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Which open source webstore would be good for small digital items store?
Hello,
I will be setting up a small website store for a friend selling digital items such as CD keys for games etc.
Do you have any advice which open source/self hosted projects would be a good fit for a simple website like that and have possibility of at least paypal and some crypto payments?
It doesnt have to have some crazy management stuff, more or less just looking for a solution for customer billing
Comments
Check out boxbilling
InvoiceNinja?
Get a wordpress+woocommerce setup. That way you get you regular website handled and have the shop integrated with it. Its a relatively fast setup. Its easy to setup payment integrations for various platforms (stripe, paypal,...)
Depending on your size and other considerations, you can get going either with a shared hosting plan (from a reputable/quality provider) or if you want to DIY everything, you can deploy on a vps or dedi.
OpenCart with a custom theme, probably. I'd say build a custom platform because modular support, etc., isn't needed, but sure, depends on your budget. Just note that SEO will be a pain, and will eat you.
Blesta would be great. You will have to find a hosting for it too, so choose a provider which provide free Blesta license is the best option.
Woo+WP is hardly a lightweight option. Opencart or Zencart (which does have downloadable products) would be better options, IMHumbleO.
Why and how? It's great specifically for recurring services. Web hosting services. Using it for selling individual items doesn't make any sense.
Woocommerce would be the easiest way.
Because Blesta is an open-source billing software, they will have better security.
It's a billing software, you can use it to sell anything, hosting is just a plus. (You will have an module / addon to automate the orders...)
Easy Digital Downloads for WP?
Just throwing it out there.
Why wait. Woocommerce is also open source and, I believe, it has more ready-to-use plugins for crypto payments.
Such answers is likely to be expected on web hosting forums
WooCommerce is based on Wordpress.
There are a lot of security holes with WP. If you want to be safe, you should spend a lot of time to make it more secure.
https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/16011/Woocommerce.html
https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/2337/Wordpress.html
Billing software is born for this reason, just install and use.
You are comparing a software product with hundreds of users vs product with millions of users. Why even waste time while trying to breach something used exceptionally by small web hosts?
I’m just suggesting a software that fit best for OP needs.
Wordpress is not made for Billing, add another plugin to make it become a billing software would be more complicated than just use a billing software out of a box.
I’m using WP for more than 10 years…
tl;dr: NO, don't use WP. WordPress + Woo = illusion that things will be free, fast and cheap.
In real-world things will be extremely overpriced, hard, and not worth trying if you're not a developer. Better to find an alternative that doing everything that you need out of the box with small customization.
I'm not an expert in the WP world. But at least I feel free in their ecosystem, plugins, themes, and I have an almost complete picture of WP component puzzles in my head.
Long story short: with WP, you have two ways:
I've written tons of plugins and customizations.
The good news is that WP is a pretty easy to understand and easy entry point.
The bad news: the WP market is highly overpriced. When I say "extremely," I mean precisely in 20-50-100-1000x times the price bigger than the product must cost.
Why is the WordPress pricing for plugins/themes (mostly plugins) so big?
Gready authors. Plus WordPress is highly advertised over the network platforms. A lot of newbies with "let's build a new facebook alternative" ideas comes to the market. Of course the bounce rate (fail rate) for newbies that trying at first time to build something in the internet - extremely high. ANd of course they almost all wit their "another brilliant idea" will fail. And will NOT come back again. That's why in my opinion such pricing for plugins. High price because of high bounce rate (refuse to continue). Plus greedy devs or big companies.
The whole WP market it's about forcing you to pay annually for different bullshit components 300-500 USD (per component) per year.
The average website on WP has around 20-25 plugins.
Maybe 5-6 of these plugins will be free. Perhaps a little bit more.
If you have no clue what you are doing, prepare a big wallet for the rest 10-15 paid plugins, where prices vary. If you use only 1 website, you will have around 50-100 USD per plugin per year. If you have several plugins, increase the budget in 3-5x times.
Because the mediocre shop built on WP can cost from 3000 to 5000 USD easily, the most significant % in the sum will be subscription payments for bullshit plugins that must be out of the box inside WP. (membership plugins, for example).
WP gives an illusion about DIY.
The illusion about: "yes. you can literally make any website type on WP, but for that, you need great instruments (plugins, themes, customizations), and while you will work with that you will realize that always something mission and exists in the market, but for 300-500 USD / year, which is not okay."
Of course, you can install WP, install WooCommerce.
But then you will be forced to create your plugins.
Then you will be forced to make at least some design for you
Then you will be forced to organize membership for your site for your clients
And so on and so on and so on...
Because out of the box, there are no free solutions for your needs.
Better initially to pick the right platform with all features that you need out the box.
I think many answers above my message can be perfect for your needs.
WP is not a good choice.
WP can be good if you're a developer. But you will spend months until the final product is ready and will pay many monthly payments.
It's the most versatile and simple e-commerce platform for me (haven't used many indeed).
Yes, most probably it will require some effort to customize. After many years, it doesn't even look like an effort to me, but for beginner - probably. As for pluses - very simple, huge user base, huge amount of tutorials and ready solutions. Some plugins can cost a little, some can cost more, that's the question of approach. It wouldn't be much cheaper in less popular e-commerce solutions. Over the time I even disregarded the fact, that I don't like WordPress per se. It's just easy to work with.
About this one: https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2021-32790/
I know what is that. And for me very surprising to see only "4 from 10" score for the CVE.
Because I think this it's a 9/10. Not 4/10
The exploit was about the dangerous SQL injection (and dump of MySQL if you need it).
You can literally do any query to DB via search field, because data is not filtered, not escaped, not prepared properly at all, for all WooCommerce sites for years until the problem has been discovered this july.
I don't understand why they set only 4 points from 10 to this extremely critical problem...
https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2021/07/critical-sql-injection-vulnerability-patched-in-woocommerce/
yea, about that I wrote above.
If you're a dev and have a lot of free time, you can make it cheap but only if you experienced guy, and know what you do and for what. For classic cases about building an "internet shop" from scratch for newbies for digital goods - WooCommerce (just in my opinion) - bad idea. Extremely a lot of things must be changed.
For complex products and shipping options - perhaps. For selling license keys - I can see even free plugin is available. One (or few) more for accepting payments. May suffice.
.. and I know nothing about hosting e-commerce at low cost. /s
[Storesprite (demised), osCmax (maintenance mode), osCommerce Phoenix (just no), Magento (how many resources?!), Prestashop (how much for that essential add-on?), WP/Woo - may as well run in docker and add to the code complexity. ]
Just look in the Softaculous list for a simple package that supports downloadable products and set it up manually, on a secured (csf/mod_sec/etc.) VPS. Job done (nearly).
Woo + WP + Plugins are probably going to be your best bet. Just make sure you send your users offsite to the card processor's site and you should be fine. As long as you're not making payments on your website then you don't have much to worry about repayments.
I'd offer our services, but it's hosted for you and it's not open source. But the above is probably going to be your best bet.
No, its not. If you want e-commerce website for just for being an e-commerce website, then go for WP+WOO, and if you want real e-commerce website which can actually help you to get sales, stay away from WP+WOO.
+1
Looking at your post, and i started typing out a wall of text. Showcasing different solutions and their pro's and cons. But it got really long winded. So into the trash it went.
For the "small company" selling a few CD-Keys example from above. - Can you show (with a calculation and comparison) how Wordpress+Woo gives you a higher yearly cost compared to a "pure Webshop" such as opencart, prestashop,...?
Some thoughts: