ecommerce webisite

[fordie]

i am wanting to set up a small ecommerce website (selling soaps and bathbombs, toiletries etc), to suppliment my full time employment, so i'm not wanting anything major. i do not have a lot to spend a month of fees either. could anyone recomend an ecomerce package? i'm after something easy, something/someone that hosts the website for me also and preferable has the domain name included in the price, so that i only have one fee to pay per month. i have seen www.ekmpowershop.com and like the look of that, as i'd like to design the thing myself. i also saw www.anthonykeenan.com and they do a full ecommerce package, but they do all the designing for you which i am not keen on. perhaps, someone has others they could recomemd me? the maximum i can afford per month is 20-25 pounds per month, everything included. also, the ekmpowershop.com does not come with its own domain name, you have to pay an extra 24gbp per month, but i have seen domain names on otherwebsites for 2.99, the ekmwebsite says you can transfer your domain name over, but i do not know how to do this. any helps, as i am a novice! sorry for all the waffle, hope you ca all decifer it. thank you.

 

[scifind]

Big ask for 20 a month - maybe try ebay and paypal? See if it works out and expand.

I (or alot of other people) could set you up with hosting, a domain name and oscommerce for £3-£10 a month. But that would be it - you would have to learn hoe to configure OScommerce, ad payment systems and have no support. Also you would need paypal or sort out another payment system (all of which cost).

I will sent you a pm with a third way.

 

[fordie]

thanks, ekmpowershop is 19.99 a month, are there some catches im not seeing then, does it actually cost more?

 

[That Guy]

For a cheap start get hosting with www.vidahost.com (£3.44 per month)

Setup Cubecart on the hosting package: www.cubecart.com (v3 is FREE)


I can help you set this up if needed, PM Me for help

 

[dave1928]

take a look at tigercommerce. The yare slightly cheaper than ekm and to me they seem good by the look of there website compared with ekm.
Im still trying to decide which to go for myself. At this moment in time im edging towards the tiger package but im just about to try there free trails.

 

[philipjohn]

Are the products made by yourself? If they are, you might be better off using a site like Etsy.com or Folksy.com. I've just set my sister up on Folksy.com selling handmade greetings cards and it's working well. You can always forward your own domain there, like I've done with hers.

Phil

 

[Conrad]

To properly evaluate a website, choose one at a time and "Go through the motions" to place an order for a few products...You can always change your mind at the last step, the payment page.As an extension of the regular brick-and-mortar business, the website should convey Trust and Security first of all.Guarantees should be prominently displayed, along with a statement of online security issues addressed...and full contact information puts "A face to the name" so to speak, at least geographically.Site navigation should be prominent and simplified...a search feature is a handy Plus, but a catalog listing on each page is a basic requirement, at least a breakdown of categories.Individual product descriptions should include any pertinent "buying decision" details you would be able to receive by reading the package at your local store, along with shipping weights and dimensions.

 

[GM Wholesale]

Hi try www.vstore.ca there packages is brilliant and for £8 per month you cant go wrong the software is really scary at first but once you get used to it its brilliant they also do free packages if you would like marketing advice contact me on MSN
Hope this helps

 

[PR Wales]

My recommendation would be to take a look at a Joomla driven site with eCommerce by a component called Virtue Mart.

First off, this is all open source software and free to use, (as is osCommerce). So you only really need worry about paying for hosting, which should cost you no more than a fiver a month for a small new start website. Probably less in fact.

Also, using software such as osCommerce can be daunting if you're new to website creation, and oscommerce is particularly flaky. For instance if you misplace a simple semi-colon or comma, the whole thing can fall over and I've seen people have this trouble just changing the index page, and thats before actually uploading any products etc. And don't even get me going on .htaccess issues.

It can be a temperamental son of a b*itch whilst still being a very good package.

But Joomla and Virtue Mart makes everything nice and easy once the software is set up. All of the product uploading is done through a nice, intuitive GUI, (graphical user interface), which generally comes with tooltips etc, to use as pointers along the way.

To give an example of whats possible I gave my 23 year old niece a crash course in working with Joomla, and after only a weekend, she came up with this - mizz-minx.co.uk, (broad minds only please ).

The site isn't doing anything as she got fed up and moved onto soaps and cosmetics. Oh no wait, thats what she's into now, but suffice to say all the work she put into this site was for nothing and today it sits idle, so please don't try and buy anything.

