How to Choose a Shopping Cart?

Introduction

Hello. People often ask me: how to choose a shopping cart software for my online store? 这实际上是一个非常广泛的话题，但我们会像往常一样尽量简化它. As we always say in our videos, there are 2 big groups of eCommerce software. We will first take care about the industry structure, 我会告诉你这些不同的产品有什么不同，然后我们会讨论如何为我选择一个特定的选项.

Groups of the eCommerce software

The downloadable 您必须在自己的服务器上托管的产品 SaaS-供应商在他们自己的服务器上为你托管一切的选项-这是电子商务的两大群体 software.

可下载的选项也可以分为2个子组，其中一些是 beginner-friendly and the others are enterprise-friendly. 这实际上是一个非常复杂的群体，但我想这么说:企业选择更适合拥有成千上万种产品的大商店, with custom selling features and stuff. The obvious leader in this section is Magento.

初学者友好组也可以分为2个子组: stand-alone products and the CMS-based products. 不同之处在于，独立的产品实际上并不基于任何其他产品. This means basically that you install PrestaShop engine or OpenCart engine and that’s all. That pretty much makes your store already functional.

In order to have the CMS-based option installed you need to install the CMS first. For example, WooCommerce or Jigoshop are based on WordPress. 这意味着你必须先安装WordPress，然后再安装 shopping cart functionality on top of WordPress. The same goes with VirtueMart, the difference is that it is based on Joomla CMS.

With SaaS the obvious leader is Shopify, they host stuff for you and they allow you to host the database, manage everything on their servers, 这意味着您不必在自己的服务器上安装任何东西, you don’t have to buy hosting 靠你自己，实际上一切都已经为你做好了.

So what should I choose?

The boring part is over, 现在我们要试着确定哪种选择更适合这种或那种情况.

SaaS

Clearly, Shopify is the most beginner-friendly option, 所以如果你在网络技术方面完全没有经验, if you know nothing about hostings, configuration, installations and stuff, that’s probably the better option for you.

The downside of Shopify or other SaaS 选项是你对你的商店的功能几乎没有控制. Shopify功能中已经内置的一些东西将会留下来. 你不能改变它，你不能在它上面添加任何东西.

关于Shopify的另一个重要部分是，它实际上更适合相对较小的商店. 你不可能通过你的 Shopify store. Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes that’s a bad thing, well, actually, Shopify通常被非常小的企业使用，比如个人层面——如果这是你的话, you should probably consider Shopify.

Stand-alone and beginner-friendly products

The next group is the stand-alone beginner-friendly software products. This group consists primarily of PrestaShop, OpenCart and a couple of other options. 它们的好处是它们对初学者也很友好，也许有一点 less beginner-friendly than the SaaS 选择，但一个完全的初学者可能会很好地照顾他的商店，人们可能会安装自己的一切，如果他们花一点时间去研究它是如何完成的. 你对商店的功能有了更多的控制, 您可以在那里更改一些小的特征元素，缺点是它仍然需要配置.

As I have said, 你必须准备好投入一些时间来研究如何使用这些东西 software products. 另一个明显的缺点是，它们不适用于拥有成千上万种产品的大商店. 如果你有一个相对较小的商店或中型企业, that’s absolutely not a problem for you. However, 如果你认为你的业务将会增长，你将需要扩大规模, then you might consider other options.

CMS-based products

The CMS基于基础的初学者友好型产品与独立产品具有几乎相同的优点和缺点, however I would say that the fact they are based on CMS products like WordPress or Joomla is also an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time.

例如，如果你习惯于使用WordPress，那么当然，你使用电子商务会容易得多 software based on what you already know. However there’s also a sort of a limitation, 因为有时这不是最方便的事情有时它们在特性和功能方面有一些限制这是由于它们是基于另一个的事实造成的 CMS product.

For example, with VirtueMart 不好的是，VirtueMart所基于的Joomla本身就很脆弱 less secure than the software with another options.

Enterprise products

So, the last groups, the Enterprise-friendly software products, 它们是最具可扩展性的——它们被拥有数千种产品甚至数十万种产品的大型在线商店所使用.

它具有很强的可扩展性和非常丰富的功能——你几乎可以将任何你能想到的东西集成到 Magento-based store, for example. 这样做的一个显著缺点是，magento驱动的商店非常耗费资源. 你需要投资一些钱在特殊的 hosting, like the dedicated hosting or the VPS-hosting in order to have your store running smoothly.

此外，你必须准备好投入开发者的时间，这其实不是一件很便宜的事情, 因为开发人员的时间很昂贵，而且Magento非常复杂 software 所以你必须准备好和一个对此略知一二的人一起工作. 或者你必须准备好独自学习这一切.

Summing up things…

I hope this answers the question, that pretty much makes it clear on what to use, based on your experience, on your needs, on the scale of your business, you may choose your own version of the shopping cart software and use it successfully. Thanks for watching, see you next time, bye-bye.

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