Best eCommerce Platform for a small business

As i'm really new at this area i would really appreciate if you could give me some advice. I'm trying to build my new shop, and a friend of mine suggested me to try with Smoolis (i can make it in my own language there). Has anyone ever try it? If you have any suggestions as to which is the best solution for a small business (handmade products) your comments are welcomed

 

Never heard of it. My suggestion would probably be wordpress + woo commerce or perhaps Marketpress the cart part. Its probably the fastest way to have a nice website.

hope that helps,
Nigel

 

First, you have to consider in how much time and money you are willing to put into your project. With Wordpress you can create a nice online store, but: Do you have experience with any kind of coding? What is your budget? Do you have a webhost already? Do you need your own languages or more?

 

Wordpress is the best as far as i know

 

Thank you so much for all of your answers! The truth is that i don't have any experience with coding, therefore i cannot deal with wordpress. I want it to be as simple as possible. I do not have a webhost, just a domain. I need to put in my language (Greek) as well as English. I don't have a certain budget, but i would say minimum $10 a month would be a great deal.

 

i also suggest it highly.

 

As i've stated before, wordpress seems to me too complicated to use. As i was searching for an eCommerce system, i've found and tested Shopify which is really a great platform, but unfortunately it's not multilingual yet. Therefore, i'm trying to build my online store with Smoolis. So far it looks good to me. I've easily added 2 languages without any coding!

 

nope, i didn't hear anything about it..
Let me know some common details of your website. What language are going to use? Which products are you going to deal with?.
however, i would like to suggest that, custom ecommerce solutions are best to start a e-store. Custom solutions are fully independent, with 100% source code too, also the users can customize as you wish. Note that there is no need of any special technical skills to build a store.
Let me know these question.

 

Shopify is better in my opinion. No technical knowledge and coding is required. Check it once. Regards, Sanjeev from dicountforsure.in

 

I found the latest prestashop a pretty interesting e-commerce solution. It has tons of features including responsive design by default, multi-language support,...

 

Can you stretch even more features about prestashop,
how many langugaes does it supports?

 

You can find the info on

features : http://www.prestashop.com/en/features
languages : http://www.prestashop.com/en/translations

Not saying this is the best solution for your site but it is my preferred choice

 

Alright, thanks for sharing the link... I think apart form this customize ecommerce solutions are better to build the e-store. It is fully accessible and can be modified end to end without depending any admin or else. Also there is multiple number of features available (also be custom) make ease of handling a store without any professional help.
What do you think?

 

by "custom ecommerce solutions" you mean building a script by yourself ? (without prof. help ??)... A custom script can be beneficial but only when developed by someone who knows what he's doing

Services like 'Smoolis' are great indeed if you want to get started fast but are also limited in functionality and the pricing goes up as soon as you add languages, products, mailing campaigns,...

In the end you are paying huge monthly fees, while with prestashop fe. the price will remain identical no matter how the site evolves. At the other side, you don't have to worry about server setup & maintaince,... but neither this is the case if you take a normal webhosting plan -> servers are maintained by the hosting provider.

 

anyone can recommend some good plugins for wordpress to open a small shop?

 

Depends on what you have to do but Woo Commerce and Marketpress are hands down the best plugins for this.

Nice theme + Woo Commerce = done very quickly.

Nigel

 

I totally agree. But, i would suggest to avoid prestashop or wordpress if you don't have any experience with coding. With an opensource system you can keep your online store running for at least 1 year without upgrading. But when the time comes, you will have to upgrade your whole system including of your activated plugins. You must have a lot of technical knowledge to do all the necessary tasks without losing your hard work building your store.

I recommend to try all this online ecommerce softwares like shopify, big cartel, bigcommerce, or this new one smoolis. Don't lose your time and nerves.

Votre Monsieur Roger

 

They are totally great, but if you think about it they are not at all expensive. For my small business for instance, i'm gonna have to give thousands of euros to programmers to build and maintain my shop. With these online softwares the price is clear and always the same. In this way, i can easily calculate my monthly budget. And for $8 a month, i would say it's the perfect deal for me. At the moment i have build my shop with Smoolis and it looks pretty good! I can't wait for my first sale

 

creating a e-shop from scratch is indeed very expensive and I (as a developer) don't see the real benefit of it as e-commerce solutions nowadays are already full-featured, customizable and (most) plugin based.

A descend person (as myself ) won't charge you that much to install ( and maintain ) your OS based webshop.
( if no or little custom coding is required )

Ask yourself the question if you want to rely on a third party service which can shut down, change their policy,... at any point in time.
What if

1. you screw up in the admin panel and you want to restore a backup ?
2. Prestashop fe. has a multistore functionality , you can maintain multiple stores in 1 core setup and articles can be shared accross the shops... are those functionalities available , do you need to duplicate all your content ( and maintain this duplicity ) when creating a second shop
3. On resale, a standalone site is often more valued.

...and so on...​

With a 'standalone' e-commerce solution you have full controll of your website , where it's hosted , when and where your files are back-upped, by who it's maintained and so on... Maybe a bit more expensive on annual basis but limitless in possibilities and easy to migrate to another party if required.

There are pros and cons for both solutions ... in the end it's a choice you have to make based on the project you're involved in.

I'm definatly not against the idea of a $8 solution, only sharing what I think you should keep in mind when making your choice

 

Mad Moll , theres no need for any coding with wordpress/woocommerce - however if you are terrified of coding go and have a look at bigcommerce and shopify this will be your best bet.