You will also need to make sure whichever hosting plan you decide upon, supports SSL or Secure Socket Layer connections.

This changes your address from HTTP://xyz.com, to HTTPS://xyz.com and also displays a padlock symbol in the base of the browser, showing the customers credit card details are encrypted.

But an easy way around that is to use Paypal or Nochex to process your payments in which case all the secure stuff takes place on the paypal (or nochex) servers so you don't have to worry.

If you would like any more Joomla info please feel free to shout up.

Good luck

Ian

 

[emerchant]

You might like to try and contact easywebstorehttp://www.easywebstore.net they have a very wide choice of templates and can also work from a design produced by yourself or a web designer. I think if you just start with a basic / standard template you can enter your design yourself as well.

 

[Optegris]

Best we can do for you is £35 per month for one of our leased eCommerce software licenses. This will include:

The store software with no limits
Your hosting
Upgrades to the software
Telephone/Email support

Domains aren't included but as you have found they are not expensive in the least with a UK domain from us being £7.98 for a two year registration.

Take a look at our site and if you have any questions then don't hesitate to ask

 

[Ali-v-8]

i am wanting to set up a small ecommerce website (selling soaps and bathbombs, toiletries etc), to suppliment my full time employment, so i'm not wanting anything major. i do not have a lot to spend a month of fees either. could anyone recomend an ecomerce package? i'm after something easy, something/someone that hosts the website for me also and preferable has the domain name included in the price, so that i only have one fee to pay per month. i have seen www.ekmpowershop.com and like the look of that, as i'd like to design the thing myself. i also saw www.anthonykeenan.com and they do a full ecommerce package, but they do all the designing for you which i am not keen on. perhaps, someone has others they could recomemd me? the maximum i can afford per month is 20-25 pounds per month, everything included. also, the ekmpowershop.com does not come with its own domain name, you have to pay an extra 24gbp per month, but i have seen domain names on otherwebsites for 2.99, the ekmwebsite says you can transfer your domain name over, but i do not know how to do this. any helps, as i am a novice! sorry for all the waffle, hope you ca all decifer it. thank you.

I don't offer an off the shelf ecommerce website but as you mention EKM we do recommend them.
For internet marketing the are easy change for SEO purposes.
In the long run it will save you money to use them.

 

[Optegris]

Until you try and transfer the domain away of course. I've had real problems with some clients trying to move non-UK domains away from EKM...

 

[Ali-v-8]

Until you try and transfer the domain away of course. I've had real problems with some clients trying to move non-UK domains away from EKM...

That's the point of off the shelf websites you don't actually own the website.
This is why you pay only £20 a month as opposed to £3,000+vat minimum for you own website.

EKM are a good solution if you are starting up. It will allow you to save the money that you need to actually buy a bespoke website and let you seet if your product is in demand.

 

[Optegris]

You've missed the point. EKM will register the domain under the clients name which is fine but they set the registrant/admin contact to be them. If the client wants to move the domain name away from them at a later stage they have to jump through hoops to get the EPP release code and the authorisation email. Uk domains are simple as Nominet can step in.

Off the shelf doe not mean you do not own the site any less than a bespoke site, it boils down to the license agreement.

The key point here is that when choosing a monthly SaaS store such as EKM you should check that you can move away later and be able to export all your products/orders/customer detail etc in a format that can be added to another piece of software.

They may own the code but the client owns the data.

 

[inspiremydesign]

I used ekmpowershop for a year, I thought it WAS £19.99! But adding the cost of domain and email.. it rose to £32.00 which took the piss! Although it did say From £19.99 so what would you expect really. It's a great ecommerce store to start your own online store with.. the backend system is INCREDIBLE!!! But the front system has some nice templates although some are quite tacky.. you can get an amazon.com looking template and customize it to how you want. My store began to grow larger and more people would buy my stock so shut down and moved to magento which is AhhhhhhhhhhhhhMAZING!!! So happy with it.. but I've had to pause it for a month to redesign the template, that's something you need to get help with because it is extremely difficult and complex to edit yourself. Magento is absolutely free, except some of the widgets do cost money but they are petty things like a gallery slider which you don't need.

I'd recommend you to go for ekmpowershop.com or magento.com. OR if your looking for something typically easy .. mrsite.com. But that's the most tackiest ecommerce ever.. the templates are crap, the backend is not flexible at all and you have to pay £20 for paypal pro to allow you to activate multiple products in your shopping category etc.

