Main benefits of paid e-commerce tools?

[mewmewfo]

Hi,

At the moment I am trying to negotiate with a client over web-hosting/e-commerce hosting. To me... it doesn't quite make sense but I'll try and explain.

She is setting up her own small business and basically, she would rather have a very cheap hosting service and a more expensive shopping cart system with e-commerce features (she wants to go with 1shoppingcart) as it has better marketing tools. My question is does it really have that many more features than the free shopping carts listed on siteground (zen, oscommerce, cube, etc.) that you couldn't add on to he website with other third party tools?

I am also worried that even if she goes with a super-super cheap hosting plan it wouldn't have the bandwidth/cpu time to support a more powerful shopping cart system anyway... but then I don't want to bamboozle her with technical terms : /

Basically I am recommending to her that the siteground hosting plan would probably be best for her at the moment, and I don't want her to spend hundreds on a shopping cart system that she probably doesn't really need. However, if something like 1shoppingcart really is that much more powerful then it might be worth it, but by just looking at the product information alone it's difficult to tell.

[Costa]

Hi

I would personally rather invest in reliable hosting.

She could have the best, feature-packed e-commerce site, but if/when the free server is down (and it will be) and her site is off-line she will be losing money.

Os commerce, zen, cube etc are robust pieces of software and are very customisable with many contributions (mods) available (my personal favourite is os commerce). I haven't had dealings with 1shoppingcart, so can't really comment.

After all, its the marketing and promotion of the site that will bring in the customers and that is ultimately down to the webmaster/developer. If she feels in the future that her shopping cart software is holding her back, then she will at that point be making money and can afford to invest in a "better" one.

I think that any site has to be based on a solid reliable server to succeed. The Siteground hosting package is just that and isn't really that expensive.

Just my opinion

Costa