nopCommerce is a very excellent open source solution for Ecommerce, which is powerful, safe and can be extended. It’s free under the nopCommerce licence clause. Its current edition is perfect, possess the complete shopping cart function, background managing function, payment shipping integration and promotion function, etc.

Developed by ASP.NET 3.5, nopCommerce use MS-SQL2005 database, and can be deployed in the windows series host of godaddy. Deploying it need only several minutes if the the environment of the host matched is good.

Attention please. You cann’t delete or hide “Powered by nopCommerce” links if you want to use it free, which will be showed in every bottom of page layout. If you want to delete it, 50 dollars need to be paid once.

Official site:

http://www.nopcommerce.com

Shopping cart demo:

http://demo.nopcommerce.com

1. The shopping cart software of PHP, MySQL combination.

This type of combination is very popular. Open-source, quick upgrade, perfect community support and low server maintenance cost are its merits. There are many such combination, they are osCommerce, ZenCart, Prestashop, Magento, Cubecart, Opencart, CS-Cart, X-Car etc. The customers choose the most suitable one according to the quantity of the products and management mode. The omnipotent is usually commercial software, very little charge is needed. In terms of the lightweight, the open-source shopping cart software is OK.

2. Bluehost, Godaddy, ixWebhosting server

Our suggestion is to adopt Bluehost, if you choose the virtual hosting provider rather than independent server, which merit is low price, good service, stable system. The independent server of being charged is its only shortcoming .

3. Paypal, Visa/Master, Bank Transfer payment methods.

We usually provide the fundamental payment method, for example Paypal, Bank Transfer. Of course, Visa/Master, Moneybookers, Google Checkout, 2Checkout, Money Gram, WU, etc. are available.

4. Shipping methods, for example, UPS, DHL, FedEX, USPS, EMS etc.

It is very important to choose the reasonable shipping company and give the buyer more shipping choices according to the various places. The customer can pay the big international shipping company needed the higher charge, if he want to get his goods more quickly. Of course, if the customer have enough patience, and want to save the shipping cost, choosing the cheaper shipping methods is a good choice.

The least necessary investment:

1. Domain name cost: approximately $10/year (Godaddy $10.69 per month)
2. Host cost: approximately $100/year (Bluehost $7.95 per month)
3. Shopping cart software: open-source $0

It will cost you only 110 dollars per year if you choose the open-source shopping cart software ,adopt default templet, update and promote the products and do the customer service yourself. Under the situation of buying the cheaper domain name and host ,the cost per year is less than 100 dollars.

The common investment:

1. The cost of the domain name and the virtual host: approximately $100/year
2. The cost of the shopping cart design: $300~$1600
3. The copyright fees for the commercial software: $200~$300

The one-off common investment is about $600~$2000. Usually speaking, the charge is variable with the quality of design and manufacture.

More investment:

1. Domain name, Host, Shopping cart design, Shopping cart software: $1000~$3000
2. Google AdWords: $100~$1000/per month
3. Else AD charge
4. Staff salary
5. Company operating expenses

Generally speaking, the shopping cart of the big company needs more investment. In the investment structure, the cost of the shopping cart promotion and the staff salary account for the most proportion.