Need new Ecommerce provider fast!

[Blom]

I have a new online company that currently uses Microsoft Bcentral for hosting and Microsoft Small Business for ecommerce. With Microsoft's Ecommerce functionality gone at the end of this month, my company is looking for a new Ecommerce provider.

Microsoft has transferred their hosting accounts to Concentric and for ease we are hoping to leave our hosting account there for now. I have done a bunch of online research and am having a hard time finding some recommendations on a new Ecommerce provider (to work with Concentric). Does anyone have any recommendations? I am looking for a company that will have good technical support especially during our conversion (we are novices). Additionally, our company has over 100 products and is growing so I need one that can handle the volume of products. Lastly we want it to have the ability to offer discounts, track email addresses and send out newsletters as well as customize the shopping account to have the same look and feel as our site.l

A couple more considerations. We want to remain Windows based. Additionally, our site is built using Microsoft Frontpage so it needs to be compatible with that as well.

I would really appreciate any suggestions! Thanks, Kristin

[Corey Bryant]

Are you looking for a shopping cart in general? Frontpage is a WYSIWYG editor (and going away) being replaced by Expression Web. There was one product called Total commerce (http://www.boomerangsoftware.com/Products/TotalECommerce/TEC.htm) that integrated into Frontpage (similar to the other frontpage components (http://www.timeforweb.com/frontpage/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5894&PN=1).

However, it would probably be better and easier for you in the long run to consider some type of shopping cart, like Comersus or maybe Modular Merchant. Comersus is an ASP based cart which can be integrated into your website (if you understand code)

[Blom]

We used Microsoft Frontpage to build our website and yes we are looking for a shopping cart with some of the other functionality I mentioned. The problem is that we don't understand code very well so were looking for one that was more 'user friendly' as well as that would have could phone support as we are converting our site. What do you recommend?

[Corey Bryant]

It almost sounds like a hosted solution would be better for you in the long run. Or asking someone to integrate a shopping cart into your website.

There are only a few ASP carts that clients have mentioned in the past - i.e. Comersus and CandyPress. These are hosted on your server. But I also noticed that you mentioned something about leaving your hosting account which somewhat makes me wonder if you are looking for a hosted solution?

If so, you might consider Yahoo. They do charge to use their gateway (a percentage) while some gateways are free or charge a transaction fee.

I would also consider running the newsletter separate from the cart - having it maintained in it's own database as well.