Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Shopify self hosted e-commerce alternative?

news.ycombinator.com

51–60 of 70 posts

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

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT: why have you omitted the last two letters from each of the company names?

I put stars there because I didn’t want to directly advertise any. Those “vanished”...

> Those “vanished”...

Likely swallowed by the Markdown parser in HN, backend.

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

#53

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…

Are you referring to using Stripe or Shopify?

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

#54
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…

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.

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

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you referring to using Stripe or Shopify?

I personally used Fastspring. I cannot talk about Stripe or Shopify. They also model your “shopping page” to fit in with everything else. So your customers have a consistent experience.

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

#57
post #2

I'm sure there are many but Solidus is one: https://solidus.io/

Does anyone have experience working with Solidus and/or Spree at scale? I know that Solidus is a fork of Spree, and from what it seems, Shopify is based off of a heavily modified fork of Spree. Couple of questions:

- How easy is Spree/Solidus to customize?

- Why did Solidus fork from Spree? How does this factor into whether I'd pick one or the other?

- Are Spree and Solidus compatible with each other package ecosystem wise?

- Which one has the most traction as of right now? While Solidus seems to be a relatively recent fork, Spree still appears to have more activity. Why is this the case?

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

#59
I would suggest Woocommerce. It has a huge community with almost any plugin or theme you can think about. I am not sure it makes sense to do it in your case, as you are likely to spend more time on the store, and less growing your business.

Some managed hosting options at different price levels: Kinsta.com WPXhosting.com SiteGround.com NameHero.com

Some themes, plugins, that can help you get up and running quickly: Elementor.com kadencewp.com/product/kadence-woo-extras/ wpastra.com/woocommerce/ commercegurus.com/product/shoptimizer/

Some other useful links to get you started: woocommerce.com/product-category/woocommerce-extensions/ youtube.com/channel/UCjDuxPEhNQ2qn_qAdjRG4YQ/videos

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

#60
Hey econcon, I built One Item Store, which solves your exact problem: https://oneitem.store

You can just set up a really simple page, accept payments, and manage orders.

I built a simple example site for your filament: https://oneitem.store/3dfilament

Let me know if you want any more info :)

Post reply on HN