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

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

#151

Post by Can_Not »

exodust wrote: post #146
Can_Not wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That $30 per month fee is bad. Sounds pretty cheap compared to donating $20,000 worth of weekends to your friend for a half baked ecommerce CMS. Maybe the business should exist first and prove total control is necessary before sinking a huge unpredictable labor-cost into it.

That's exaggerating things and distorting the intention. It's for his friend's craft "business", not some client who needs a copy and paste effort ready by 9am tomorrow. Half baked CMS you say... are you predicting the outcome of an effort under your development? Some people should stick to plug and play solutions because it's their only real option. A friend of mine set up a Woo-commerce site for her boss who ran a…

> are you predicting the outcome of an effort under your development?

That's an ad hominem and still leaves my point of how huge the amount of underestimated work there is. The problem is the volume of work first, the quality of work (by both OP's self-admitted juniorness and by lack of time for a full-time project) second.

Also, your standards are high for ecommerce but you don't think a lot of effort is required to do as-good or better than a specific one you didn't like?

> It's for his friend's craft "business", not some client who needs a copy and paste effort ready by 9am tomorrow.

His friend probably doesn't want to wait a week everytime he thinks of a new basic requirement built into the vast majority of ready to go ecommerce CMSs.

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

#153

Post by onetokeoverthe »

jventura wrote: post #66

Like other posters, I suggest to test the market before writting your own software. A client of mine is using https://shopk.it for the store front, and it seems quite ok at 10€/month. It allows you to have your own domain attached to it, but you have to pay a little extra for https (which is kind-of strange, but...).

Thanks for crashing my browser. Shopk.it broke my internet.

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

#154

Post by ciaranconnor »

wilsonfiifi wrote: post #56

You could use an ecommerce API like Motlin [0]. This should allow you to have more control over the site and offload the ecommerce logic and processing to a 3rd party until you're confident you can roll your own. Haven't had the opportunity to use it personally but it seems like a good place to start. [0] https://moltin.com/

I know I'm late to the party, but moltin is far from cheap, which is a shame, as it's a very interesting approach.

As far as I'm aware, they still offer a free tier of 30k API operations per month, which apparently approximates 10k page views - which is very kind of them. However, I had to email them to get pricing information, and was informed their pricing _starts_ at $1k/month (I was actually quoted $12k/year) for 250k operations (i.e. ~80k page views). Ouch.

To make matters worse, they use to charge $49/month for 300k operations [1]. I was informed that this was very out of date information, as apparently they've got a new logo and everything since then. But still, I feel bad for anyone who got vendor-locked to them.

All in all, probably not a bad product, but definitely one to avoid for scenarios like OP's.

[1] https://www.g2crowd.com/products/moltin/pricing

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

#156

Post by e40 »

petra wrote: post #70
e40 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps less so if you use a wordpress hosting service.

Please explain.

A wordpress hosting service does one thing, maintain WP. They live and breath it. They apply important updates right away. They are more secure than my WP would be, since I don't live and breath it. And, if I'm using a WP hosting service and they get owned, no skin off my nose. I have daily backups of my WP site, so I can move to another one that is more secure, should my current hosting service prove unreliable.

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

#157

Post by yazan94 »

exodust wrote: post #147
akx wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, my response was that they _probably_ don't, if they'd evaluate that viewpoint further. Especially as a software dev/engineer, it's all too easy to think that you need absolute control. And no, now that you ask, no I'm not. I _have_ been the lead developer for at least 3 e-commerce systems though, so I know it's not trivial. Why do you think the fee is "bad"?

Because... it's a craft e-store, never going to have a lot of revenue; $30 per month is $30 less for buying food; also Shopify take a cut of each sale, so it's a regular double whammy and that sucks. And the owner will be a creative person, and they are usually fussy/particular/perfectionists regarding visual presentation of their artwork/brand/style/look and feel. I know, I've built online stores for artists. The at…

Well what would you do instead? Assuming that OP will build the site for free, the shop owner still needs to pay for hosting (assume $5 droplet at Digital Ocean), domain name (assume ~$10 from Namecheap), and a payment processor (assuming Paypal, (2.9% + 0.30) / transaction). Considering all of this is abstracted away and handled for you for $30, doesn't sound that bad. We haven't even touched on headaches from future maintenance, bugs, features, scaling, etc.

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

#158

Post by exodust »

yazan94 wrote: post #157
exodust wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because... it's a craft e-store, never going to have a lot of revenue; $30 per month is $30 less for buying food; also Shopify take a cut of each sale, so it's a regular double whammy and that sucks. And the owner will be a creative person, and they are usually fussy/particular/perfectionists regarding visual presentation of their artwork/brand/style/look and feel. I know, I've built online stores for artists. The at…

Well what would you do instead? Assuming that OP will build the site for free, the shop owner still needs to pay for hosting (assume $5 droplet at Digital Ocean), domain name (assume ~$10 from Namecheap), and a payment processor (assuming Paypal, (2.9% + 0.30) / transaction). Considering all of this is abstracted away and handled for you for $30, doesn't sound that bad. We haven't even touched on headaches from futur…

You've included "domain name" in the list of things Shopify does for $30, and you'd be wrong about that. It's an extra expense. And not only that, but the $30 plan doesn't provide "professional reports" which most businesses would want. Exporting invoice data as CSV, or to accounting software, backup of database etc. These are things I would advise a business needs.

I never said build the whole CMS/store platform from scratch. I would use something like Perch which is a CMS with shop-addon that allows you to build the site and store normally, then integrate easily into a shop. It's possible to be up and running quickly using a basic shared hosted platform as the host - which is all you need at first.

The day that "scaling" is needed is the day you ask your web host to put your mySQL e-store site on a better shared hosting plan with more RAM and more CPU... wow, what a huge effort! Or go VPS or something. Easy.

Every used mySqL? It actually works quite well believe it or not. Cheap, easy, not a headache.

We can argue all day about the details, but in the end you are advocating a microwave dinner as the solution for a small business wanting to make an impact and good impression with new customers. I am advocating something a lot better.

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

#159

Post by exodust »

Can_Not wrote: post #151
exodust wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exaggerating things and distorting the intention. It's for his friend's craft "business", not some client who needs a copy and paste effort ready by 9am tomorrow. Half baked CMS you say... are you predicting the outcome of an effort under your development? Some people should stick to plug and play solutions because it's their only real option. A friend of mine set up a Woo-commerce site for her boss who ran a…

> are you predicting the outcome of an effort under your development? That's an ad hominem and still leaves my point of how huge the amount of underestimated work there is. The problem is the volume of work first, the quality of work (by both OP's self-admitted juniorness and by lack of time for a full-time project) second. Also, your standards are high for ecommerce but you don't think a lot of effort is required to…

"basic requirement" huh, like exporting customer orders to a format ready to import into accounting software, aka "advanced report writing". Sorry, only available in the $299 per month shopify plan.

Look, if you like Shopify... go for it. Me, I would avoid that thing like the plague. I value flexible parameters and increased possibilities over a stifled e-store that pops out the vending machine slot if you remember to feed it $30 a month.

Shopify is not for developers, and not for anyone who knows a developer or willing to pay for something better than a microwave dinner experience. That's not just my opinion, it's also how it actually is.

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

#160

Post by handbanana »

thatthatis wrote: post #135
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.

Care to expand upon that?
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