Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

#61

Post by aries1980 » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 6:01 PM UTC

looping__lui wrote: post #47

looping__lui wrote: post #19

Honestly - don’t. Beyond the technical challenges, have you considered: - All the little tax issues for various countries/states - Security in processing payments, avoiding fraud and protecting customer data - Integrating payment processing for credit card companies, Payp et al. and NOT having to deal with constant “account freezes” due to stolen credit card payments, customer complaints etc. For selling software, I…

Just adding to that (especially for software): not only was the development overhead minimal: I think setting up the shop, integrating the license key generation, determining all the pricing etc. took like 1 day including testing?! The savings on accounting were also significant. Had we been the direct seller, we would have driven the (tax) auditors fee ad absurdum. E.g., we would have needed a tax id in every EU sta…

> E.g., we would have needed a tax id in every EU state we are selling to

You could have registered to "VAT Mini One Stop Shop (MOSS)" in one member state: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/i...

Re: Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

#62

Post by DoctorOW » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

I'll put Snipcart (https://snipcart.com/) in the ring. It's nice because it has only the server logic part in the cloud but it's very easy for a programmer to set up and do themselves.

Re: Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

#63

Post by askafriend » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

Don't self-host. Just get Shopify and be done with it. You should be focused on running your business not fussing around with the tech. Any time you spend doing that is time you aren't spending on selling.

Re: Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

#64

Post by tamiral » Sun, Jun 21, 2020, 12:00 AM UTC

ecesena wrote: post #6

Woocommerce. Can you elaborate more on "ideological reasons"? I'm genuinely curious why you don't feel ok to pay less than $1/sale to shopify to keep your store up & running but are ok paying much more on fulfillment/shipping.

i love wordpress+woocommerce instead of shopify because it's an easier system to manage security + hosting + speed + code if you know what you are doing. You don't really need paid plugins, just some PHP along the way and some free plugins will get you a long way. Esp paying < $100 for a shared cpanel or 1 of the better hosts $100-200/yr is still cheaper than Shopify's 30-70 USD a month.

Re: Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

#65

Post by meesterdude » Sun, Jun 21, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

maximus024 wrote: post #49

meesterdude wrote: post #17

Workarea is a rails engine you can host yourself, I do integration work for retailers but the core of it is OSS. Lots of plugins, and they're easy to create. https://github.com/workarea-commerce/workarea

License is a non starter: > You may make production use of the Licensed Work without an additional license agreement with WebLinc so long as you do not use the Licensed Work for a Commerce Service.

> Effective on the Change Date, or the fourth anniversary of the first publicly available distribution of a specific version of the Licensed Work under this License, whichever comes first, the Licensor hereby grants you rights under the terms of the Change License, and the rights granted in the paragraph above terminate.

doesn't that convert the license to "Version 2.0 or later of the GNU General Public License"?

Re: Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

#66

Post by neurostimulant » Sun, Jun 21, 2020, 7:41 AM UTC

Just use woocommerce. As long as you keep the number of installed WordPress plugins minimal and keep them up to date every couple weeks, you're golden. The biggest issue with WordPress ecosystem is the varying qualities of 3rd party plugins which give it endless security issue, but as long as you keep those minimal, a woocommerce store is very solid choice as woocommerce is a first part plugin with solid attention from automattic.

Re: Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

#67

Post by mosiuerbarso » Sun, Jun 21, 2020, 12:53 PM UTC

Woocommerce on it's own VPS running CentMinMod: http://centminmod.com/ I help manage an Ecommerce site which gets 10,000 vistors a month, and our $20 per month Linode instance + Centminmod handles that level of traffic easily. As for Wordpress themes I'm a big fan of GeneratePress. https://generatepress.com/

Re: Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

#68

Post by allanmacgregor » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 11:50 AM UTC

econcon wrote: post #34

honkycat wrote: post #30

If you can't afford the shopify fees you don't actually have a business.

I also sell 3d printed models online so I've made like 20+ e-commerce websites so far. Most of them are niche website and get 5-10 sales each and some even get zero sales but some websites are seasonal in nature and in some season or event, they blow up in sales. I am trying to capture this windfall but Shopify is not good for this task. They charge per store so I am limited to just having one store which is not good…

I been thinkering with the idea of service first ecommerce platform; that doesn't lock people down as much Shopify, Magento or BigCommerce do.

For an use case like yours, the 20+ websites are more akin to microsites focused on a subset of products but still mapped to one single catalog and ecommerce store.

Even with ShopifyPlus multi store support each store has its own catalog, and completely seperate for integrations, transactions, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

#69

Post by econcon » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 6:57 AM UTC

allanmacgregor wrote: post #68

econcon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also sell 3d printed models online so I've made like 20+ e-commerce websites so far. Most of them are niche website and get 5-10 sales each and some even get zero sales but some websites are seasonal in nature and in some season or event, they blow up in sales. I am trying to capture this windfall but Shopify is not good for this task. They charge per store so I am limited to just having one store which is not good…

I been thinkering with the idea of service first ecommerce platform; that doesn't lock people down as much Shopify, Magento or BigCommerce do. For an use case like yours, the 20+ websites are more akin to microsites focused on a subset of products but still mapped to one single catalog and ecommerce store. Even with ShopifyPlus multi store support each store has its own catalog, and completely seperate for integratio…

This is actually very popular usecase among dropshipping too, being locked to one store reduces conversion rates.

We can make subaccount in stripe, so it's easy to specific different subaccount for different product.

While WooCommerce is there but still we need to setup wordpress blog and multiple other things.

Re: Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

#70

Post by honkycat » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 11:59 PM UTC

yowlingcat wrote: post #54

honkycat wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OH! Ok that actually makes sense when you put it in context. I would probably develop a framework and do free gatsbyjs/netlify static sites that link back to a centralized payment processor service

Yeah, I think this is the move. Do you think you should also centralize inventory as well? IE having 1 shopify store with inventory of all of your items vs having 1 stripe account.

I would centralize inventory and filter on the client side with queries