2 years back, I was planning to buy a new car. Based on my personal preferences of features and budget, I settled for a particular model of a popular brand. When I went to buy that, I found that the actual cost including the taxes, accessories, insurance, decor etc was exceeding my budget. The similar implicit costs are associated with a software product too.

If you are planning to buy a shopping cart software for your online business, you should perform a complete feasibility check. You should also keep in mind the growth of your business in near future. As your business expands and customer base increases, you may want to add additional features for better customer service and to target requirements of varied customers. In that case, you may need more add-ons or customizations. E.g. you may want to add few more payment gateways to support your business across the globe.

After checking the technical feasibility of the shopping cart software, if it suits your business requirements, plan to dig deeper to explore other aspects. In addition to the cost of product, there may ahttps://www.hikashop.com/download.hlso be few other costs that would incur when you use this product in your business. Be sure to check those before making a final decision. Otherwise, you may end up with a low cost product which is not actually low; has higher operating cost and hence, proves to be an expensive affair.

In this blog, I am putting together some of the significant cost factors which you should consider before buying a shopping cart software for your online store -

1. Cost of Product - Consider the cost of product with taxes, and other charges along with the duration of subscription. The cost of currency conversion and other fee should also be checked if the product is not offered in your own currency.

<li><strong>Cost of Payment Gateways</strong> - Do check the
    payment gateways which are integrated with the shopping cart. Are they
    offered along with the base product or do they cost extra bucks?
    Initially you may choose a shopping cart which provides integration
    with a payment plugin you want (either free or paid), but as your
    business grows, you may need integration with other popular payment
    gateways or want to provide other payment options for users of
    different countries. In that case, you’ll have to pay additional
    charges if it is not free.</li>

<li><strong>Cost of Shipping Methods</strong> - Is the cost of
    shipping methods already included in the base cost of shopping cart?
    If not, then how much additional cost would that be to add a new
    shipping provider. Seek clarification for these questions from product
    provider.</li>

<li><strong>Cost of Add-ons</strong> - Do not forget to check if
    you would need any additional plugins for the shopping cart software
    to perform the required business operations and how much would that
    cost.</li>

<li><strong>Cost of Themes</strong> - You may have to use some
    themes to customize the shopping cart extension to integrate it with
    your existing website and provide a seamless rich user experience to
    your customers. Check if there are any themes available with the
    product and is that included in the product cost. Also, explore if the
    theme of your choice can be used with the shopping cart extension and
    take its cost into account too.</li>click

<li><strong>Cost of Support</strong> - Support of a software
    product is a very important aspect to consider in your buying
    decision. Starting from the initial product setup, support plays a
    vital role in product customization, issue resolution, new component
    development &amp; integration, future upgrades and feature enhancements.
    You should consider the quality and terms of support for the product
    along with the cost of support.</li>

<li><strong>Cost of Training/Documentation</strong> - Explore the
    documentation of product to identify if that provides complete
    information to use it. Check the cost of additional training and
    documentation if you may have to provide it to your team to use the
    product.</li>

<li><strong>Cost of Removing Backlinks</strong> - You may need to
    remove backlinks added by the shopping cart software. So check if the
    software adds backlinks (Powered By, Copyright text etc) and will
    charge additional cost for removing it.</li>

Following table shows you key cost factors of popular Joomla! shopping cart softwares -

Source : Internet

Disclaimer : The information is put into this table as found on the respective website of a product as on 21-May-2015. If the information on respective website changes later, this table may contain obsolete data. Please check the respective product’s website for latest information.

What may seem like a cheaper product, may not actually be cheap to use. If you only consider the product cost shown in the pricing plan and do not consider the overall cost of using it for your business operations, you may not be able to make a right decision. Plan to invest in such a product which is capable to meet the futuristic requirements of your business with low operating cost. PayCart from the house of Ready Bytes is one such product which lets you use your core business skills to expand your business and handles all technical details on its own and is easy on your budget :)

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If you know more tricks to compare total cost of software, please do share with us in comment section.