ecommerce's design, one time fee or monthly fees?

Hello,

I spend quite some times reading post on thsi forum and I learned a lot... so thanks to everyone. But still, I am a newbie and there is still a lot of obscure fields... And I don't know anything about programming.

I have to make a hard decision, and I was hoping some of you could give me their opinion. I am about to hire someone to design my ecommerce.

I have 2 choices:

1) My first idea was to have someone to create the website for a one time fee, buy a shopping cart (I was thinking of xcart), use a hosting service (I was thinking of hostgator), plus I want to use a forum on the website (like SMF) and somehow put everything together (I am not sure who would do it but I guess I can figure it out later). So basically, as for the monthly fees I would only have the hosting service (exept for the merchant account and gateway of course).

2) 2nd option: a company called websiteforge, they will charge me to design the website but they require that I use their hosting service. They will design a custom website, set up everything like the shopping cart (they use their own which have all the bells and whistles that I need) and forum and all the website features that I want. Plus they claim to use a powerful SEO software and also to do the website maintenance which is how they they justify their $99 fees per month (so that would be for hsoting, maintenance and whatever problems I can encounter).

So here are my questions:

1) is it worth it to be required to use a hosting service, it seems to me that I won't really own the website. What if they go out of business. $99 a month seems pretty expensive, or not really?

2) In the other hand, what about maintenance, does an ecommerce need a lot of maintenance, who would take care of it if I use option 1. What about putting everything together (shopping cart, forum, merchant account...)

3) option 2 claim to offer a powerful SEO, which, if it is true might worth the money, but how can I be sure? maybe I better do some of the job myself and hire a SEO consultant in the future if I need it?

3) My last question is not directly related, but any clarification would be helpful. I want to be able to ad product pages myself, update and edit them. How does it work? Will I have to use software for this, if so, is there a lot of different one out there to choose from; or are the update/ edit web based?

Sorry, those might sound like dumb questions, but any help would help me tremendously.

Thanks,

Stephane

Here's a very simple answer to a not-so-simple question:

If you owned a brick and mortar store, would you:

1) Let someone else decide where you located your store?
2) Let someone else run it for you and not know yourself how it operates?

So many people want to open an e-commerce site and leave the blood and guts details to someone else, hoping all they have to do is rake in the dollars without doing the work. I'm not saying this describes you but to me the answer is clear. Take control of your site, learn about the inner workings of your e-store and choose your own host.