In our previous post, we covered Shopping carts and it’s various types. In this one, let’s get into the pros and cons of both types of shopping carts.
Why Self-hosted eCommerce platforms?
- With a self-hosted shopping cart, you have better control over your web stores.
- Additional features are available in forms of plugins or extensions and if you don’t have one, there is a community to reach out to develop one.
- The self-hosted eCommerce solution gives you the freedom and capability to scale anytime as business grows.
- Freedom to choose hosting of your choice.
Why NOT?
- Requires technical assistance in setting up the store.
- Though you have the community backing you but there is lack of direct support from the provider.
- Costs go up once your store begins to grow and this is completely dependent on the hosting provider you choose.
Why Hosted eCommerce platforms?
- The one-stop eCommerce solution that includes hosting, shopping cart capability, and technical support.
- Simple to build and manage eStores with very little technical knowledge.
- Centralized support team to go to when you are stuck and they will take care of it for you.
- They are reasonably priced and offer various deals on advance payments.
Why NOT?
- As you scale your store on hosted eCommerce platforms, it can cost more than the self-hosted eCommerce solution.
- Your control is limited when it comes to customizing the store and can work only with the available resources.
- Switching platforms can cost you a lot of money and is also a time-consuming process. At times, it has been found impossible to migrate the stores from hosted platforms due scope of the store.
In Conclusion, Hosted and Self-Hosted eCommerce solutions are both powerful and flexible. They provide control and can be set up within lower budgets but takes time and requires technical know-how to maintain and run.
Whereas, Hosted eCommerce platforms can be set up quickly and requires less technical knowledge but will cost more and have limitations with customization.
Now that we have covered the positives and negatives of Self-Hosted and Hosted shopping carts above, look out for our next blog where we will present comprehensive list of Self-hosted Shopping Carts solutions.
