What do you want from an e-commerce platform?

[Sky.]

Hey,

Me and my team are currently working on a self-hosted e-commerce platform called Vendor. Vendor's main focus is to keep your clients' information private and secure, as well as being able to host the application yourself.

Vendor is supposed to be the cheaper, self-hosted alternative to other e-commerce platforms. If all goes well Vendor will only cost $30* per license. That 30$ gets you 1 year of updates**, and lifetime support as well as access to Vendor. After the one year period, you can pay a small fee to gain updates again.

With Vendor, you can sell anything. Whether it be online products, such as builds, license keys or plugins - or physical products such as bikes, artwork and more. You can sell it all with vendor.

What we're asking is, what more do you want. If you had the opportunity to change something about the worlds leading e-commerce platforms, what would you change?

The best ideas will be rewarded with license keys to Vendor when we release.

Best Regards
Akash

(p.s - we're hiring https://www.mc-market.org/threads/668628/)
*Price subject to change
**Exclude security patches, and necessary updates (i.e dependency is deprecated).
***Excluding extreme bugs, which break Vendor.

 

[ashleyyyy]

This sounds like a really good business venture - I hope all goes well for your team.
Personally:
- I dislike the fact that lots of online sites offer a small amount of payment options. I know a lot of people who rely heavily on a checkout option like Paysafe, but not many stores offer support for this method.
- On many e-commerce platforms, there's a contact us or support section but as teams grow, these sites lack the creativity (probably not the greatest choice of words) to bring a live chat system. You/buyers are put on a short/lengthy wait to receive a response to an inquiry via email and something like live chat would capture the attention of others who look for a reliable site.

I will likely edit this response if I come up with more suggestions for the initial question. Looking forward to watching this venture strive!

 

[Sky.]

This sounds like a really good business venture - I hope all goes well for your team.
Personally:
- I dislike the fact that lots of online sites offer a small amount of payment options. I know a lot of people who rely heavily on a checkout option like Paysafe, but not many stores offer support for this method.
- On many e-commerce platforms, there's a contact us or support section but as teams grow, these sites lack the creativity (probably not the greatest choice of words) to bring a live chat system. You/buyers are put on a short/lengthy wait to receive a response to an inquiry via email and something like live chat would capture the attention of others who look for a reliable site.

I will likely edit this response if I come up with more suggestions for the initial question. Looking forward to watching this venture strive!

I strongly agree with the fact that it’s hard to actually contact the seller. Even on platforms like Shopify, there isn’t really a real way to contact the seller.

We could definitely be looking into PaySafe and other payment methods, but for now we’d only be offering BTC, PayPal and Stripe.

 

[madsiv]

Just a quick question.

How are you to compare performance-wise and featurewise against WHMCS for example? It's half the price.
What's making your platform unique to others?

 

[Sky.]

Just a quick question.

How are you to compare performance-wise and featurewise against WHMCS for example? It's half the price.
What's making your platform unique to others?

1) WHMCS is for hosting companies, not web stores. You could modify WHMCS to sell but its not worth it.
2) WHMCS is a monthly recurring cost, so just 2 months of WHMCS would cost the same as a lifetime licenses to Vendor.

Performance wise, we will be the fastest. No if's not buts, no added terms. We will be the fastest and best e-commerce platform for anyone to conduct business.

Right now, its already super fast - I can probably give specs as we get closer to release.

 

[madsiv]

Ahhh so it's lifetime. Is that a feature that is subject to change? Because I think that could be a deal breaker for a lot of people.

I'm looking forward to see the performance of the platform!
WHMCS Isn't really dedicated to hosting companies only. But it's their main customers, I always recommend WHMCS for webstores, hosting or another store.

Primarily because they have a solid foundation. So I think it's worth it, but everyone has their own opinion.

 

[Sky.]

Ahhh so it's lifetime. Is that a feature that is subject to change? Because I think that could be a deal breaker for a lot of people.

I'm looking forward to see the performance of the platform!
WHMCS Isn't really dedicated to hosting companies only. But it's their main customers, I always recommend WHMCS for webstores, hosting or another store.

Primarily because they have a solid foundation. So I think it's worth it, but everyone has their own opinion.

Yep, each license lasts forever (as long as we keep our servers online). So you can only use the license once per store. Still very cheap.

You get 6 months or 1 year of updates (not decided) and then after those 6 months or 1 year, you can keep Vendor. But it won't be updated.

Performance is another one of our key ideas, we're really wanting to perfect. In short, if it doesn't preform well - its not being released.