Stand alone website creator for e-commerce

I have been using weebly for my website so far, but I want to sell my products online.
While weebly is a great and easy to use site creator, I found that the customer help service is absolutetly crappy.
Now I really get my doubts, weather I should build my business website with a website builder linked to a host. Basically I am at the mercy of this provider. In short what other website builders are good? My criteria:
1. ease of use I have no time at all to learn html and such, I am a plant nursery person after all,
2. stand alone - I want to be able to change the web host,
3. good for an online store, I have got a lot of different plants to sell and there needs to be a text for every plant
4. free or at least affordable,
5. Reliable

Any suggestions???
Thanks

 

There is a wide array of free, open source CMS that you can choose, each one offers all the features that you require above. Check this page: http://www.opensourcecms.com/scripts/show.php?catid=3. There is a demo for each ecommerce script on the list, just click on any title and you will find the demo site link. They are all free, and usually with some free themes/plugins as well, but also some premium themes/plugins that you can purchase at the CMS site.

Some other CMSes that can manage ecommerce/shopping cart, not mentioned on the list above:
1. Wordpress + Woocommerce
Probably the most popular ecommerce at the moment. Wordpress is mainly a blogging CMS and Woocommerce is a plugin that needs to be installed within a Wordpress site. There are thousands of free Wordpress themes/plugins, and Woocommerce-compatible themes/plugins. I use WP/WC on one of my sites, but I am not a big fan of it.
2. Drupal + Ecommerce module
The hardest to configure, but once you have managed how the module works then you are all set to go.

 

Thanks for your reply. Wordpress something serious, but the reason why I chose weebly in the first place was the ease of intergration of blog and website - it is all in one. I will have a look though.

 

I am not sure which package you were using for weebly but it is always a pride to have own domain and to promote it with own branding. I believe WP is very easy to use solution and excellent for everyone either you are designer, developer, webmaster or website owner.

If you want to use some FREE open source but a ready made solution with a shopping cart then i will suggest you Shopify/BigCommerce as they are excellent.

 

I was using the free package, which was quite good. But then I wanted to have my own domain and that was were the difficulties started. The website name showed up as available, I paid and then it did show up as unavailable.. there is only a marginal customer service, seems like a high school boy, no interest to resolve the problem. I cannot build anything serious with such a miserable sercive!

 

Try glabex.com it has web store builder + internal marketpalce, it has all social attributes allows you to build buzz around you prodcut, to minimize your spending on advertising and adword, you can simply start bloggin and run eamil campaings, invitatin tool aslo helps you bring attention to your store, your products, help you to promote your tproduct via social. It is quick and simple to set up, you can list your products with file.

 

BTW, woocommerce build on wordpress.com?

 

I do most if not everything with woo commmerce and WP. Its trivially easy stuff.

hope that helps,
Nigel

 

I had a look at shopify and found it quite impressive. I like very much the google preview.

 

well other than wordpress plugins there are also some full ecommerce opensource stuffs like opencart & prestashop what you may have a look at

 

I am now really hooked on shopify. Dead easy to use and really nice. Hopefully they have a usefull customer service other than at weebly.

 

Excellent Support is another good feature of Shopify, I'm sure you will like it.

 

Good to go up with pre-made solutions like shopify if you are looking for unique kinof web designs you can try around multivendor website builder some famed website clones like fancy and wanelo.

Good luck...

 

If you are ok with shopify like pre designed script it will be good. Though if you are looking for unique alternative why not to try clone scripts with the initial packages