Best ecommerce for small start up

nino1

I am looking at the likes of shopify and magento to set up an ecommerce site.
The plan is to start small and build up.
Shopify seems a bit expensive for me as cash flow is a problem to begin.
I would be happy to pay more after year one.

Any recommendations for cheaper alternatives?
Magento?

If the business takes off as planned is it a major difficulty to change over to a better platform when finances allow?

Thanks

pullandbang

Not sure what your budget is, but have a look at Bluepark Solutions. In a previous life I used them and they were excellent.

mneylon

Wordpress with WooCommerce?

betakrea

This is not the easiest thing to plan and you already got half of the answer.

Moving from a platform to another depends on the platforms you'll use and how you'll manage them, some of them have so many add-ons that you can manage your warehouse, implement the billing, a CRM etc.
So you should decide wisely.

An answer is not that easy at the moment as I don't have many details, The number of products (items and SKUs), the type of products, the niche you'll work in/competition, the main promotion and acquisition channels, etc are important factors to take into consideration while you choose the best small (or big) platform.

SaaS or in-house solution have pros and cons, but to better define what's best for you I should have more details.

Just to mention a personal experience: a company I've worked with re-launched their new ecommerce with Magento, the process to build and customise the site took so long time that it didn't worth the whole work and the revenue was not enough to cover these costs according to their plans.