Author Topic: Shopping Cart - platform or custom build?  (Read 3178 times)

micah

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Shopping Cart - platform or custom build?
« on: March 04, 2014, 10:40:56 AM »
A client wants to upgrade their shopping cart system.  Their current platform works (although its very crappy -- like the database has 7,000 plain text passwords and e-mail addresses)  The catch is they've hacked it for some custom shipping needs (they sell chocolate and need to force shipping methods to warm weather zipcodes at certain times of year)

I've been tasked with figuing out the best solution: (1) upgrading their existing platform and re-hacking it to account for the custom shipping.  (2) implementing a new platform like Zencart or x-cart and hacking it as needed or (3) a custom build, integrated into their site.

I'm leaning towards the custom build because, well, thats just more fun for me.  But also because other solutions come with dozens of features they don't use or need.  They really just need a way to set up products, assign them to categories and have an effective cart system and easy checkout process for their end users.  The hurdles would be setting up the card processing with their existing vendor (which I've done before) and writting all the code for calculating the shipping.

They don't have a huge budget and I know a custom solution would probably cost more BUT, it could be easily integrated into a new site (which we would probably include as a loss-leader) which would help with a lot of their other problems they came to us for (such as SEO and UX)

Thoughts?  Which route would you go?
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ober

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Re: Shopping Cart - platform or custom build?
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2014, 11:40:45 AM »
Custom.  Most of the OTS products are built to be the entire site, not integrate into one.  And I agree that there is a lot of functionality they'll never use.  After completely building one from scratch, I would recommend it.  And it really doesn't take that long to build one.  By the time you get used to the OTS way of coding, you can probably code your own and make the client happier.

webwhy

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Re: Shopping Cart - platform or custom build?
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2014, 04:36:20 PM »
custom solution and no budget sounds like a shitty customer to me ;)

micah

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Re: Shopping Cart - platform or custom build?
« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2014, 04:48:11 PM »
They're a fairly well-known local brand with 10 retail locations, most of which are in higher-end shopping areas.  I think they're just cheap and are hung up listening to their in-house IT guy who's scared that we're stepping on his toes.
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ober

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Re: Shopping Cart - platform or custom build?
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2014, 08:35:59 PM »
Ahh... gotta love politics.