OSCommerce

CMA IT Services said:

Whats the going rate for an oscommerce setup/bespoke customization by a design company? thanks

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We paid around £500 for a customised installation of osCommerce a few years back for a fashion web site. It was a Scottish web hosting and design company and they also included amendments of which there were many.

I've no doubt you can get the same service for a fraction of the cost or 5 times the cost depending on where you see value.

CMA IT Services said:

Whats the going rate for an oscommerce setup/bespoke customization by a design company? thanks

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Since you mentioned a 'design company', it depends what is offered by that design company, an overall solution, custom graphic design, business advice, seo advice, development, ongoing support etc.

If it is just one-off ad-hoc development work you require, e.g. tendering whenever you decide you need the next contribution/module integrated into your system, then you also have to ask yourself who is responsible for and who is supporting your final system, in most cases it is you. If you pay a developer to integrate a contibrution/module into your system, that developer generally will not take responsibility for nor provide support for the whole of your system, they will just do the work you specified on a time and materials basis.

Since osCommerce development requires developers with a knowledge of PHP, MySQL, and osCommerce, to get an idea of rates go to www.jobserve.com and run a skill search, with job type contract, for PHP MySQL osCommerce.

Then also consider that the default osCommerce system needs quite a lot of development work to get it into a professional state, have a look at this custom osCommerce thread.

Generally, custom development is risky and good custom development work is expensive, which is why you should try to minimise the need for it where possible. If you are going the custom semi-bespoke route, then the free osCommerce system might be a false economy requiring more development work, when you could choose a different commercial system which isn't free, but requires less development work (or even no development work) to turn it into your final system.

To give you an idea of the sheer differences in prices between going for a solution that requires a lot of custom coding and one that does not, my company's custom PHP/MySQL development rate is £300+VAT per day (which we only provide to some select long-term clients), but we also provide a hosted managed ecommerce solution, which is customisable to a certain extent without coding, based on our own custom osCommerce version which costs clients £250+VAT per year including premium hosting.

If you go the custom development route you will get different quotes, different rates, different service, and different quality of final system from different suppliers.

You may also want to look at alternative products on the market such as ours: www.openmindcommerce.co.uk

We can supply you with a license fully hosted with a free SSL certificate for just £299 inc vat. The system is incredibly easy to skin, certainly easier than osCommerce, but if you prefer we can put you in touch with one of our designers to produce a custom design for just £849 inc vat which includes your license etc...

Some of our example sites are below:
www.nsdpowerballs.com
www.lippiselkbag.co.uk
www.toyuniverse.co.uk
www.uprint.me.uk

As you can see, even though they all use the same system, they vary dramatically in appearance which just goes to show how flexible the system is.
Do give me a call on 08456 445 789 if you would like to have a chat about your options