Anybody using Magento Free (Self Hosted)??

[bartonz20let]

So I'm with EKM powershop and I'm having a bit of a nightmare, something has happened with the transition from the cart to my payment processor and I'm experiencing a really high number of dropped carts, the EKM team are 'on it' so it will get resolved in 2032....

I've seen the free version of Magento and was wondering if someone could give me the run down on how it works, how flexible it is and its limitations?

Any input would be good, I've looked at the common suppliers of paid & hosted options but they all seem a little pricey and limited, I have 10,000's of products so something with limited 250's just not going to work (hence why I chose EKM)

 

[monaghan]

I've not used it to sell my own stuff, but have worked on integrations with other systems so have setup test installs and so on.

It is quite a beast and will consume server resource, however, it does seem very flexible and has huge potential to customise.

Rather than relying on other people's experience, I'd suggest setting up a copy and "playing" with it to see if you can make it do what you want.

 

[Conglomer Group]

Hello,

Magento includes product id, product title, sku, images, description… everything! Although this may seem a bit abstract, it’s also one of the most powerful concepts in Magento and provides an almost limitless ability to control the products.You also don’t need to add any columns to your database - it’s all done automatically from the attributes manager.

That’s right - you just add the attribute from the admin, and you can start entering data for products using this new attribute.

 

[bartonz20let]

I've not used it to sell my own stuff, but have worked on integrations with other systems so have setup test installs and so on.

It is quite a beast and will consume server resource, however, it does seem very flexible and has huge potential to customise.

Rather than relying on other people's experience, I'd suggest setting up a copy and "playing" with it to see if you can make it do what you want.

That's something I forgot to ask, I've seen some dedicated hosts for Magento, and they quoted a number of 500 MySQL Databases, forgive my ignorance but what does this mean? I can get unlimited for and extra £4 but I'm not sure what it is.

I've a friend who uses it and his site seems tidy and works well so from a customisation point I have an idea what can be done and the back end seems similar to what I'm used to but unfortunately he lives so far away I can't get over for a proper look.

Cheers for the advice guys

 

[monaghan]

That's something I forgot to ask, I've seen some dedicated hosts for Magento, and they quoted a number of 500 MySQL Databases, forgive my ignorance but what does this mean? I can get unlimited for and extra £4 but I'm not sure what it is.

I've a friend who uses it and his site seems tidy and works well so from a customisation point I have an idea what can be done and the back end seems similar to what I'm used to but unfortunately he lives so far away I can't get over for a proper look.

Cheers for the advice guys

Many hosts will quote large numbers and "unlimited", this is something to be cautious of.

You will only be using a single database for the cart so having 499 available is not really going to make any difference. What will make a difference is how much memory is available to the software to use and how many other concurrent users there are on the system.

If your shop is busy, you may well suffer performance issues on a "cheap host"

 

[Stanton22]

You can install Magento Community edition on any hosting package. I've done one through Easily (hosting also) and it was simple, and another through Bluehost (who have 1 click installation).
So pretty much find a host that offers 1 click installation of Magento (or something similar) if you're not comfortable installing it yourself.
You then export all of your products onto CSV, rework them a little bit (to fit a Magento CSV) and then reupload. Lots of articles/videos on how to do this online.

Best of luck.

 

[makeusvisible]

In terms of hosting, this is not something you will want to compromise on with Magento. It is a power hungry beast, and does require a properly configured hosting setup...preferably a Magento specific hosting environment.

You might well be able to install it on a standard shared server.... but longer term you will have speed and performance issues.

From the sounds of the size of your site, I would expect to pay around £200 - £400 per year for the hosting. If this is outside your price range, I would look at other options rather than trying to make Magento work on a lesser hosting platform.

Hope that helps.

 

[finleydesign]

You can install Magento Community edition on any hosting package. I've done one through Easily (hosting also) and it was simple, and another through Bluehost (who have 1 click installation).
So pretty much find a host that offers 1 click installation of Magento (or something similar) if you're not comfortable installing it yourself.
You then export all of your products onto CSV, rework them a little bit (to fit a Magento CSV) and then reupload. Lots of articles/videos on how to do this online.

Best of luck.

Wasn't aware you could install magento on "any" hosting package! are you sure, you really need a dedicated VPS or dedicated server package to get Magento to work

 

[bartonz20let]

In terms of hosting, this is not something you will want to compromise on with Magento. It is a power hungry beast, and does require a properly configured hosting setup...preferably a Magento specific hosting environment.

You might well be able to install it on a standard shared server.... but longer term you will have speed and performance issues.

From the sounds of the size of your site, I would expect to pay around £200 - £400 per year for the hosting. If this is outside your price range, I would look at other options rather than trying to make Magento work on a lesser hosting platform.

Hope that helps.

Well compared to what I'm currently paying (£25+ / month) that would be a massive increase over EKM's cost.

From what you've said I'm not sure I would get a better ROI by switching to Magento.

 

[Faevilangel]

Well compared to what I'm currently paying (£25+ / month) that would be a massive increase over EKM's cost.

From what you've said I'm not sure I would get a better ROI by switching to Magento.

at the higher end, it's less than £10 extra a month ....

DX3 webs offer Magento hosting from £25 a month (for 5k products)

 

[bartonz20let]

at the higher end, it's less than £10 extra a month ....

DX3 webs offer Magento hosting from £25 a month (for 5k products)

Doh....

I misread that, thought he had said /month

I was wondering as I had seen hosing in the £25/£40/month brackets.

 

[makeusvisible]

Well compared to what I'm currently paying (£25+ / month) that would be a massive increase over EKM's cost.

From what you've said I'm not sure I would get a better ROI by switching to Magento.

It is a brilliant platform.... but not right for everyone.

