UK competition for Volusion cart system

When you say hosted, what you are actually referring to is Managed or Leased.... All eCommerce apps are "Hosted" otherwise they wouldn't be on the web. Managed or leased eCommerce services are where the ecommerce application is rented as a service and you pay a regular fee to use it.

Very few (e.g Actinic) actually have an offline component for managing products and sales etc so that means the vast majority will allow you to login from anywhere and manage all the stuff from a web browser meening that a leased sollution is not a requierment.

I would NOT personally suggest using leased or managed product as you will likely be paying over the odds for an inferior system which wont allow you any freedom. e.g you will be stuck with their hosting and a system that wont allow modifications and since the software wont be yours, as soon as you stop paying for the service you will loose not just the hosting but the whole site as well.

I would personally look at some of the more advanced self hosted ecommerce systems like Xcart (Commercial / open-source) or Magento (Free / open-source) which will give you some good software that can be heavily modified and can be moved from host to host as your needs change.

Much of what you want can be achieved with your own hosting account.

1) Most hosting accounts have a statistics tracker via the cPanel
2) You can log into the website cPanel and shop Admin section from any web browser
3) A correctly setup hosting account can integrate your emails and forward them on to any email account (Gmail if you want online web browser email access)
4) Good SEO will get you to the top of Google quickly - this does take a lot of time and effort. It has little to do with whether your shop is hosted by someone else or you host it on your own hosting account.
5) Hosted shops are more restrictive than setting up your own hosting and online shop. Some would argue otherwise but they usually have a connection to sellling hosted shops.

So if you decide to host your own online shop you then need to decide which software package to use. Then allocate a budget for getting it to look the way you want. Then allocate a little for SEO and promotion.

Hosting accounts are not expensive. www.ryanhost.com do a hosting account (bronze hosting) suitable for online shops at under £40 per year

Open source shoppingcarts are free to obtain and there are plenty of people to customise them (including me) to get them how you want.

www.zencart.com
www.cubecart.co.uk
www.oscommerce.com

It will take you a little longer to set up your own hosting and ecommerce store compared with a hosted one but the effort will be well worth it. It will cost a little more too but you will soon see the benefits reflected in your sales.

If you need any advice send me a PM and I will be glad to help

Hi Leigh,

There are plenty of excellent UK alternatives to Volusion. In addition to our own hosted Ecommerce solution, take a look at www.awebapart.com, www.openmindcommerce.co.uk, www.paceretail.co.uk, www.ekmpowershop.com or if you have a larger budget then www.venda.com, and even www.actinic.co.uk have their own hosted Ecommerce service these days.

Avoid similar offered by 1and1, 123-reg and other predominantly domain hosting services, they tend to resell a German system without the help and support you might consider important.

Interspire have become very popular lately

Rob

Go for X-Cart or Magento, the Interspire product looks interesting, used to use their email system years ago!

nickpp said:

Go for X-Cart or Magento, the Interspire product looks interesting, used to use their email system years ago!

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I doubt the OP will find either of these suitable unless he/she is paying a designer to customise it. Both X-Cart and Magento are complex and not suited to beginners in ecommerce. Judging by the initial post I am guessing the OP does not yet have much experience with ecommerce systems so a simpler one which does not cost a lot is probably best for the OP to cut their teeth on. Magento and X-Cart will scare the bejeesus out of any beginner.

The simplest to start with IMHO is cubecart but Zencart is probably equally as good a place to begin. Move on to X-Cart and Magento some time later.