i need help for my new site (oscommerce)

[matthew]

This is my first post here
I am planning to start online sales for my business
I find a company that does a web sites using oscommerce
I am planning to sale wholesale and retail online
Is os commerce is good for me?
I am looking for a very professional shopping cart
Pleas help me on this
Thanks

[roban]

Hello Matthew and welcome. One suggestion: You posted twice and I deleted the second post so it is only necessary to make 1 post ok?

OSCommerce is a decent free shopping cart although you will need to be thoroughly familiar with how to edit it and it's not one of the easier carts to learn. I would strongly suggest you go to their support forum and see if the support you'll be expecting to get is what you want.

You might look into Zen Cart and Cube Cart (version 3 is free, version 4 is not) before making your decision. Do a ton of research before making your choice because it will be a PITA to change.

[skytopdesigns]

Hello.

i must agree with roban. do tons of reaserch. sometimes the free ones are a bit harder to navigate than the paid ones. check out some paid carts too, you may find one that will fit your budget and get you going online in no time.

while a free one may keep cash in your pocket but no hair on your head.

so check out all of your options.

[matthew]

Thanks for the help
I am not going to do the web site my self. I have a company how dos the job for me and his customizing the cart and designing the site for me.he is going to charge me for the job and do the maintenance for the site(he will charge me monthly for this service)
The Program his using to make the site is oscommerce
$4000 to make wholesale and retail sites that will operate from one shopping cart in two deferent domains. This includes all design and all customizations.
Should I trust this os program?

[roban]

$4000.00 is a ton of money. Since the shopping cart is free are you paying a monthly charge on top of that? I have designed sites for much less. What about SEO? Is the company going to do anything about optimizing and promoting the site for that money?

[skytopdesigns]

that is alot for an os site.

[opensourceforce]

I would not pay too much to customize an oscommerce site. Many of the most commonly installed functions on oscomm are ALREADY installed on the free Zen Cart or CRE versions....this is the point of these platforms whcih is to give you a more robust version of oscomm that you dont have to customize as much.

So...if the features he is adding are already on other free carts...why not start with those.

Do you NEED monthly customizations? If you are going to pay $4000....i would want the programmer to install interfaces and controls so YOU can easily make changes and such without needing the monthly fee.

It is high...but he might be REALLLLLLLLY good. If he is custom designing all kinds of graphics and flash and things for your site it would add to the price...but i dont think you really need to go that high unless you really like his graphic design styles and think he is worth the extra expense....You can also pay $100 to $200 for an '"off the rack" template if you dont really have a big custom design need.

[matthew]

He is going to add for me all features that are available on os and hi will custom the cart according to my company needs.
In addition, he will custom the entire site from A2Z grafhics, flash and more
This price includes two sites one for wholesale and one for retail it means two sites will be set up and customized for me.
Each site will operate under different domains and it will operate from the same cart.
Good deal?
Thanks for the help and the information you providing to me.