and before you know it you'll wake up one day and realize 5 years have passed and your business really hasn't grown any.
Just some friendly advice
wonderfield
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PayPal certainly has a cart system that you can augment onto a mostly static site, though a shopping cart implementation is so trivial that it's almost absurd to rely on a third-party solution for such a system. For payment processing, though, there are obvious wins to offloading that to PayPal/Google/Amazon.
It's not completely unreasonable that it could be done within a $4k budget. Even at the upper end of the pay scale, that still affords more than a full week for full-time development. For a basic, no-frills platform, that's an achievable prospect.
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I was going to avoid talking about the business side, but since someone else started ill join in.
I couldn't agree more. I charge 2-4k for just a static site. An honest to God shopping cart system is much more than that. Everything RyanLucier said is true. I have first hand experience with that.Avoid the dreamers bud, all they'll do is drag your business down and before you know it you'll wake up one day and realize 5 years have passed and your business really hasn't grown any.
Just some friendly advice
It's funny you say that; After years of undercutting myself and taking on ANY client who would approach me I finally starting taking myself seriously. I now actively turn down work (like a sub $4k shopping cart) and its paid dividends. I'm making far more now in a single job then I used to in a whole year and my clients are becoming far more prestiges. Maybe it's just luck, but it all started when I decided to drop the dreamers.
Maybe I'm not following, but are you trying to say a no-frills shopping cart would take only a week to build for under $4k? Unless you're a programming God, I find that hard to believe. Even if you are a genius, shit takes time! And you're bound to hit a snag or two that take time to overcome. Crazy man.
wonderfield
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Is it possible you're over-defining the term "shopping cart"? At its core, a shopping cart is just an array of SKUs that users have some capability to manipulate through an interface. The implementation of such a system, whether it's session-based or whether its implementation rests more on the client-side, is trivial. The other components to an e-commerce platform are decidedly less trivial, but — depending on what tools you're going to leverage to put something together — that is not necessarily something that is going to exceed 50 hours or so of development. A single productive developer can make that happen.
Something that's exceedingly well fleshed-out is going to take many more hours to develop — an order of magnitude more time in many cases — but a very basic e-commerce platform is manageable within that time frame. You could certainly expect to see a lot of general unpleasantness in the back end, but functionality is key there.
Something that's exceedingly well fleshed-out is going to take many more hours to develop — an order of magnitude more time in many cases — but a very basic e-commerce platform is manageable within that time frame. You could certainly expect to see a lot of general unpleasantness in the back end, but functionality is key there.
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To me it sounds like you're over simplifying what a "shopping cart" is and making it intentionally obtuse to fit your "it's simple" statement. It's simple to throw together a hand spun "array of SKUs". But the hard truth is that even a "simple" shopping cart is much more then what you described.
Similarly, I've seen the expectations and baseline comparisons made by non-technical clients for a "simple shopping cart" also go beyond what was described.
wonderfield
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I can't really respond to that unless you elaborate on "much more". What, specifically, are you referring to?
This is all tangential anyway. Given such a limited budget, using an existing solution is an obvious win, which is why the OP asked for recommendations on such solutions. I'm just saying that the "it costs an order of magnitude more" statements aren't necessarily on the mark.
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Agreed. This is the reason I say a simple shopping cart is much more then what wonderfield described.
I think we can all agree that we have differing opinions of what fits the bill here. I think I've already side-tracked the conversation enough. Sorry OP!
that would be basically stealing that money. Robbery dude
What people pay for isn't just the labor. It's for the knowledge. If I invest 6 years into a trade skill why on earth would I work for like $15/hour? Might as well flip burgers and move into management or something.
It's my job as a developer to consume technology and determine what's a good option for a client. What we use to produce the result is irrelevant as long as it fits the spec of what they want.
I haven't used Magento personally but maybe it takes 20-30 hours to theme it out and another 10 hours to configure it. Perhaps the site also has a few static pages too. What looked like a 1-2 day task ends up being easily 40ish+ hours assuming the client doesn't change his mind at any point which pretty much never happens.
Parmenides
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Is that some really dry sarcasm there?
I still need to meet with the client to gather details before accepting this gig. Since their budget is tight, I was hoping to come across a plug 'n play platform. How about WooCommerce? That is free and is used with WordPress. I could give the client an option of purchasing a pre-made theme, or have one built for them. I'm not familiar with Drupal so I would rather not spend the time to learn another platform if WordPress and Woocommerce can do the same thing.
If it takes that kind of time to do it then you're not a worthwhile developer
Have you checked out Ecwid as yet? It seems to meet most of your requirements: plug and play, free/cheap, and relatively easy to use/manage.
Client can bump up their plan depending on how many features/max inventory they want.
By all means, please elaborate how you would be more effective in ShoeLace's hypothetical presentation.
I already mentioned I never worked with Magento so I don't know how complicated it is to setup and tweak. All I know is when you have a client asking for certain features and you're dealing with a pre-made solution often times you need to dive in and start modifying things.
You can try to insult me but I don't really care. I've been doing this for a long time and never had any complaints. I also turn down work on a regular basis because I stopped dealing with idiots when I was able to afford to do so.
Edit:
Also I wouldn't automatically bill someone $4k for 40 hours of work. If their budget is $4k I would try to balance it in a way that would benefit them the best. That might be $2.5k for the web site and then $1.5k for business cards, SEO and/or content creation, paid advertising or anything else they might want.
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Exactly shoelace. If somebody wants to charge $4k and is willing to put in 40 hours of work than good for them I guess. My potential client doesn't want to spend a lot so they will get what they want/pay for. I'm not saying I won't do a good job, but I won't under sell myself. Im willing to setup an ecom site but I won't build one from scratch, even though I could. I think a custom theme and an ecom site built on a platform such as woocommerce is a good compromise.
I love it when only DEVELOPERS give their opinion on dealing with RETAIL CLIENTS and running a BUSINESS. Because we all know that dealing with clients is mostly dev work right
Have you looked at X-Cart? It's a good cheaper platform to use, and many many pre-made templates you can modify a bit and customize the header / footer to fit in that budget.
right Have you looked at X-Cart? It's a good cheaper platform to use, and many many pre-made templates you can modify a bit and customize the header / footer to fit in that budget.
Magento is an excellent platform, but has higher requirements than most of the other common platforms out there. It's also more difficult to theme than say, WooCommerce. But, it's also far more powerful than others, too.
Depending on their requirements, configuring Magento correctly or integrating into POS, accounting, shipping matrix, pricing matrix, etc can take a significant amount of time.
For the price his client is willing to pay, you'll be hard-pushed to find someone developing a completely custom Magento site. If you do, it's going to be awful.
Of course, there are other platforms out there.
Depending on their requirements, configuring Magento correctly or integrating into POS, accounting, shipping matrix, pricing matrix, etc can take a significant amount of time.
For the price his client is willing to pay, you'll be hard-pushed to find someone developing a completely custom Magento site. If you do, it's going to be awful.
Of course, there are other platforms out there.