Magento, Shopify or others?

[idv]

Hi

I know this will have been asked thousands of times but would like a fresh expert opinion please.

I am looking to sell a few products from my existing hotel website, so just require a separate page to sell items from our spa such as beauty products. Would it be better to have a separate magento site which looks simple to set up with many of the one click installers, use shopify (however if this is only available in dollar payments this is out) or are there any other options I have missed?

With regard to payments would paypal be the most straightforward option?

 

[ServWise]

Magento is not what I would ever call easy to setup, certainly very hard to customize and probably far to OTT for your needs. What is your site currently running, is it static HTML or CMS driven like with drupal or Joomla? If static then something like opencart in a sub-folder would be good and you could easily customize it so it fits nicely with your current site design. If you run drupal, wordpress or joomla, then they all have plugins eCommerce systems that would work well for you. You might even consider migrating to one of them if you aren't already to make updating your current site easier.

 

[idv]

Hi servwise thanks for the reply

It's a static site at the moment which works well and is easily updatable, the major components are using php includes for the major structural elements.

So it looks as though I should investigate opencart or magento? With regard to payments how is this handled by either platform - could this be used with paypal or are there other better solutions rather than having a dedicated merchant account for online payments

 

[ServWise]

Hi servwise thanks for the reply

It's a static site at the moment which works well and is easily updatable, the major components are using php includes for the major structural elements.

So it looks as though I should investigate opencart or magento? With regard to payments how is this handled by either platform - could this be used with paypal or are there other better solutions rather than having a dedicated merchant account for online payments

Both include paypal connectivity in the box so yes you can use a paypal account or even a paypal pro account where your customer does not even need to leave your own site. One other thing with Magento is it is much more resource intensive than opencart so you may need to upgrade your hosting if you're on a shared hosting plan.

 

[henryc]

I use shopify and it couldn't be easier. Granted the themes aren't so great but was so quick to get started and trading. Both Magento and Big Commerce take a lot of work just to get the standard website ready before the millions of other options that need configuring!

 

[cartridgesave.co.uk]

These are some helpful tips, thanks guys. I've never used Shopify before either

 

[antropy]

I am looking to sell a few products from my existing hotel website, so just require a separate page to sell items from our spa such as beauty products.

It depends how far you want to take the ecommerce side of the business. If it's just a few products then PayPal buttons might be okay.

If you have a whole product range then a separate website (perhaps just in a /shop folder) might be the way to go.

If you go with the latter then I'd recommend OpenCart rather than Magento.