I was on a sales call yesterday discussing various options for this lady’s store. I will have to say this question is one of my favorite and most dreaded questions to answer. Essentially, it is just a matter of opinion, but also depends on your store’s individual needs.

Hosted Ecommerce Platform

Licensed Ecommerce Solution

The tables above are only a small number of the pros & cons of each. Essentially the choice all depends on your situation. How much of a budget do you have now? Do you need any extra features? How tech saavy are you?

Generally when starting out, most companies go with a hosted platform. As their company grows, so do their needs, and thats when most companies switch to a licensed solution. Again, its best to answer the preliminary questions to establish what features you need in your shopping cart. Once you know that information you can search for solutions that meet your needs. More often than not, you’ll have a mix of hosted and licensed solutions. You then just have to make the decision that is best for you.

Again, the tables are vague and not as detailed as they can be. Stay tuned as next week’s post will be a detailed look at Licensed Solutions!

Tags: Business, e-commerce, E-Commerce Solutions, shopping cart, small business trends, Web Design and Development

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 10:15 am and is filed under E-Commerce Guide | . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.