Research the market, there's obviously alot of offers going on now because businesses are shutting up shop offline and converting to online.. so good luck with it.

 

[Accounting Sage]

take a look at netpivitol website. Could not find more reasonable price.

 

[wood1e2]

How are you going to market you website on your budget?

 

[new2bus]

That's the point of off the shelf websites you don't actually own the website.
This is why you pay only £20 a month as opposed to £3,000+vat minimum for you own website.

I think you have either been looking in the wrong places or you have not looked enough, if that is your experience. Sorry.

 

[Ali-v-8]

I think you have either been looking in the wrong places or you have not looked enough, if that is your experience. Sorry.

Strange comment. How do I lack experience. My comment is sound and to the point. :|
Off the shelf ecommerce websites (or LEASED website as the are known to experienced seo's) are not owned, hence the low monthly payments.

£3,000.00+vat in MY opinion is an average price to pay for an ecommerce website. (customising and added extras cost more)

3

 

[emerchant]

I would agree if you want it doing properly then thats what you are looking at, the leased options offer fantastic value for money and you should be able to take all the data but you cant "own" the system.

 

[new2bus]

Strange comment. How do I lack experience. My comment is sound and to the point. :|
Off the shelf ecommerce websites (or LEASED website as the are known to experienced seo's) are not owned, hence the low monthly payments.

£3,000.00+vat in MY opinion is an average price to pay for an ecommerce website. (customising and added extras cost more)

3

I say that because when you pay only £20 for the leased site you are getting the standard templates, you still have to pay for the customising and added extras, so why have a leased site that has the inherent problem of what I said, you may as well have a standard cart then pay someone to customise that one.

I will use as an example Magento, it hardly cost £3,000 (customising and added extras cost more) or XCart is the same.

By all means purchase a script and pay someone to customise it.

End result is you do not have all your eggs in one basket.

 

[new2bus]

I have taken the time to look at a few "leased" carts and looked at what you get as standard, not a lot that you are not able to get with a "non-leased" script.

My advice is have a free or purchased script, pay to have it customised to your liking, then you are free to take it and all the modifications you have paid for to any host you wish.

Tie yourself into a lease and have a fall out after you have spent your money and where does that leave you? A lot will feel they have to stay and put up with it others will have to dig deep into the pocket and start all over again.

Remember one thing is paramount in business, it is called planning and planning for the unforeseen is way up there.

"EKM are a good solution if you are starting up. It will allow you to save the money that you need to actually buy a bespoke website and let you seet if your product is in demand." so then what? you find yourself tied in with an option of staying or saying goodbye to a lot of the work you have put in and moving on. Bad advise I would say.

I know there are others but try looking on here for threads on ekm or ekmpowershop, see what advise some of them will give you. In fact just look at posts from people with a "leased" cart tied to hosting say when things go wrong. It is when things go wrong that you find out the truth of anything.

 

[new2bus]

EKM are a good solution if you are starting up. It will allow you to save the money that you need to actually buy a bespoke website and let you seet if your product is in demand.

Then what? You find yourself tied in and have to decide do you stay or do you leave and say goodbye to a lot of the hard work you have put in, or paid for. False economy and lacks forward planning in my opinion.

EKM does not give you a BESPOKE website it gives you a choice of tailoring a pre formed template, hardly what you are describing.

Bespoke - custom-made to the buyer's specification. How can that relate to getting a site from EKM at £20.

 

[Ali-v-8]

Then what? You find yourself tied in and have to decide do you stay or do you leave and say goodbye to a lot of the hard work you have put in, or paid for. False economy and lacks forward planning in my opinion.

EKM does not give you a BESPOKE website it gives you a choice of tailoring a pre formed template, hardly what you are describing.

Bespoke - custom-made to the buyer's specification. How can that relate to getting a site from EKM at £20.

solution 1 = bespoke ecommerce= website created from scratch. (cost depends on specifications)
solution 2 = off the shelf = companies like EKM = £20 per month.

How can you complicate that.

 

[new2bus]

solution 1 = bespoke ecommerce= website created from scratch. (cost depends on specifications)
solution 2 = off the shelf = companies like EKM = £20 per month.

How can you complicate that.

solution 1 = Zen cart or XCart or Magento or similar bespoke ecommerce= website created from scratch. (cost depends on specifications) but not tied in
solution 2 = off the shelf = companies like EKM = £20 per month and not bespoke and ties you in.

