Shopping Carts and MailMan

[neumannu47]

Anybody here using Interchange or Agora shopping carts? If so, how robust are they? How about a link to your site with one of them. I know nothing about them.

MailMan mailing list software works pretty well, but there are some changes that would be helpful, if I had root access (changing from 30 to 100 members per page in the membership list.) I hate bothering Jim with these things!

[midwest]

Agora is clumsy and not really worth the bother. Interchange is overkill as it is can truely be called "enterprise" level. It is a bit complicated and the setup is rather involved. Why not look at osCommerce? It's probably the best bang for the effort of all the e-commerce apps and there are a boatload of modules available to customize and add features, some of which are so easy to install you'll wonder why anyone would use any other software for online sales.

[neumannu47]

I do not know enough to be dangerous. Does osCommerce have to be installed on the server? Can we do that? How? Please tell me as much as you can about setting up such a function.

[Sheila]

I've never used it myself (I use Mals-E which is free) but you can auto-install OSCommerce via the Fantastico installer located in your CPanel. You must be using the XController skin in order to have access to Fantastico.

Sheila

[TechWeasel]

I've been working on an e-store for a friends site for a couple of weeks and went through many store options, I'd second midwest's endorsement of oscommerce. It's a script you'll have to install yourself and you can find out more information at
http://www.oscommerce.com.

As a bit of a threadjack, I was shocked with how few "lower end" shopping cart options existed. While scripts like osCommerce and zenCommerce are great - they're vastly overpowered for the majority of e-commerce used as "incidental" features of sites (ie: sites that aren't geared exclusively to selling merchandise). I know when I want to add selling options it's often more in the vein of "band wanting to sell cd's and t-shirts" than "clothing retailer looking to carry entire inventory on-line". I finally found this excellent Client-side javascript shopping cart (halfway down the page) to integrate with paypal, but it's certainly not admin-friendly, and required a week of hair-pulling tweaking to work, but it's rediculously robust with what it let's you calculate and pass to paypal (down to weight based zone shipping calculations).

[midwest]

It's available as a cpanel install on some of the panel versions, IIRC, the xController and BLadvanced have it.

osCommerce is two faced, so to say. It is a very powerful e-commerce application when installed into its own folder. OTOH, if you install it as your main site, like you would with any of the nukes or similar it becomes probably the single most powerful website management tool available for free. with all the extra modules available it actually blows the nukes away for features but most people never use it that way as they never think of it except as an e-commerce app.

[Sheila]

"lower end" shopping cart options

That's what Mals-E is great for. I've used it on several sites for 1-20 items. It's free and easy to setup and customize. Then I used it on a bigger site that should've been done with a database!

Sheila

[Red74]

I agree with Tech Weasel. I opted to use CartManager after reviewing the prices for other carts. Until a site volume reaches hundreds of orders per day and inventory management becomes an issue, I would stick with easier, less expensive carts. Also, the choice of your merchant account and the services they provide are just as if not more important than the cart.

Merchant card management will stop your business quicker than the cart.

[neumannu47]

What is the price of CartManager? I went to their web site, and they have one of the stupid "Contact a sales weasel for a price" messages. It is a pet peeve of mine that a price is not listed for a standard product.

[Red74]

Your reaction is valid. They are a good company. I am in SoCal and they are in Utah. I pay $10 per month. They other features available at additional costs but I have not reached a volume that requires them. The button-maker creates simple buttons but once you disect the html code it is easy to create your own, working buttons. Believe me, if I can do it anyone can.

I use Authorize.Net with Wells Fargo and all these work flawlessly in unison. I will be glad to answer any questions that are not available at the site.

[neumannu47]

Originally posted by Sheila
That's what Mals-E is great for. I've used it on several sites for 1-20 items. It's free and easy to setup and customize. Then I used it on a bigger site that should've been done with a database!

Sheila

Sheila:

I just reviewed the web site for Mals-e and am curious: What's in it for Mal, other than the little logo he includes on each page? You obviously feel confident in trusting your client's and client's customers' information with them. Are you using a gateway for credit card processing?

His service is a great deal, but are there any catches?

Mike

[Sheila]

Mike:

I unaware of any catches. They are widely used. I've had several sites using it for a couple of years already with no issues. I'm not sure what's in it for him other then he does have higher level products he sells.

As for gateways... Most of my clients are tiny and they're using PayPal. The biggest one already had a cart when I redesigned it. They're continuing what they did before which is to take the credit card info on the website and process it manually via their merchant account when they process the order.

Hope that helps.
Sheila