Anyone have Good Experience with Volusion, BigCommerce, 3DCART, or Magento? I am looking to build a new website store and really need GREAT advice on this subject. EVERYBODY claims to be the BEST. I would prefer anybody that weighs in have ACTUAL experience or current customers of the companies they are either suggesting or preventing. Thanks for reading this
You should base your decision on what you like best, not based on others. People use different carts, and multiple cart platforms can be successful in their own rights. You will not find one cart that has success, and all other carts are failures.... and what maybe best for one, maybe not best for you... This is why you have to do your homework, and choose the cart you think is best for you, and not based on what others may say; one may think 3dcart is success, while another may think its a failure....
Each software has its own unique features and functionalities. so it is better to choose the software based on the scenarios.
I think what I should have said or asked was for current and past customers to post any quirks or dislikes about a service and maybe that would help rule out a choice or two. When I asked some of them about the things I read about each company claimed that those reviews are not validated and phoney. They also ALL used the comment that "that was an old issue and not a concern anymore" volusion stated they have not had server issues since 2010. I need the truth from the mouths of it customers past and present as none of them will acknowledge any concerns
What do you prefer? Hosted Solution, or you own host; I do not know to much about hosted carts as I have never had any interest setting up anything on someone else's server, just does not seem professional. What is your skill set? Can you code, design, etc...a cart coder/designer can take the most failed cart on this planet, and fix it up to his very own dream cart; Where someone else may say "This is the worst eCart on this planet" and if you can not code/design, or jack of all trades, then you might as well pull out the check book.... ok, lets say now that you got your cart setup, you got the best design on the planet, etc...now what? Did you think traffic was just going to roll into making you $100k/mo? Can you say SEO, Traffic Targeting, eMarketing? Do you have the skill to do all of this? Do you know SEO, or anything about eMarketing that will give you better changes of success? Opps...maybe you did not think this far ahead, maybe you thought your magic cart was going to pull it all the traffic it needs so you can eat lobster every night for the rest of your life... Time to pull out the check book once again; even then your cart will have already been up for many months, if not longer, there is no such thing as easy success to eCommerce, you are competing with every other ecommerce on the planet, along with the big boys such as Amazon, and whoever else is out there... Before you even get off the ground, I suspect you will have already put $1-$3k into your cart.... (assuming you do not know Coding, Design, SEO, eMarketing, and so on....) I am not a coder, designer; I know spit about SEO/eMarketing, and I have 35+ niche domains, and I think some of them would do very good, unfortunately, I am just as broke as everyone else on DP.
Great reply. I would prefer a non hosted solution unless enough weigh in otherwise. I have a powerful server with a 4 core i3 with 12gb memory and ssd array. As far as coding I am good with HTML but not much beyond. Seo I am not worried about as far as offline SEO. If there is a good online SEO setup better than others that may be important. I am thinking magento right now but not ready to pull trigger. Can I just install magento and then purchase a template closest to my liking and simply pay somebody to code it to my liking?
Any little thing you can do yourself will be that much better...I would not go with just any SEO, you should seek out a company that can provide you eCommerce solutions in all aspects, they need to offer advice, consultation, SEO, eMarketing solutions, fix this, fix that.... consider them your IT to your eStore...every company has some type of IT dept for a reason; to keep things running smoothly.... I do not know enough about Mag; however, I do have my eye on PrestaShop, I have heard good reviews, they have many addons, and those addons do cost a pretty penny, and you can also find PrestaShop templates, I have seen some pretty good ones.... They also have forum support; PrestaShop is a free cart, so do not expect any direct support from PrestaShop, you wont get it.... Their forum is also very active, so if you are looking for help with your cart (paid) then you should not have problem finding someone.... Hope I was helpful
http://www.shoppingcartelite.com - the founder posted this recently http://www.igorsoshkin.com/post/37961783529/good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal Volusion always goes down, Google it. Internet Retailer has a whole section on it.
That seems like by the time you sign up for the recommended and suggested options and addons you are spending many hundreds of dollars per month. While they say they are different seems the sales pitch and dream cart scenario is the same.
if you sell not too many products, do not use magento, magento needs vps or dedicated server. it runs very slow. you can try oscommerce, or zen-cart. both of them are free also.
I have been doing extensive research on what cart to use for my ecommerce site which is rather small. My web developer is pushing wordpress but wonder if that is because it is such an easy site to build. Magento is to complicating and costly to host. The best options if you want open source (free shopping cart) is prestashop, opencart or zencart ( google these) I decided against a hostes solution like volusion or bigcommerce because you pay them a fee and they are not very flexible in design of your site but everyone is different so they may be whay you need. I am considering going with wordpress and using a plugin like woocommerce (not exactly sure of the name) I am doiing some research now on wether or not to use wordpress and an ecommerce plugin. If anyone has an opinion I would like to hear it. I know where the original poster is comming from when he said he wants feedback from the actual owner of an ecommerce site. Trouble is- people who freqeunt these forums aren now site owners rather site builders. Site builders give great into but still they are not the avg joe owner of the site who knows first hand how the site is operating or difficultiies from the owners perspective.