Mr Site

save-a-lot

buglawton wrote:

If you rent hosting space and get a freelancer to install one of the free shopping carts eg Cubecart, Zencart or Oscommerce, and have them tailor/style if for you, then the maintenence + hosting costs might come out at £20/month. Main beneift is you have complete control to make changes you need.

As well as Scriptlancer there is Rentacoder and Getafreelancer

£20/month - where do you get your hosting?

that is very expensive, I can recommend a good host for ALOT less... http://fuzioned.com/sgre/shared.php
go with bronze package and upgrade if required. I host with these and the service is more-or-less personal.

Kilty_2

GoDaddy give 5GB storage and 250GB bandwidth for less than £20 a year.

I'd get a freelance designer to develop it for you if I were you (OK maybe I'm a bit biased).

Generated websites simply don't cut it to be honest.

BANANABUS

As i know "nowt" about computers i have found MR SITE really good.
It has a bit ( that i have not even tried yet ) so you are listed on search engines.
It is so easy to edit

you get your domain name in with the price too . i've found that most .coms are about £25 anyhow.
I treid DREAMWEAVER! oh my i got lost .

cheers JIM

buglawton

save-a-lot wrote:

£20/month - where do you get your hosting?

that is very expensive, I can recommend a good host for ALOT less... http://fuzioned.com/sgre/shared.php
go with bronze package and upgrade if required. I host with these and the service is more-or-less personal.

I did say maintenence + hosting costs - my hosting is about £50 per year but anyone thinking of starting an online shop (and not renting a service from say, Mr. Site), has to consider paying for occasional essential customizations and fixes to their site so I included the typical average cost that I experience, using something like Getafreelancer to find the freelancer. Many techies who enjoy doing a total DIY job can quote super low running costs but in this thread I'm trying to give advice to those who would pay someone to to the techy bits for them.

No doubt someone will ask: "What maintenance costs?" - new issues come up all the time, e.g your hosting service changes their version of the operating system, breaking your shop somehow - it needs urgent fixing. Or new security vulnerabilites are discovered in your shop package, and upgrades need installing. Not to mention small improvements and tweaks you realize you need due to feedback from your customers.