My point is where do you fit the bespoke into this £20, it is not bespoke, but it is how you described it.

I would also say you have not quoted like for like, there is no way a standard EKM site looks anywhere near someone spent £3,000 on it.

 

[Ali-v-8]

solution 1 = Zen cart or XCart or Magento or similar bespoke ecommerce= website created from scratch. (cost depends on specifications) but not tied in
solution 2 = off the shelf = companies like EKM = £20 per month and not bespoke and ties you in.

My point is where do you fit the bespoke into this £20, it is not bespoke, but it is how you described it.

I would also say you have not quoted like for like, there is no way a standard EKM site looks anywhere near someone spent £3,000 on it.

Again "read the post".

Never has it been said that £20 for a bespoke website.

It was said that you would expect to pay £3,000 (average depending on specification) for a bespoke shopping cart.

the comment your refer to without reading is :-
"It will allow you to save the money that you need to actually buy a bespoke website and let you seet if your product is in demand".

now unless I am mistaken and any one else that took the time to read it, it states that
1) try an EKM shop at £20 per month.
2) see if your product sells
3) save up to BUY a BESPOKE website.

I hope this clarify's. If not go to the shop buy a can of coke let the caffeine enter your blood stream and wake up.

 

[new2bus]

I apologise, I did indeed read your post wrong regarding bespoke.

I hope this clarify's. If not go to the shop buy a can of coke let the caffeine enter your blood stream and wake up.

I hope this clarifies, get off the rose tinted specs come off of what ever you are taking, then shop around and you will find £3,000 minimum you quote is a joke. (sorry for this flippancy it was in reply to yours and not to flame)

You can hardly compare the EKM £20 offering as being anywhere looking like you spent £3,000 on it. If you are going to bandy figures then look at what is being offered in the marketplace then look at the templates EKM offer and your price is way off base.

I anyone took a site licence, say on a freebie or low cost script even, if they spent £3,000 on it it would be vastly superior to anything that a standard off the shelf would offer.

So if you are going to quote, then do so on a like for like basis.

That is why on my post #19 I said "I think you have either been looking in the wrong places or you have not looked enough, if that is your experience. Sorry. " what I was meaning with that statement was that if your experience is you can not get a better site than a standard EKM offering for the price you mention then you have not looked enough or you have looked in the wrong places.

One of the places is this forum, because there are members here that will provide a lot more than EKM has for £3,000 and for something as basic a lot less.

I would also mention that if a user did not want to add mods now to a cart, they could in the future and still retain the hard work they have spent on it.

With EKM I will say again in my opinion it is false economy to do as you state, unless you do not want to grow and you want a standard template site.

 

[Ali-v-8]

I apologise, I did indeed read your post wrong regarding bespoke.



I hope this clarifies, get off the rose tinted specs come off of what ever you are taking, then shop around and you will find £3,000 minimum you quote is a joke. (sorry for this flippancy it was in reply to yours and not to flame)

You can hardly compare the EKM £20 offering as being anywhere looking like you spent £3,000 on it. If you are going to bandy figures then look at what is being offered in the marketplace then look at the templates EKM offer and your price is way off base.

I anyone took a site licence, say on a freebie or low cost script even, if they spent £3,000 on it it would be vastly superior to anything that a standard off the shelf would offer.

So if you are going to quote, then do so on a like for like basis.

That is why on my post #19 I said "I think you have either been looking in the wrong places or you have not looked enough, if that is your experience. Sorry. " what I was meaning with that statement was that if your experience is you can not get a better site than a standard EKM offering for the price you mention then you have not looked enough or you have looked in the wrong places.

One of the places is this forum, because there are members here that will provide a lot more than EKM has for £3,000 and for something as basic a lot less.

I would also mention that if a user did not want to add mods now to a cart, they could in the future and still retain the hard work they have spent on it.

With EKM I will say again in my opinion it is false economy to do as you state, unless you do not want to grow and you want a standard template site.

"£3,000.00+vat in MY opinion is an average price to pay for an ecommerce website. (customising and added extras cost more)"

I'm hoping this will clarify AGAIN

If you have an issue with EKM please enlighten me.
As an SEO I will stick by my guns.
If you run an ecommerce site please go to the thread show me an example and i will give you my opinion on it.
And if I find it as easy and as simple to optimise and use then I will endorse it.
But until you do buy a coke.

