Small business ecommerce solution?

February 18, 2008 4:55 PM

What is the best(are there any at all?) FREE storefront (Amazon Webstore, Shopify, WebBuilder, and bigcartel )type websites that don't use payment gateways?

I need a quick, easy to setup website to sell one specific line of products - Maybe 5 items total (at the moment, only three are ready to ship). Something secure and convenient for customers. Are there any free websites that offer this? Right now, I'm leaning towards just pushing through with bigcartel or shopify - time is an issue.

Any suggestions? My web/programming skills are non so I don't know that building a site from scratch would be a viable option. As it is I just struggled with putting up a template based website using a WYSIWYG editor.

posted by s01110011 to Technology (4 answers total)

eCrater will do the trick. People pay via Google Checkout, so you can accept credit card payments.
posted by sachinag at 5:35 PM on February 18, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks sachinag, but I intended the term "payment gateways" as including such services as Google Checkout - the of not using such services being that customers wouldn't have to sign up for some service just to purchase one item.

In other words, what I want is for checkout to consist of: just enter billing/credit card info and done.
posted by s01110011 at 6:40 PM on February 18, 2008

Response by poster: the purpose of**
posted by s01110011 at 6:40 PM on February 18, 2008

Both Shopify and bigcartel look like great solutions (that I wasn't aware of - thanks!). I've done a couple of ecommerce sites, and I don't think you're going to do better than Shopify's $24/month and 2% per transaction plan. What's the worst-case scenario? You didn't sell anything all year and you're out $300. That's not a high entry cost.
posted by letitrain at 9:33 AM on February 19, 2008