There is a lot of discussion about the ongoing battle between paid and free shopping carts – whether a free shopping cart is really free and whether a paid shopping cart is worth the money you spend on it. Then within paid shopping carts there are another two broad types: hosted shopping carts and self-hosted shopping carts. What do you choose and how?
The easiest way to decide what you want to do comes down to your experience and how much you want to get down to the day-to-day management of the shopping cart software. Even if you have the expertise to manage the shopping cart software you may not want to. A paid shopping cart would normally have the following advantages over a free one:
- If there’s a problem, you’re paying them so they’ll fix it
- When new features are available your provider may be able to upgrade you to them, and resolve any issues for you.
- If you have trouble doing something and cant’ find help for it in the documentation, you have an expert you can ask.
- New features will be added to the cart that you can purchase or obtain at no cost (depending on the cart and their terms). Free carts you can wait for years for an upgrade or a bug fix.
- You don’t have to stress about things like security as much. A paid provider will usually go to the lengths of ensuring that they do their upmost to offer a secure cart, and plug any security holes as they become aware of them. Free software will usually be installed on a generic hosting provider whose server must cope with both the needs of shopping carts and other types of generic web applications. You’re always better off on an ecommerce optimised server.
Free shopping carts are free but you usually have to post problems on public community discussion boards or wait a long time for software authors to reply or resolve issues that you are having. Modules and plugins may or may not have been tested with the other modules and plugins that you have, wreaking all havoc on your system that you have to resolve by either fixing it yourself, or paying someone else to do them.
For an experienced ecommerce programmer, or someone who wants a high level of control over the day to day workings of your shopping cart software, then a free solution may work for you. But you’re generally better off with a paid or paid/hosted solution.
