I'm planning to have my own ecommerce website, a la Rakuten, Lazada, Soukai etc. Domain registered btw.

Quite a newbie in this area, I've come across few names like Shopify, easystore and sitegiant. Looking at their UniCart Pro package (RM1090/year), Sitegiant suits most of my requirements, except for multilingual feature. They use Google Translate which a major turn off for me since their translations can be funny, unprofessional and do not convey the right message. My target audience is Malaysians, so should have at least an option for the potential customers to select either Bahasa or English pages.

With those big local companies, I do not have to worry about hosting etc and their customer support so far (pre-sales) have been great. Thinking of getting OpenCart or Magento but I'm worried about hosting, support etc.

Which way should I go? Would the learning curve be too steep to have those open source platform? Appreciate your feedback. Thank you.

OpenCart si free.. hosting is free (or cheap.) Support yourself. Learning curve isn't that steep. There's nothing they can tell you that you can't find out for yourself eventually.

Wordpress is good.

I think I'll take the DIY approach. Just wondering, is there such a thing as free hosting? Can recommend any good and best bang for buck hosting company/package?



Maybe it's just me, but Wordpress might not be suitable for my needs. Thanks anyway.

Yes cheap/free hosting exists. Don't want to advertise for anyone so just Google it maybe

This post has been edited by wodenus: May 5 2015, 01:15 PM

u can click my link below ... i am using open cart

U can try check see www.magevps.com for magento hosting

Uih..cekci sangat.. segan nak click

Hi, do u face any issue with opencart so far? is the privacy in terms of preventing hacker done by opencart or hosting? which hosting u use? does the payment gateway extension free? any local bank transfer gateway?

sorry for so much question here..

Open source solution is good as it's free as long as you have the time and knowledge to maintain it, else it's really recommended that you look for a provider.

Opencart is quite good in terms of security, customization and operations. However, keep in note that this is still an Open Source solution that you should always keep it updated and do extra security measurements.

you can chose either wordpress with woocommerce, or magento , both is the best in the market, a lot of plugin is ready there

my opencart sifu...

opencart for end user, prestashop for developers, wordpress for anything in between.

if you don't have the budget it will be hard. Look at all the successfull ecommerce sites. They all use either commerical ecommerce or self developed ecommerce. That ecommerce site is their bread and butter. They make sure to put in the most effort into this. Using open source would means security will a concern. Imagine what the hacker can do if they hack into your ecommerce site.

However if you have limited budget then by all means use ready made opensource. They can be effective as well if done properly.