Shopping Cart Wish List

[Cheryl]

I've been searching high and low for a shopping cart that will suit me and my various clients and haven't yet found the perfect choice. If anyone has some good experience with something they can suggest, I'd really appreciate it!

Wish List:
1. Online administration and secure, online order retrieval.
2. Option for real-time credit card processing.
3. *Easy* implementation of multiple shipping options/pricing (preferably some sort of plug-in for calculating UPS shipping charges).
4. Option for HTML or searchable database driven store.
5. Completely customizable in terms of layout design.
6. Online catalog builder.
7. Hosted on my server.
8. Product graphic upload.
9. Customizable invoicing via web and email.
10. Configurable product options.
11. Inventory control would be a plus.

I've looked at QuikStore (quikstore.com), which looks good, but not crazy about how shipping in configured.[nbsp][nbsp]StarVisor (starvisor.com) seems like a perfect choice, except that it requires use of their secure[nbsp][nbsp]server for $50/month and for real-time CC processing they only have one choice for a gateway account which has a high set-up fee (perhaps that's typical?).

Thanks a million for any suggestions or feedback on programs being used by anyone out there! I'm desperate to find a turnkey solution soon!

[Stephen]

i'd also like to hear more about this from other people who either have a cart like the one described above, or are in search of one.

what makes a great cart? i'm a developer and i have some of the necessary components distributed in various scripts of mine--others could be designed from scratch. so i could concievably design one of these. but there's a ton of carts out there, so what i'm wondering is, what would be the incentive to create yet another?

[Rich]

Cheryl:

Your requirements for invoicing and inventory control put you into the "high-end" cart category. Here are (my personal) recommendations:

Miva Merchant - This should do everything you want. You can purchase this direct from www.miva.com (http://www.miva.com) (you'll also need the Empresa engine). Total Cost: $990 Support is from www.miva.com (http://www.miva.com). (You can also take a sneak peak at www.merchantquest.com (http://www.merchantquest.com) for what I am working on for launch real soon now.) Merchant is also very capable as a developer's platform (see www.ebaystore.com (http://www.ebaystore.com) and www.florist.com) (http://www.florist.com)).

PerlShop - from www.perlshop.org (http://www.perlshop.org). This also has lots of bells and whistles. Pros: free. Cons: Expect a lot of integrating (i.e., coding) to get all the features you want. This is a recommended "look-see" if you are an advanced Perl developer.

If you "roll your own" I would expect to spend about a year in development and testing, at least. Shopping carts are complex applications, especially when total html accessible administration/configuration is included.

Rich

[John Kennett]

Cheryl

I've been looking around at shopping carts recently, and the one that looks best to me so far is CheckItOut from Adgrafix http://ssl.adgrafix.com -- I'm not sure if it has everything you are looking for, but it's certainly got most of the features.

I would be interested to hear anyone else's thoughts about this one!

BTW if you do end up buying CheckItOut, make sure you sign up as an Adgrafix reseller (takes about 5 minutes) and you'll get it for about $320 rather than $495!

John

[John Kennett]

Stephen

If you are even thinking of building a system of your own, have a look at http://www.dack.com/web/shopping_cart.html for a guide to best practice for shopping cart interfaces.

It looks like good advice to me, and one thing we don't need is another shopping cart script that is barely useable!

John

[Stephen]

John,

Thanks for the link. I actually have designed a shopping cart from scratch, but it's a custom-built affair for handling software sales. For what it is, it works nicely and follows many of the rules outlined in that link you provided. Maybe one day I'll generalize it if I think it's worth doing. Then again, there's a lot of competition out there for shopping carts.

[Evoir]

Hey hey.

Miva really seems like it is the thing. Is there any chance of folks teaming up and sharing the Empressa Engine? It is $500 per CPU, not domain. (just the Empressa engine)

$500 bucks (for the cart) seems fair for a stable and expandable and customizable script like MIVA, but then you have to buy the Empressa Engine. And I don't want to host with another company who provides it. I want FQ.

I am still trying to get my Network Solutions stuff fixed (admin contact is wrong) before I HAPPILY move our site to FQ. Having access to an Empressa Engine would sweeten the deal.

What would it take to make this happen?
[This message has been edited by Evoir (edited 07-05-00@9:23 pm)]

[Ryuuguu]

Any date yet on merchantquest?[nbsp][nbsp]Do you know if it will handle double byte characters (Japanese character set)?

Thanks
Grant
[This message has been edited by Ryuuguu (edited 07-31-00@05:38 am)]