Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#131

Post by thatthatis » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

exodust wrote: post #106

codyzazulak1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried Shopify? It's nearly full control and cheap as shit. I've started stores and sold products in the same day many times, they have 1000s of apps, and even 2 week trial that enables you to test any product before even paying a cent. Unless you can't live with credit card fees, or you're selling drugs, you should almost 100% always use Shopify. Not to mention they can be scaled to the moon cheaply too…

Coding the store is NOT terrible advice when you're talking to a developer who wants "full control and independent". It's very disappointing to see all the comments here saying "use shopify". That's what your mum would do. Are you a developer or not? It's like saying "just use facebook, you don't need a website", or "Just eat at MacDonalds, it's much cheaper and easier". There's no way I would recommend being tied to…

Absolutely developers should write their own shopping cart vs use Shopify. While they’re at it, they should probably design a custom OS and a custom webserver too.

After all, these aren’t all three cases of discrete functional software with well defined patterns of use where minor customization is easy and writing from scratch takes thousands or millions of man hours.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#132

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:31 PM UTC

yurishimo wrote: post #61

elicash wrote: post #12

I haven't used it, but you might be interested in https://craftcommerce.com

It's also $999 for use on a live website. It's a dark pattern that they don't expose the pricing requirement except at the bottom of the home page. I can buy a lot of hosting on different platforms for a thousand bucks.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#133

Post by theandrewbailey » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

aerovistae wrote: post #82

mythrowaway1124 wrote: post #10

Unless your product is an online store, don't code an online store.

I don't really understand this sentiment which seems to be widely shared here. Stripe handles all the PCI stuff. What's wrong with coding up a basic store?

You also need to take care of:

    Catalog/pricing/inventory management
    Category/multiple product display/design
    Search
    Single product page display/design
    Shipping options
    Checkout, aside from payment (partial flow, or completely externally hosted?)
    Order management (how to get orders out of the system and into a warehouse to be packed)
    Promotions and discounts (will you have coupons?)
    Customer feedback/product reviews
    Contact me/us

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Source: I work for an ecommerce consultant (I use/live in Salesforce Commerce Cloud/formerly Demandware)

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#134

Post by thatthatis » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

sireat wrote: post #127

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #27

To the rest of the posters... __READ__ what he is writing.. He want total control and a low budget. Have any of you even tried Shopify ? It's low control and it's expensive as hell. Ok, so i'm actually running a pretty large store on Django Oscar. But i would say that it really depends on what you are building The only reason i choose Django oscar over something like shopify is that we sell a highly customizable prod…

Is there a decent alternative to Shopify that is self-hosted? That $400 a year from Shopify is not a trivial expense for a hobby store. I have friends with small brick and mortar stores and have a hard time suggesting an off-the-shelf ecommerce solution. Shopify would be a bad choice for my friend's carpet store where very few customers will actually order the carpet online but where customizable website functionalit…

If $400 a year isn’t a trivial expense for an ecommerce store, you are probably wasting your time.

You can go with woo, which is marginally free. But it takes a week to set up vs half a day with Shopify. So, wasting 35 $100 hours to save $400 is a bad decision. Then you have maintenance costs of a few hours a month.

You could go with amazon. But to list your own product costs $39.99 a month, so $480 a year there too. (You might be able to go with $39.99 then downgrade, haven’t tried it)

eBay and Etsy might work. Craigslist for sale postings are still free.

But at the end of the day, if the store isn’t bringing it at least $400-500 a month it should probably be shuttered and move on to the next idea.

There are definitely apps to do customizable combos and reserve but don’t pay.

Customizing Shopify (or big commerce or volusion) is almost always cheaper in total cost than custom work until you have a huge base.

I wrote software for 7 years. Now run 4 Shopify stores. I used to also run two woo stores. Shoping carts are complicated and boring. Shopify gets things right you wouldn’t know you need for three years. It’s the right place to start.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#135

Post by thatthatis » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

handbanana wrote: post #36

Shopify. And if they start selling a lot and ship things themselves, have them look into shipping software as well (where you can buy and print postage/labels and get shipping rates for packages online)

Shipstation is probably the right shipping software to start with. It.Just.Works.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#136

Post by mkirklions » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

Rjevski wrote: post #42

mkirklions wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does the job for me. Plus then you get a wordpress/php website. Im very happy now that I understand php and was able to make a custom theme.

A Wordpress website isn’t an advantage, it’s a nightmare in terms of security and maintenance.

What about security?

And what maintenance? Hitting update every few weeks?

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#137

Post by mkirklions » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

Rjevski wrote: post #41

mkirklions wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use wordpress + woocommerce(amazon pay) I dont think this entire setup costs 200 dollars.

Would not recommend anything Wordpress-based. That thing is a security and maintenance nightmare.

Can you cite anything?

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#138

Post by thatthatis » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:46 PM UTC

a_imho wrote: post #19

WordPress with WooCommerce. In the end there are only a handful of subtle differences between off the shelf solutions.

Getting a woocommerce store to load in less than a second is not trivial.

There are a lot of hidden costs behind the “free, just pay hosting” of woocommerce

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#139

Post by thatthatis » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

richjdsmith wrote: post #53

Please for the love of all that is good in this world, don't use Woocommerce. I maintain a WooCommerce site - it is a fucking nightmare. Oh, as for "saving money" by choosing Woo over Shopify, in the end you pay for plugins bringing you the same functionality already built into Shopify.

And you pay in setup time, and in developer maintenance time.

Woo is a siren song. It has a seductive appeal: free, complete control.

But then you spend 40 hours setting it up vs 5, and 10-20 hours a month maintaining it vs 0, and 20 hours getting your pages to load fast enough. And then updating plugins. And updating plugins. And updating plugins.

in the end, most stores are better on Shopify or Big or Volusion.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#140

Post by thatthatis » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

yurishimo wrote: post #58

richjdsmith wrote: post #53

Please for the love of all that is good in this world, don't use Woocommerce. I maintain a WooCommerce site - it is a fucking nightmare. Oh, as for "saving money" by choosing Woo over Shopify, in the end you pay for plugins bringing you the same functionality already built into Shopify.

One thing Woo has over Shopify is the control of the data. Self hosted will always offer more control to the store owner in every aspect of the business. I agree, not a good idea to choose Woo for cost savings alone though if you can get by on the services provided by Shopify.

Control over data cuts two ways. If you control it, you also have to secure it.