I would give Andy at DX3Webs a call as Magento hosting is their business. He will be able to pin down the costs for you.

 

[Faevilangel]

Doh....

I misread that, thought he had said /month

I was wondering as I had seen hosing in the £25/£40/month brackets.

Yeah I thought as much, I have done that as well :redface:

Moving to Magento (or another software) will be much better in the long run as you won't be limited by the platform (as much) and can basically do what you want to the website.

Your costs will go up (payment fees, designer fees etc) but you should reap the rewards quite quickly.

 

[RepricerExpress]

I agree with the sentiment here—use a hosting company that caters for Magento as it does consume a lot of resources which is why so many people think it's slow (they have scraped on the hosting setup). It will do everything you need (and more) but take into account your time in getting to know it etc. Are the other platforms like Shopify, Bigcommerce and Volusion too restrictive at this point?

 

[bartonz20let]

Are the other platforms like Shopify, Bigcommerce and Volusion too restrictive at this point?

Presently no, I'm with EKM and it has just about everything I could need, other than one issue I'm having I actually can't fault it.

The friend I have who uses Magento, his site looks scruffier after he's edited his template (could be a personal thing) and from an SEO perspective I can't see any differences.

If not for the payment issue I'm having with EKM I wouldn't think of changing.

 

[dx3webs]

10 000 is a lot of products.. I guess it is a case of working out how much your hosting is worth compared to income. If you are taking in a few hundred quid then its not worth it.. look at opencart or similar.. while not as flexible as magento it is a great cart and runs with lower resource requirements.

If your site is pulling in thousands a month you don't want to be risking that income on some micky mouse hosting package.

Magento can look as good as the template you have installed. There is a massive range to choose from.

You can test any of our shared hosting options free for two weeks if you want to play (or install it on you local machine for free)

 

[ldjames]

Magento is *very* bad for cheap web hosting packages. It requires a lot of resources to run even a small store and with most traditional hosts putting hundreds of accounts on a small server it doesn't end well.

Bear in mind that with 10,000 products, Google will be constantly crawling your store to find updates and this will exacerbate the problem.

If you are serious about Magento then expect to spend about £100/month for a reliable and fast web host. Talk to a few companies and make sure they understand the demands of Magento and not just e-commerce or websites in general.

That said, I wouldn't recommend Magento at all. Most of the best options for e-stores are proprietary in my opinion. Look at Shopify or Squarespace. Both excellent options.

 

[Faevilangel]

That said, I wouldn't recommend Magento at all. Most of the best options for e-stores are proprietary in my opinion. Look at Shopify or Squarespace. Both excellent options.

Yuk - awful advice in my opinion

both are US based and are poor examples of sites, you never own the site (like any hosted solution) and they lock you into their sites.

For 10k products they need to be getting an open source platform at the minimum to be able to get something more custom than the above sites and be in control of the site.

 

[ldjames]

Yuk - awful advice in my opinion

both are US based and are poor examples of sites, you never own the site (like any hosted solution) and they lock you into their sites.

For 10k products they need to be getting an open source platform at the minimum to be able to get something more custom than the above sites and be in control of the site.

I wasn't necessarily recommending those two, but more trying to point out that what you save on the software you pay for on the hosting.

There are means to import/export products between all of these systems.

 

[Faevilangel]

I wasn't necessarily recommending those two, but more trying to point out that what you save on the software you pay for on the hosting.

There are means to import/export products between all of these systems.

most of them packages won't accept 10k products, they are limited to less than that.

Some have moving tools but they are poor systems overall for an established business, for a start up they are fine to test the business.

 

[webhostuk]

If you are going with 10k product dedicated server is the right choice with good hardware , also have ngnix webserver it has surely helped the performance of magento websites.

 

[owas]

Wasn't aware you could install magento on "any" hosting package! are you sure, you really need a dedicated VPS or dedicated server package to get Magento to work

nop, I set up 3 small magento stores of about 300 products and they on a shared server, web space of 5gb and a mysql database.

 

[owas]

at the higher end, it's less than £10 extra a month ....

DX3 webs offer Magento hosting from £25 a month (for 5k products)

another large site I worked with about 5k products we moved the hosting to dx3webs and they come highly recommend from me also for large stores.

 

[OSWS]

Presently no, I'm with EKM and it has just about everything I could need, other than one issue I'm having I actually can't fault it.

The friend I have who uses Magento, his site looks scruffier after he's edited his template (could be a personal thing) and from an SEO perspective I can't see any differences.

If not for the payment issue I'm having with EKM I wouldn't think of changing.

Up until I read this comment, I would agree with others: Magento is more flexible and far more scalable - but it will require a fairly large initial outlay to transfer from EKM to Magento (at least in comparison to your corrent monthly charge). However, if you are happy with EKM I would suggest you look changing your payment system, that is

Fix the problem, not the solution.

It will be far simpler to change payment processor to one who integrates well with EKM and can give you the service you want, assuming the problem lays with the payment gateway.

I'm sure if you outline the problem, somebody will have had similar experience or can perhap suggest an alternate solution while you 'wait for EKM'.

 

[goivvy]

Wasn't aware you could install magento on "any" hosting package! are you sure, you really need a dedicated VPS or dedicated server package to get Magento to work

it depends on how complex your theme and setup is.

magento 1.9.3 coupled with decent full page cache solution could easily run on a cheap shared hosting.

 

[goivvy]

Wasn't aware you could install magento on "any" hosting package! are you sure, you really need a dedicated VPS or dedicated server package to get Magento to work

there are various shared hosting plans capable of running magento. check out nexcess for example.

the latest magento 1.9.3 coupled with a decent full page cache extension could handle 10 orders / day on a cheap shared plan. good for a startup. no need for VPS.