We outsource our server for Akopia.

We are currently having problems with our current provider.


Are there any companies that are out there are stable, and have Akopia on there servers.

Joe

I would also be interested in finding this out.

Site5 and VO, along with WeinBar have Akopia installed.

there are a bunch of these. at least jtlnet.com and liquidweb.com have akopia installed. i am hosting with liquidweb but cannot recommend it... jtlnets prices are kinda high.. at least for me because i want to have a static ip and for this feature you have to pay $40/ month.

but im sure these are not the only ones.. just look for a host with a preinstalled shopping cart.. chances are it is akopias interchange.

Originally posted by spiggy
but im sure these are not the only ones.. just look for a host with a preinstalled shopping cart.. chances are it is akopias interchange.
I disagree. That may be true in the near future, especially since Red Hat bought Akopia and is using it for their e-commerce solution in Red Hat Linux 7.2 and on, though not now. There are a lot of shopping carts out there, from free cgi scripts with no support to expensive licensed products like Miva Merchant and some really high end costly products. According to reviews I've read, none do all that one might hope for, not even the costliest ones.

I'd been searching for months for the right program as I have a couple of clients who will have a need for it soon (one other had a Javascript based cart that was okay for his limited needs). I looked at many of them. The high end was out and the low end was too low. Most lack the ability to interface with Cybercash and.or Authorize.net and there was no real support. E-commerce is just too important to use an unsupported program.

It was thanks to this forum that I learned of Akopia and began researching it further. I was impressed, especially with their 3 tier administration system. The ownership by Red Hat (which has 70% or more of the Linux market) the open source nature that allows improvements to be made by anyone with the ability, and the availability of support by RH, along with Interchange's features, convinced me that this was the right program and that my search was over.

It will be installed Monday, along with some other improvements I'm making. I'll report on it in a few weeks after I have some familiarity with it. One of the sites I'm redesigning now can benefit from it and I may incorporate it with the revisions.

I'll keep you all posted on it later.

Akopia does indeed look very powerful.

The problem with running this as a pre-installed script at a host however, is that you are now at the mercy of the host to provide support.

There are a number of areas within the installation that I cannot even see, much less effect.

Liquidweb was not able to get the demo running for me in my account. I cannot have my shopping cart down for days waiting for the host to figure out what is wrong with it.

I'm going with one I can installed as a stand-alone CGI and support myself.

Akopia looks nice, but I'd be careful if you cannot install and support it yourself.

-t

Originally posted by thewitt
Akopia does indeed look very powerful.

The problem with running this as a pre-installed script at a host however, is that you are now at the mercy of the host to provide support.

This is true, However, it is also true that one should choose a host carefully, with support being one of the key considerations. After all, you;re likely to need their support in other areas as well.

There are a number of areas within the installation that I cannot even see, much less effect.And well you shouldn't. Many files and areas serve all customers on the server and no customer should have access to them. It would be like giving root access to all shared server customers.

Liquidweb was not able to get the demo running for me in my account. I cannot have my shopping cart down for days waiting for the host to figure out what is wrong with it.
I have to agree with you on that. However, it goes back to the issue of choosing a host carefully.

I'm going with one I can installed as a stand-alone CGI and support myself.I can well understand the desire to rely as little as necessary on a host for support. I had two lousy ones before I got my own server. Your needs are probably simple though if you plan on running a stand alone script. I haven't seen any really good ones, though some are better than others.

Akopia looks nice, but I'd be careful if you cannot install and support it yourself.
I agree, though I think more focus should be on the selection of host. Once they have Interchange running, it's largely a matter of just adding a new MySQL database (or Akopia's own, depending on their set up) and letting the customer do the rest.

Choose wisely. However long it takes to find the right host is time well spent. Those who make hasty decisions and/or fall for gimmicks and marketing flash usually pay the price somewhere along the line.

Originally posted by Duster

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Choose wisely. However long it takes to find the right host is time well spent. Those who make hasty decisions and/or fall for gimmicks and marketing flash usually pay the price somewhere along the line.

This is of course, easier said than done.

I shopped for weeks trying to find a new host. I found nothing of serious consequence against the host I eventually went with, and I've been nothing but disappointed.

