website quote

edeneve

Hi,
I started a new online business just 11 weeks since now, had quotes from 300-3000 for a e-commerce site, just didn't seem worth it really.

In the end I bought my domain names from heart internet for about £8 each then decided use:

Try ekmpowers (cant enter direct link)
it offers e-commerce hosting and gives you all the tools/templates etc to build your own website. I built my site and had it up and running for sales via shopping basket and payments via paypal in 1 day. I could also import all my ebay shop listings directly onto the site and it even stocktakes in sync with ebay.

It is a brilliant product and what has it cost me? £24.99 a month and can cancel at any time.

The quotes I had were from £300-£3000 and between £25-£50 hosting per month.

Hope it helps.

steve1980

edeneve wrote: »

Hi,
I started a new online business just 11 weeks since now, had quotes from 300-3000 for a e-commerce site, just didn't seem worth it really.

In the end I bought my domain names from heart internet for about £8 each then decided use:

Try ekmpowers (cant enter direct link)
it offers e-commerce hosting and gives you all the tools/templates etc to build your own website. I built my site and had it up and running for sales via shopping basket and payments via paypal in 1 day. I could also import all my ebay shop listings directly onto the site and it even stocktakes in sync with ebay.

It is a brilliant product and what has it cost me? £24.99 a month and can cancel at any time.

The quotes I had were from £300-£3000 and between £25-£50 hosting per month.

Hope it helps.

So you're paying £300 per annum for a bit of hosting which should cost you a maximum of £45.00 per year and a program that you could get a free alternative of?

TechnoBoy

edeneve - looking at the prices quoted are you sure you are not comparing apples with oranges here, and that the higher monthly rate didnt include a premium shopping cart?

Hope that it works out for you.

terra_ferma

PasquiC wrote: »

Give it a go and see what happens. Another option is to go to www.artisteer.com - really good website that allows you to design a website into a wordpress, joomla and loads of other CMS profiles. Upload it to your server then add the paypal, google cart plugins and job done

It looks good. However in my opinion it's too expensive, for example if you use elegant themes you pay a much lower annual fee for an unlimited downloads of a good number of very professional-looking templates.

terra_ferma

edeneve wrote: »

Hi,
I started a new online business just 11 weeks since now, had quotes from 300-3000 for a e-commerce site, just didn't seem worth it really.

In the end I bought my domain names from heart internet for about £8 each then decided use:

Try ekmpowers (cant enter direct link)
it offers e-commerce hosting and gives you all the tools/templates etc to build your own website. I built my site and had it up and running for sales via shopping basket and payments via paypal in 1 day. I could also import all my ebay shop listings directly onto the site and it even stocktakes in sync with ebay.

It is a brilliant product and what has it cost me? £24.99 a month and can cancel at any time.

The quotes I had were from £300-£3000 and between £25-£50 hosting per month.

Hope it helps.

I wouldn't recommend a hosted shopping cart, because generally speaking they don't offer great value for money.
But they have advantages, support/upgrades are included, and normally you don't have to fiddle with css files (many have a css or visual editor, with exceptions, like big commerce).

DYI is very time-consuming, and you need to enjoy playing with css, ftp etc.
A good web designer is not cheap, but is useful if your business needs a top-notch website (the example I keep using is expensive items like jewellery...).

Anything that gives peace of mind, a hassle-free, reliable platform is good, and I'm glad you found something that works for you, although it may not work for everybody.

PS the stock synch with ebay is a great feature, when I looked at it a while back it was not working properly, particularly for variations, but it's saves a lot of time. This is one of the advantages of hosted carts, with a self-hosted version it's harder to upgrade and have the latest add-ons when they come up.

shmeeko69

debtfreebyxmas wrote: »

the cheapest website quote we have had for 5 page with paypal facility is 350 and then 80 each hour following for updating/ changes. Are we looking in the wrong places or does this seem good/ reasonable?

Both the initial cost and the updated costs seem quite expensive unless your wanting a high tech website with all of the bells and whistles? I mainly build basic HTML websites for my own use and wouldn't dream of charging those figures.