There certainly are a lot of options available.
The bottom line is this. How much time and energy are you or your clients prepared to put into an online shop.
If you go for something like RomanCart, then a lot of work has been done for you as it is a hosted solution. If you go for something like OScommerce or Zencart then your practically developing a shop from scratch, but you get the framework in place.
Some shop software, such as our own Usercart 8 Infinity have been highly developed to slot into an existing site, but we do charge a one off licence fee per domain. Your domain name owns the software, if that expires, so does the licence. Licences are not transferable.
Other shop software are free, but you need to spend a considerable amount of time developing the site in order to use it.
Regardless of who you use, payment are always collected through a payment processor like Paypal, this is mainly because of the risks involved in accepting online payments. It is a position of trust and extreme risk through online fraud. You should expect to pay between 1% and 5% of the transaction value in transaction fees.
Any other questions come back on here and I will try to give you honest answers.
Finally there is other end of the spectrum, where you
Hi, apologies if this is the sort of question that has been asked before, but I am new to ecommerce and finding it all a bit confusing because there are so many options out there.
What I want is an ecommerce solution that works like RomanCart - ie it can easily be integrated into an existing site, but that has no annual subscription fee because I can't see all clients really going for that option.
From reading round the subject I understand there are opensource solutions like Zen-cart, osCommerce etl al, but what I don't understand is are these completely free or do you still have to pay someone, somewhere for the processing of payments?
Any answers to my questions or advice on this matter will be gratefully received,
thanks Bek
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