They have Akopia running for a dozen other customers. Why all the sudden they are unable to make it run for me, I don't know. My request sat in their helpdesk queue for a week without being addressed. When I called their 800 number, they finally looked at it and were unable to determine the cause of the problem. They said it was something I had done in my editing through the administration interface. I told them to delete the whole thing and reinstall. They did. No differance. I told them to delete the install and I'd deal with it on my own. I'm setting up a shopping cart system on my own now. It sucks. I'm already paying for a plan that includes a cart - that cart is not functional. The host is apparently not capable of making it so.

Since I'm a IT professional with 20+ years of experience, I find that I can often support myself better than anyone who works for a reselling host. I suspect there are some great hosting companies out there that I'd love to have support me. I just have not found one yet. I'm continually disappointed.

Caveat Emptor is certainly a guiding principle when searching for a hosting company. I would not go with another web hosting company without first getting feedback from their existing customers. In some cases this may be hard to do, but since going to my current hosting company, I've now had plenty of warnings and negative feedback that I did not get beforehand.

-t

http://theexchangeproject.org/

Maybe not quite what you're looking for, but we had a guy set this up with almost no need of help from us at all. He's a self confessed non-programmer. Seems quite powerful, and 'apparently' simple to install

Greg Moore

Originally posted by akashik
http://theexchangeproject.org/

Maybe not quite what you're looking for, but we had a guy set this up with almost no need of help from us at all. He's a self confessed non-programmer. Seems quite powerful, and 'apparently' simple to install

Greg Moore

This is exactly what I'm setting up as we speak.

-t

Ok, I guess it is what you were looking for :)

The guy who set it up on our server only had one real problem. magic_quotes needed to be overridden as the way PHP is compiled with Apache on Alabanza means it's locked into the 'off' position. A single line of code added to the config script sorted that out. Beyond that I think it was fairly well straight out of the box. I'm thinking of using it myself if I can find something worth selling *lol*

Greg Moore

Beware of Akopia I dont think it is that reliable.

We have had several problems with them.

Joe

As far as nice looking and doing a lot, akopia is it. But we have noticed that the interchange server that runs it is often shutting down for no clear reason.

We have been loading free cgi carts for small stores to avoid more problems with akopia. However, I do fully feel that it is more a problem of conflicting programs within our control panel software or set up then akopias fault.
I have heard from others not at the vdi NOC that it is running great for them with no down time with the interchange server that runs the carts on the server. We are pretty sure it is a cpanel conflict, and the issue is going to be addressed.

Tim L

Originally posted by superiorhost
...
We have been loading free cgi carts for small stores to avoid more problems with akopia.
...
Which ones are you using?

www.sipernet.com has them preinstalled,
I think that it is very reliable, it seems kinda of hard to set it up by your self and all, but if it is preinstalled, plua you can reset the cart if you are a reseller.

Hi IntelligentHosting.com,

I have found commerce.cgi to be one of the simplest and reliable small carts around. After this last couple of updates I am starting to wonder though.

They just removed the tarball so you have to FTP it into the sites ( slower set up) and that is dissapointing.

Also, I have had people with earlier versions running 1000 products with no problem, and now it says it will slow after 300 or so.

agora.cgi is it's sister more less... it is set to use pgp or gpg mailing the orders out wich is good also. Both set up about the same. they are almost the same script... at least agora was developed from commerce.cgi from what I can tell.

They are both good free carts that are easy to set up.

Tim L

We have used the Quikstore cart and if you can live with one that don't uses an sql backend it is very powerful and flexible. It uses it's own crypt program for cc numbers and have plug ins for all major payment gateways and works with inventory and ups module. Works with both an online and an offline catalog manager/builder.

One of the best parts is that it supprts any language and currency, and uses html templates so you can do any type of design. You can even mix html and database pages on the same site.

The only minus with it is that it uses a simple text database, but works ok as long as your products don't go over a 1000 items.

Nordic

Akopia is by far the best system available and we've tried the lot, Commerce.cgi, Agora, Exchange Project, Actinic Catalog etc. etc.

The only thing about hosts who use CPanel is that CPanel make a right hash of Akopia, CPanel out of the box isn't even setup right for Akopia (I know because I had to make some changes before Akopia would run on a new server, and now it's running it's been running for 4 days and going strong - but not under load unfortunately). We used to have Akopia on our Alabanza box and it ran fine once the Alabanza scripts stopped shutting it down.