All ecommerce businesses can choose between either implementing a free or a hosted shopping cart. The shopping cart is an integral part of an online retail store. A customer's order depends on an efficient and reliable cart software to sum up the total number of products, calculate the final cost, accept the customer's credit card and complete the payment processing. A website shopping cart is just one aspect of an ecommerce solution, which also includes hosting, web store design and other features that are needed to create an e-commerce store.
The free or open source solution can be downloaded and used by anyone that already has a website with hosting.Many people prefer using a free website Shopping cart
integration for their website, because most importantly it does not cost anything. Another main benefit is its flexibility, this type of software can be fully customized. There are several features available, which are just like that of the hosted shopping cart. It is becoming a very popular solution for people who want to create an ecommerce business without a lot of money to spare.There are also several disadvantages for selecting a free over a hosted shopping cart. Here are just a few obvious disadvantages:
Programming knowledge and technical skills are needed to set up and customize the website shopping cart to resemble the look and feel of your online store
Site needs to already have hosting
Upgrades are not always available and if they are, you might be asked to pay for it along with additional features
Lacks basic support, you have to search for the answers to your questions on support forums
Servers are likely to become overloaded with numerous sites, which can lead to slow performance or even downtime
Security updates are not automatic
There is a much higher percentage of people who choose to use an e-commerce solution with a hosted shopping cart service. There are a number of good reasons for doing this, the most important among them are security and reliability. Customers receive much more support from an e-commerce solution and new features and upgrades are enabled automatically. There are a lot more features that can directly help your online store, especially if you have plans to expand and grow your business. Unlike using a free cart, you do not have to have any technical knowledge.
In fact you can create your store in only a few minutes using pre-made storefront templates that are often provided by the e-commerce solution.If you can't decide between either using a free or hosted website shopping cart, you should definitely try out both shopping carts software solutions. The free version has to be downloaded and installed on a site that already has hosting. You can usually try the hosted version free of charge for a limited time depending on the e-commerce solution.
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