Hello,

I'm new to this forum. I was brought here by the 1planhost/webhostplus thread. My site (massagewear DOT com) has been down for over a week now. So I'm searching for a new hosting providor that offers a cart with some of the same features as my current cart (Cart32) for about the same cost. (1PH is $99/yr.)
The site is now accessible from some states if anyone wants to take a look to get a feel for my product page layouts, etc. Cart32 is a good cart, but it takes a long time to set it up. I have to enter all of the product info into their HTML generator, and then paste the code into my web pages. I don't have my products in any kind of database. I can't access my cart to export the settings into a new account with Cart32. The setup takes so long, I was hoping to find something easier to implement.

Some of the features I will need are:

- The ability to use my current "Add to Cart" buttons. Most of the carts I've seen lately (OS Commerce, Agora, etc.) seem to be deigned to have the cart serve as the web site. I want to keep my site as it is, and have the products added to the cart from my current site. I want to integrate the cart into my site, not the other way around.

- Customizable to look at least similar to my site as far as colors, headers, footers, etc.

- Customer discounts based on a coupon code

- Flexible shipping options (We charge $1.99 shipping per item for 1-6 items, 7+ items get free shipping)

- The ability for a customer to checkout without signing-in or creating an account

- Multiple options for products (Size, color, etc. with the ability to charge more for certain sizes)

- How they heard about us box (Can be just a text box)

- Also, the ability to export sales transactions into Quickbooks is not necessary, but a definite plus)

Any suggestions would be appreciated. This seems to be a very helpful board. I've learned a lot already. Thanks in advance!

Hello,

I'm new to this forum. I was brought here by the 1planhost/webhostplus thread. My site (massagewear DOT com) has been down for over a week now. So I'm searching for a new hosting providor that offers a cart with some of the same features as my current cart (Cart32) for about the same cost. (1PH is $99/yr.)
The site is now accessible from some states if anyone wants to take a look to get a feel for my product page layouts, etc. Cart32 is a good cart, but it takes a long time to set it up. I have to enter all of the product info into their HTML generator, and then paste the code into my web pages. I don't have my products in any kind of database. I can't access my cart to export the settings into a new account with Cart32. The setup takes so long, I was hoping to find something easier to implement.

Some of the features I will need are:

- The ability to use my current "Add to Cart" buttons. Most of the carts I've seen lately (OS Commerce, Agora, etc.) seem to be deigned to have the cart serve as the web site. I want to keep my site as it is, and have the products added to the cart from my current site. I want to integrate the cart into my site, not the other way around.

- Customizable to look at least similar to my site as far as colors, headers, footers, etc.

- Customer discounts based on a coupon code

- Flexible shipping options (We charge $1.99 shipping per item for 1-6 items, 7+ items get free shipping)

- The ability for a customer to checkout without signing-in or creating an account

- Multiple options for products (Size, color, etc. with the ability to charge more for certain sizes)

- How they heard about us box (Can be just a text box)

- Also, the ability to export sales transactions into Quickbooks is not necessary, but a definite plus)

Any suggestions would be appreciated. This seems to be a very helpful board. I've learned a lot already. Thanks in advance!
Hi WebGuy,

Most of what you are asking for is available from a lot of different shopping carts out there. I personally use X-Cart and LiteCommerce and can recommend both of them to you. I notice though that Cart32 is ASP based. Do you want to continue with Windows hosting as you are now? Or will Linux hosting do for you?

Dave :peace:

Hi WebGuy,

Most of what you are asking for is available from a lot of different shopping carts out there. I personally use X-Cart and LiteCommerce and can recommend both of them to you. I notice though that Cart32 is ASP based. Do you want to continue with Windows hosting as you are now? Or will Linux hosting do for you?

Dave :peace:

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the quick reply. It doesn't really matter to me which platform the site is hosted on. I'm not sure what the benefits are of one over the other. My site is very basic as are my web authoring skills :-) Is there an advantage to one or the other? Thanks again,

Tony

have a look at www.jshop.co.uk as well :)

Just noticed the mis-spelling in the title of the original post. "sprecific"? What was I thinking??? :-)

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the quick reply. It doesn't really matter to me which platform the site is hosted on. I'm not sure what the benefits are of one over the other. My site is very basic as are my web authoring skills :-) Is there an advantage to one or the other? Thanks again,

Tony
Hi Tony,

Actually a lot of the carts out there will run on either Linux or Windows since they are basically written in PHP. Linux web hosting is a lot more popular and therefore generally less expensive than Windows hosting with the same specifications. You probably want to look for a host that has good uptime and support as well as not being on overcrowded servers. E-Commerce customers depend on their websites for income and therefore have more critical needs than say someone with a personal website. Most Linux hosts that offer cPanel will also have a script installer called Fantastico which can install certain cart software for you with very little effort. Most will offer osCommerce, ZenCart and CubeCart as the free cart software. All three of these carts are open source and will do the job for you. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Dave :peace:

to me it sounds like you have a very specific set of rules or options you would like your cart to do and all of the major vendors of commerce applications seem to do a few here, a few there.

I would suggest trying to find someone who is willing to do the customization one on one with you to get exactly what you want.

Thanks to everyone for the advice. Looks like I'm going to try OS Commerce first - what do I have to lose... LiteCommerce looks good if I need to upgrade. I liked JShop, but at $500, I didn't see enough advantages over LiteCommerce for my situation to make it worth the investment. Thanks again!