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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?

#51

Post by newppc »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Shopify or Etsy to MVP until there's traction. Don't prematurely optimize by thinking you need to use Django or write the shop yourself in the beginning. > Budget for building online store is very low. I want to full control over it and independent? Don't do this. Your time is worth something. Just keep an eye as things develop as to how you're going to get the data out of your prototype into a bespoke system, eventu…

Totally agree with this, and like another commenter said, WordPress can be a nightmare. If you need Woocommerce because your site is already built on WordPress and you can absolutely keep WP secure [1], then go for it.

As much as developers love to hate on done-for-you website builders like Shopify or Squarespace [2] they are a good first step to get to MVP.

[1] https://sucuri.net/guides/wordpress-security https://premmerce.com/complete-woocommerce-security-review-i... [2] https://www.whatsthehost.com/shopify-vs-squarespace/

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

#52

Post by richjdsmith »

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.

I'm currently the maintainer of a Woocommerce site. My client paid for a massive rewrite of the thing and despite me damn-near getting on my knees begging him to use Shopify, he stuck with WooCommerce.

It is truly terrible. I cannot recommend enough to anyone to keep as far away from it as possible.

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

#53

Post by richjdsmith »

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.

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

#54

Post by nkg »

dfee wrote: post #23
mattkevan wrote: post #11

Agree with the other posts here. Don’t write your own store. Shopify/Squarespace/Sellfy etc. are much cheaper and lower risk, at least to start with. From experience PCI compliance and tax rules are pains you do not want to deal with. I’d only ever recommend custom coding if you have some extremely specific requirements. Even WooCommerce on Wordpress would be a better starting point. If you want to tinker, you could…

Wow. I’ve been down a rabbit hole with cart building and DB design and never realized that Snipcart existed. What other magic is out there?

+1 Snipcart looks neat. Actually I was just showing it to a teammate.

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

#55

Post by nkg »

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.

+1. It's hell.

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

#56

Post by wilsonfiifi »

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/

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

#57

Post by yurishimo »

amelius wrote: post #24
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Shopify or Etsy to MVP until there's traction. Don't prematurely optimize by thinking you need to use Django or write the shop yourself in the beginning. > Budget for building online store is very low. I want to full control over it and independent? Don't do this. Your time is worth something. Just keep an eye as things develop as to how you're going to get the data out of your prototype into a bespoke system, eventu…

Good suggestion, but he said budget is very low, so is there a free solution out there?

Etsy is 20 cents per listing plus the CC transaction fee. I've seen a lot of shop owners get around this by offering incredibly customizable products. They have a text box for "Customer Comments" where you describe what you want.

I actually bought the exact thing OP is trying to sell on Etsy using the method I just described. The seller had uploaded a lot of examples of different types of work they could create so I had an idea of what they could do before I purchased.

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

#58

Post by yurishimo »

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.

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

#59

Post by Hackwar »

Joomla and Hikashop. Yes, it is more work to set up than simply using shopify, but you are independent, you are flexible, it is cheap and when something like GDPR comes around the corner that prevents a system like shopify (or shopify is bought by Amazon or similar) you still have your shop. It is also Opensource. Also, if you are selling stuff that might be against the terms of shopify, your shop might get deleted, but not if you role your own installation. Definitely don't invent your own shop system, but use your own installation and an opensource solution.

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

#60

Post by jordanlev »

ccccccccccccc wrote: post #46
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…

How does Shopify not give enough control? Anyone can write Shopify apps to extend extra features with their API or pay someone to create an app (less than paying someone for a full ecommerce site)

Not all aspects of Shopify can be customized -- especially with the checkout workflow (eg you can only set a logo for the checkout page, but not style it). Also the non-ecommerce pages are woefully lacking in content management functionality (anything more complex than a blog is impossible without using a third-party app to store custom content in meta fields).

And writing apps yourself is not always ideal because they need to run on your own server (thus mitigating the benefit of using a hosted platform to avoid infrastructure maintenance), and any frontend modifications can only be done via JavaScript (you can't modify the outputted HTML itself, so it's a lot more difficult to make robust, performant and accessible customizations to functionality).

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