 

[new2bus]

"£3,000.00+vat in MY opinion is an average price to pay for an ecommerce website. (customising and added extras cost more)"

I'm hoping this will clarify AGAIN

If you have an issue with EKM please enlighten me.
As an SEO I will stick by my guns.
If you run an ecommerce site please go to the thread show me an example and i will give you my opinion on it.
And if I find it as easy and as simple to optimise and use then I will endorse it.
But until you do buy a coke.

I do not have to, if you go to a standard £20 EKM Template and look at it, and if you or someone you recommend would charge £3,000 to mod and design a cart to look like one, then you are the one in need of the coke, and I would not think your opinion was valid, purely for the reasons I have stated in #19, if that was the case.

You may think I am being argumentative here, but I am not, I just do not like the scare tactics you used in your post that was totally misleading and inaccurate when applied on a like for like basis..

 

[Ali-v-8]

I do not have to, go to a standard £20 EKM Template and look at it, and if you would charge £3,000 then you are the one in need of the coke.

Actually I charged a client £8,000 for the last ecommerce website I did.
I wont under rate my service and ability.
If you are unable to offer an ecommerce website for £3,000 with out the client biting your hand off then you definitely need to restructure your product.

Value for money is key. And like i said specifications determine price and my prices are not fixed,.

 

[new2bus]

Actually I charged a client £8,000 for the last ecommerce website I did.
I wont under rate my service and ability.
If you are unable to offer an ecommerce website for £3,000 with out the client biting your hand off then you definitely need to restructure your product.

Value for money is key. And like i said specifications determine price and my prices are not fixed,.

I have no qualms about you charging £8,000, or more for that matter. I would have an opinion if your customer paid you £8,000 for a £20 look alike though.

As for people offering, I have already suggested you need to get out more, or stay in at your screen and look around the forum members here, easy to find a £20 lookalike a lot cheaper than you suggest.

It is very easy to get a £20 lookalike which you recommend for less than £3,000 (MY POINT). There are members on here who would deliver a superb site and charge a lot more than £3,000 (not my point), but it would not look like a £20 EKM Template effort.

Have you got my point yet. It is your comparison of what you get for £20 with an offering from someone that costs £3,000 that I find misleading to someone who reads it. It is not a true comparison.

 

Not sure how all the fighting about £20 v £3k is helping the op, but never mind.

I'm feeling a little repetitive tonight but it seems theres been mass posting of the same question re advice for possible providers ... we really do need to get some kind of sticky as the list of providers in the market is huge and there is plenty of choice!

At the end of the day it comes down to needing to take a long cold hard look at needs, what do you need the site to do in order to successfully sell your product, what features are an absolute must, what are the nice to haves etc, then you also need to factor in your budget and the fact that you are testing this out and take a look at the list of wants and work out what is a realistic list based on funds.

Second to this is how hands on do you want to be, are you capable and IT savvy enough to actually design a safe, secure, easy to navigate well thought out site? Or do you want to leave that side of it to an expert but be able to make minor adjustments?

For testing out a product in an online market I would never advocate going immediately down the custom shop route, you could be throwing money away, the market is currently untested for you, you dont know whats going to work or what... or if you customers want it.

Folksy/Etsy etc are great for being part of a handmade product collective, but you are also in amongst a lot of sellers and its not always that easy to get your listings to appear well in Google so that the average surfer finds them.

A hosted solution would give the ability to test out your ideas within a relatively safe environment and if you used a well optimised host (Open Mind, Internet Retailer, Pace, etc) then you have a good starting base to work from with a lot of features for a low cost).

 

[new2bus]

Not sure how all the fighting about £20 v £3k is helping the op, but never mind.

It isn't only the OP that reads the thread though, and I would hate someone reading the ill thought comparison of £20 with a £3k site and get mislead. The OP did mention EKM though so the subject matter is still here.

You only have to do a search on here for EKM and EKM powershop and my warning would stand about using and getting tied in to a system that locks you in.

Frightning someone that reads this thread, that the alternative means spending £3,000 minimum for a site that looks and behaves the same is a non-starter because that is not the minimum by any means for a basic EKM £20 lookalike.

 

[quikshop]

my warning would stand about using and getting tied in to a system that locks you in.

Unless you can write your own, every software system ties you in but to my knowledge there are no systems that lock you in.

You can move from our service, or EKMs or any other managed and hosted Ecommerce solution to open source or a custom built product. You can equally moved from open source to hosted, I don't quite see what your warning is aimed at.

