Middle of the row carts?

[sativo]

Is there a set of carts out there that fall in between the big guys like markelive, intershop, etc. and the little guys like cubecart, x-cart, aspdotnetstorefront.com?

I'm looking for a self managed solution.. not a hosted package. Any thoughts?

[cometmall]

i'm not agree that cubecart, x-cart, ... such a little guys. What features you need they dont have ?

[sativo]

i'm not agree that cubecart, x-cart, ... such a little guys. What features you need they dont have ?

They're carts are priced below $200 -- that's an entry level cart compared with > $150,000 for higher end carts like marketlive, atg, bea, etc.

Most of those entry level carts are built by programmers who have little to no experience with marketing, business analytics, accounting (GAAP), etc. In other words, most entry level carts like x-cart are nice as a store shelf, but if you're looking to profit maximize... you need something with more power.

[cometmall]

It's still dont unswer my question, what features do you need.
If you want 3 tier secure application, with multiple branch managing system, and with ability to connect direclty to Credit Cards comapnies for transactions ? Just curious what it is "more power" ?

[sativo]

It's still dont unswer my question, what features do you need.
If you want 3 tier secure application, with multiple branch managing system, and with ability to connect direclty to Credit Cards comapnies for transactions ? Just curious what it is "more power" ?

Ability to set custom business rules for promotions (ex: A/B merchandising tests). Faceted navigation and searching systems. More user centered intelligence that can customize unique promotions based on user behavior. Back office solutions -- either directly integrated fulfillment, order management, inventory management, etc.. or integration by proxy to a stand alone / separate app that seamlessly passes data to accounting system.

Better community building features like CMS, social networking, profile building, etc.

Analytics to help locate inefficiencies and perform accounting ratios and economics analysis to help profit maximize.

Should I continue? hehe

[cometmall]

yep you right, there are no such features in these shopping carts...
I think with such requirements you will end up with > $150,000 prices

[sativo]

Well... like I said, I'm looking for something that is middle of the road. I don't need all of these features, and/or I don't need them to be extremely sophisticated. But I would like to see carts that are in the $5000-$15,000 range that do more than just act as a shelf / order taker.

[cometmall]

ok, if you find something suitable for you, please post it here so we can examine it

Maybe other people can help you more, i'm dealing with "little guys" applications

Good luck

[cinnamon9691]

I don't know if it's a solution that you've looked at, but have you checked out Volusion? I know that they used to offer a purchasable solution (so you could recode and host it) for around $10,000.00. I'm not sure if this is still an option from them or not...

I know that there are some carts out there with some of the functionality that you mentioned. The cart I work for has a customer search on products that have/have not been purchased, customer keyword match, order and spending history that you can target for coupons or special promotions. Unfortunately, it's a hosted only solution and most of my knowledge is with the hosted carts.

Anyways, you might want to look at Avactis, Volusion (purchasable code), or Jshop. I don't know if they might offer you the features you need but they might be a good place to start. Goodluck.

[Chris_WI]

I think the offering from http://www.devix.com would do what you are asking. They recently became an employee-owned company, and Lloyd over there has been extremely helpful. They are not cheap (Think $50k or so), but after reviewing their offering I'd put their cart up against the $150k offerings. Included with the cart (if you want to use it) is purchasing automation, business process automation, accounting, crm, marketing automation, etc. They also can set you up with EDI, screen-scraping data collection, customer-based micro-sites, and more. I'm still in the evaulation stage of several offerings (see below), so I'm not an actual product user at this point.

I've also looked at http://www.mainstreetcommerce.com and I think that if they didn't do what you wanted out of the box, that it could be worked in quite easily due to their architecture. They are a bit less expensive - think $15-30k to implement.

A third option to consider is http://www.coresense.com - think $30-50k for implementation, plus $2k/month for upkeep.

I wrote about even more options at this thread (page 8 of the thread):
http://forums.smallbusinesscomputing...read.php?t=441

Hope this helps!

[opensourceforce]

With your needs you might be better off with a feature filled cart that is easy to customize like Zen Cart or CRE Loaded. You can get them for free or some paid versions like CRE Pro. Then use the money you saved to hire a freelance PHP programmer to customize the features you want (they could even remove features if you dont want certain things at all on the cart). They could add a blog, CMS, additional forms and reports, etc. You just need to give enough details for your specifics and then find an hourly quote by a few firms to add them. It might cost you another $500 to $3000 to customize it with the additional features you need to have a cart specific to you. That is the great thing about the open source carts.

[Volusion]

We are a middle of the road cart with tons of features that shouldn't break the bank. Our solutions start at $29.95 a month and include RackSpace hosting, 24/7 support, and free upgrades. Just click on the link in my signature or call our sales team at 800-646-3517 option 2.

[Shannonlp]

Getting a good solid cart and hiring a designer/developer to customize the system the way you want the shopping cart to work seems like a good solution.

RubyCommerce may be a decent solution for a framework. I haven't done anything with RubyCommerce but it was one of the more impressive packages I have seen.

From a price standpoint MMK Cart is in this price range I have never used it.