On-line store - shopping cart program for Mac?

[Oriole]

Is there a free one? What did you use to set up your store? (even if it wasn't a Mac program).

Thanks a bunch.

[dogmom327]

I've never done a store on Mac so I'm not sure if it would be different but I've used Light Commerce (which is inexpensive), Zen Cart (which is free) and Core Commerce (which is reasonably priced hosted software). We're about to switch to Magento which is free in terms of the software but having it programed is spendy--probably not what you'd want to start out with.

[Kristine233]

Don't think it makes a difference. I've used a variety of stores on both Mac (what I have now) and PC and doesn't matter. You'll see more compatibility issues with different internet browsers instead of computers.

Zen cart are cube cart are both free and so is Wordpress eCommerce. Actually there are a lot of free ones. But more importantly than free is, will you be able to set it up yourself? Of those, I think the Wordpress one is probably the most user friendly if you don't know a lot of coding simply because Wordpress comes with themes to manage the style (or you can download other free ones). The others are pretty basic and you'd need to know some basic coding to get a "look" for it.

There are also even more flexible carts design-wise that would be good for beginners that have small fees involved, like Merchant Moms. You can find free templates and low cost ones to load to this cart.

[Jenryma]

Dogmom327,

I was reading with interest a thread from 2009 where you were looking to move to Corecommerce.  I'm looking at that now, but then just looked at your current site & saw you had moved to Magento (that's how i found this post.) 

As I'm considering CC, I'm really interested in what drove your decision to move on from it, and how you settled on Magento? 

Thanks for any insight you'd be willing to share!

[dogmom327]

I'm so sorry, I just saw your post.  There were a bunch of things but overall it was a lack of flexibility.  CC is good software, it really is and they make improvements all the time (more on that in a second) but since it is a hosted solution you don't have the option of making customized changes, hosting sub-folders rather than sub-domins for blogs, forums, etc. (sub-domains are not as useful for SEO).  I will give them credit for constantly trying to put out new features and most of them are cool but every time there was an upgrade it seems like something else broke temporarily which was stressful (since it's hosted, you can't opt out of upgrades).  Their customer service was very plesent but more often than not the answer was "that isn't possible at this time".

With Magento we have ultimate customizability (basically anything we an dream up can be done...it's just a matter of $$) we also have complete control over our hosting (CC hosts with Rackspace though which is an excellent company).  Downside is that Magento is expensive.  The software is free but building the site/customization and hosting is spendy.  Magento is a major resource hog so to run well you need some high end hosting (we run on a dedicated server).

That's the short version anyway.  Let me know if you need more.  Might PM me though because I'm not so good about checking threads :)
 

Originally Posted by Jenryma 

Dogmom327,

I was reading with interest a thread from 2009 where you were looking to move to Corecommerce.  I'm looking at that now, but then just looked at your current site & saw you had moved to Magento (that's how i found this post.) 

As I'm considering CC, I'm really interested in what drove your decision to move on from it, and how you settled on Magento? 

Thanks for any insight you'd be willing to share!

[Jenryma]

I'm sorry -- i thought i'd get a notification on your reply but i just came back and saw you replied months ago! I don't have permission to PM you, so just wanted to thank you for your note. I'll try to be more diligent about following your posts. Really impressed with what you've done.