The only 'locking in' is with some hosted solutions you are using proprietary software exclusive to that service, but the danger is no more than any other Ecommerce proposition.

Given that our software has been running for 5 years (3 years commercially) and EKMs considerably longer these are both very stable platforms.

Ours at least will be around for many years to come

 

[new2bus]

If you can not move/migrate the licence and the script to another host you are locked in to that company.

If someone hosts a zen cart script for instance on abc_hosts.com and then decides to leave for any reason, they simply backup the database and file folders(if they have not already) then go to a new host and upload the file folders create a database then just alter the config files to point to anything that has altered.

Any work you have had done to the cart will move to the new host. So flexible with the host, not the cart.

Go with a company that ties your hosting to the cart and you can not just move it, because you would not have a licence on the new host so you would be forced into a new script, and your old cart abandoned. Any work you paid for to customise the cart is also lost. Yes you can go to the company that did your original work and ask them to replicate it on your new cart, but that means paying again.

It is pointless saying you can move from one script to another because invariably you can't.

So my advise still stands that the host is one part and the script is another, if they are tied in then you could have a problem later and you loose flexibility.

EKM and some others, will not let me just transfer my whole site as is to abc_host.com as far as I am aware.

 

[new2bus]

Given that our software has been running for 5 years (3 years commercially) and EKMs considerably longer these are both very stable platforms.

Ours at least will be around for many years to come

That raises another point, what if anything unforseen happens to your tied in package

"Ours at least will be around for many years to come" is something I do not argue with or dispute because I do not know, but I would not expect you to say you were looking bankruptcy in the face, so that raises another risk by being tied to a company with both hosting and script. Loose one you loose it all. I would say that is another reason for not putting all your eggs in one basket.

I wonder how many MDs have said ""Our company will be around for many years to come" and not been shortly after. (no reflection on your company)

 

[quikshop]

If you can not move/migrate the licence and the script to another host you are locked in to that company.

That just doesn't stand up to any sort of examination.

If a shop owner wanted to move from hosted to open source, they simply import their business data from the hosted solution into the open source one via a csv file, and skin it to match their previous hosted shop.

Likewise, if they wanted to move from open source to hosted they import their existing business data into the hosted solution.

You're confusing moving an open source solution between hosts, and changing software vendors which are two very different things.

 

[quikshop]

That raises another point, what if anything unforseen happens to your tied in package

Equally if your hosting company goes down without a trace, you have no way of recoving your open source solution.

Its a duff argument, personally I would rather align my business with an inclusive hosted service that has a strong record over a period of years with a growing customer base, than use one of these 25p a month open source hosting services run by Billy out of his bedroom.

If a problem arises with my business I want to be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone who can resolve it. I don't want my website going down because little Billy had to turn his 'server' off at 9pm because he's been sent to bed for not finishing his homework

 

[new2bus]

So in your opinion a site only consists of data? there is no template that is based on a design they paid for?

So if I took a site of yours and was to import it into say zen cart, I can and my whole design will stay. I do not think so. A site is a bit more than just data.

I think your description does not stand up to any examination

I will say it a bit simpler, If I had an independantly hosted script, I would just back up my site as is, I would then upload it to the new host, wait for dns to propogate and a visitor to my site would not know know I had done or changed anything from the last time they visited.

Job done.

I can not do that with a tied in script. A cart from someone else may take the data, but what about the template and everything else that makes up my design, a design I probably a large amount for.

Or are you suggesting I would not have to pay to have it skinned.

I would also mention time factor, I should already have my backup so depending while I wait for my site to upload to new host I spend 20 mins and no cost to upload, if I do have to pay someone to upload to the new site it would be relatively cheap or free in some cases.

Having my site completely redesigned to fit into a new script and the setting up of the new script = Cost and a complete waste of a lot of the work I put into my old site.

With independant script you retain 100% of your existing site, what do I retain with a locked in one. Oh yes a data file in csv that probably does not import into my new script, or did you forget that the csv has to match the script you are importing into.

I am not confusing anything, I am separating them.

That just doesn't stand up to any sort of examination.

If a shop owner wanted to move from hosted to open source, they simply import their business data from the hosted solution into the open source one via a csv file, and skin it to match their previous hosted shop.

Likewise, if they wanted to move from open source to hosted they import their existing business data into the hosted solution.

You're confusing moving an open source solution between hosts, and changing software vendors which are two very different things.