In my country developing a full website is very cheap, it would run for about 700-1000 USD to have it up and running with Open Cart, with no monthly fees. Is there a reason I should consider using Shopify and do it myself? Is Open Cart comparable to Magento?
From what I can see the agency is not bad, this is one of their websites.
http://www.koxisonline.com/
Thanks in advance for your reply.
Developing the website is the least of your concerns.
If you are operating an online store, building trust and confidence with your customer base is critical. So, when choosing a shopping cart to run your store, performance and availability are key.
When you use a quality, paid service like Magento or Shopify (or the myriad of others), you are paying for the solid infrastructure, the ongoing development and support.
With an open source cart, as you said you will have I do it yourself. You may not have the monthly subscription fee. But, you will have maintenance and development fees. You will also have infrastructure fees - if you plan to do it right.
If you would like to discuss this more, schedule a free call using my free consultation code below. I provide up to 30 minute calls at no charge for first time callers.
https://clarity.fm/kevinmccarthy/FreeConsult
Kevin McCarthy
www.kevinmccarthy.com
As Kevin has said there are a lot of advantages with SaaS shopping carts.
If you can manage your own server (or have people(s) who can then you should be fine. I could not image from an infrastructure point of view you would build your own physical servers and firewalls, etc... This is why you start out with a VPS from a company like AWS, Godaddy, etc...
Damn, even Digital Ocean has hosting for $5/month.
Rarely do I say to talk to a coach, but here's a great opportunity where a few minutes with an expert will help you a lot.
Open source shopping carts are great -- however, there are always hidden fees. If you have a full time developer then by all means - open source is fine. However, if you do not want to worry about that part of your business, think about it economically. While you sleep, Shopify is fixing bugs and running servers all for $30/month or whatever. $30/month multiplied by 12 months? Can you get a full-time developer who will work 24/7 and pay for your hosting and merchant services for less than that?
Cheers -
