e-Commerce Storefront – Buy or Rent

When it comes to building a new e-commerce site or changing from your existing vendor, a question that eventually comes up is whether you should outright purchase the e-commerce platform software or use a hosted solution meaning you pay month to month. Just as owning or renting a home as its advantages and disadvantages, so does owning and renting you online store. There are many full featured e-commerce platforms out there for under 5K which will give you all the functionality you need for years to come as well as creating a successful foundation to build upon. Companies like Interspire, Able Commerce and AspDotNetStorefront are a great starting point if you look to go the purchase route. Even open source e-commerce applications like OS Commerce, Magento and Zen Cart have a strong following. With any of these solutions you will still have the month to month hosting, payment process and SSL certificate costs. Companies like Yahoo and Big Commerce are a couple that offer month to month e-commerce packages which include your domain, hosting, and more. These are great options for a store just starting out when generally the budget for technology is small. As you grow your store however, the add-on fees for product catalog size, bandwidth, disk space start to add up. Also, being hosted on a web server with hundreds or thousands of other stores can slow down your site and decrease user experience. Because most decisions come down to budget, many end up going with the rental option. Although this does reduce your barriers to entry, so generally end up getting a cookie-cutter store which looks like hundreds of others on the web. Purchasing a license for a full featured e-commerce platform and having a development agency customize the look and feel in the end is the better long term option. Standing out from the crowd can drive brand recognition, loyalty and eventually sales.