Should you buy or rent your shopping cart?
When choosing the shopping cart software that is best for you and your
customers, you have the option to choose a shopping cart supplied by a webhost
or buy a shopping cart and host it yourself. There are advantages and
disadvantages to both options.
The biggest advantage of hosted shopping carts is technical skills aren’t
required to set up the shopping cart – the host does the hard work. You will not
be required to provide the secure certificate, and you can get straight into
setting up your shop.
The disadvantages associated with remotely hosted shopping carts is that there
is usually a monthly fee that you will need to pay. You also run the risk of the
host closing their business, leaving you without a shopping cart. You may be
given less control over your shopping cart pages which may make it difficult to
match the shopping cart design to be similar to your website.
If you decide to use a hosted shopping cart, make sure that you check the host
out thoroughly. Assure yourself they will not be accessing your customers
sensitive data, or harvesting your database for their email addresses – their
privacy policy is a good place to check.
The main advantages of buying shopping cart software that you host yourself is
that you will not have any monthly fees, and you will usually have more control
over how the pages are displayed.
Some shopping carts are very simple to install, while others may require some
technical skills. The upfront costs are higher but the ongoing fees are lower.
You may also need to get a secure certificate – your webhost can usually help
you with this.
No matter which option you choose, you will need to be sure that the shopping
cart can be used with your merchant account. Explore all of your options for
your shopping cart, and choose the one that will best serve the needs of you and
your customers, based on what your business can afford.
Like this article? Want it on your site? Copy and paste below. You can do this without cost or notification
on the condition the HTML is left unchanged (minor formatting changes are acceptable).