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I am looking for a low cost, low volume, and very simple to setup/use ecommerce solution for a friend to sell home made goods (e.g. photo boards and knitted scarfs). There is likely to be little traffic to the site and I only expect her to sell one or two goods per week.

What I really need, is a solution that I can set up in a day or two and easily show someone who is not an internet guru how to add new products. This does not have to be a free solution, but am looking for something that will have low costs associated with it.

I have had experience with zend cart before, but I get the impression that it has become a little outdated and also requires a lot of setting up.

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9 Answers

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For simplicity Shopify http://www.shopify.com/ and Interspire http://www.interspire.com/ are the two that immediately come to mind.

Whether they count as low-cost depends on how you're counting. But if time taken to get something presentable up and running is what you're concerned about both do an excellent job.

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It has turned out to be a great thread with nice suggestions. I can't find any place under onStartups to bookmark threads. :( – Ankur Jain Mar 19 '11 at 17:35
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http://www.opencart.com/ is very easy to setup, very easy to use. Its got a cute little ajax add to cart animation that is very neat.

There are a good amount of plugins for customizing, and you can find decent themes. Everything is customizable so either you or a your developer can make changes.

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+1 for opencart. A solid product. – jimg Jan 3 '11 at 14:51
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solid for a e-comm startup – Frank Jan 3 '11 at 23:49
One comment about OpenCart: Recent developments have me thinking. Basically, OpenCart recently had a CSRF security flaw disclosed, and the developer seems not to care. Not sure what conclusion to make, but this seems to bespeak a wrong mindset for an ecommerce application: blog.visionsource.org/2010/01/28/opencart-csrf-vulnerability – Jesper Mortensen♦ May 7 '11 at 10:03
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try magento. they have a great shop. you need a fast server though.

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up vote 1 down vote

I don't know how you define low cost, but after having tried many solutions, including free ones like Magento, OsCommerce, etc and even planned to build my own, I finally decided to go with Interspire Shopping Cart.

Very easy to setup and work with. It saved me tons of time (so tons of money). It is also designed with maximizing your sales in mind. For example they have a built in guest shopping option that allows shopping without having to create a user.

That was almost 2 years ago, and I'm still happy with it.

For others business that doesn't have many products, I use the simple solution from Plimus.

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Interspire is a good choice, can also be run as a monthly subscription if you dont want to deal with hosting it yourself, big commerce i think. – Frank Jan 2 '11 at 16:22
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Also explore www.prestashop.com. Its a nice and very easy to use.

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Opencart +1

Recently featured as the #1 upcoming ecommerce solution.

Or alternatively how about an Ebay store, or simply setting up a normal basic webpage then adding Paypal 'buy now' buttons.

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up vote 1 down vote

They guys behind Flavors.me have created Goodsie, an eCommerce solution aimed to be super simple, easy to set up and use, and well designed from the get go. http://goodsie.com/

Shopify is of course also a great competitor in this space and well worth checking out

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Goodsie is very nice. Easy to use interface, beautiful clean results. – SteveD- Jul 11 '11 at 6:46
up vote 0 down vote

There is also Volusion.com. It is pretty well known and have been in the industry for quite a while. Even if you don't choose this e-commerce solution, the website has a pretty cool page with good information for you to choose the Shopping Cart solution that fits your business.

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I have had great success with Pinnacle Cart. Mature platform, great features, easy to use…

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protected by Zuly Gonzalez♦ Feb 23 '12 at 16:55

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