Why should you pay for a remotely hosted
shopping cart for your small business website, rather than just install a free OpenSource
shopping cart on your site?
There are a lot of reasons:
1) Focus.
Your business is selling stuff, not installing and managing
a complicated script. You'll have enough issues running a business that you won't be able
to outsource to someone else the way you can with a shopping cart script.
2) Price.
Paid hosted shopping cart software's price is
inconsequential: $10-$100/month. If that's a significant expense for your business, you
need to look into improving your profit margin.
3) Support.
While support for "paid" business software is
included in the cheap price, support for "free" business software is pretty
expensive. OpenSource and other free software come without any support except forums for
do-it-yourself-ers to share ideas. So, you'll end up paying someone to install and
maintain it. Or you do it yourself, which costs so much time it's more expensive than
paying someone if your time is worth anything.
4) Installation.
When you buy hosted software on a subscription plan,
installation is already done and support is included. When you have an issue–and have
you ever had software that you didn't have an issue with at least once?–you don't
have to pay a developer $150/hour to make it go away.
5) Security.
Security issues are taken care of for you by the
provider–no patching software.
6) Speed.
Hosted online shopping carts really do work now, out of the
box. You just input your inventory and go. OpenSource shopping carts come with dozens of
customization options that will take you hours just to decide you don't need most of them.
7) Peace of mind.
The shopping cart is the jugular vein of an online
business. If anything makes the blood stop flowing, however minor the cause, you'll feel
it fast. If you are the one who has to make sure the blood stays flowing, or if you have
to rely on the availability of a freelance programmer, you won't be getting the soundest
sleep. Let a specialist do that worrying for you, 24 hours a day. |
