Is your online store lagging in the digital retail race? Has your product line outgrown your website? In today's era of cut-throat online competition, investing in a robust E-commerce solution and migrating from legacy platforms to clouds is the best way to stay in the game. However, choosing the right E-commerce solution is not as easy as it sounds, considering the market is flooded with many E-commerce solutions. When it comes to choosing an E-commerce solution, selecting a custom over a subscription-based model is a better option. Subscription models raise significant issues like the subscription fee, which soon became a point of debate for large companies who are more concerned with specific functionalities, control over the set-up, SEO, scalability, and speed. On the other hand, custom E-commerce solutions end up as a better option while re-platforming E-commerce applications from obsolete applications as it breaks all these barriers.
A custom E-commerce solution is not only scalable and flexible but also provides greater control. Even though a subscription-based E-commerce solution may seem like a convenient deal as they’re fast and easy to set up a store, they only offer standard features that don’t make any space for store customisation and catering to the industry you serve. With a custom E-commerce solution, you get greater control, flexibility, and scalability in one fell swoop.
Why Opt for a Custom E-commerce Solution Over Subscription-based for E-commerce Replatforming
When considering E-commerce re-platforming, the subscription-based model can be very appealing because it gives the impression that it saves time and money. While it might be valid to some extent, custom E-commerce solutions offer the advantage of accepting the business's specific requirements, leading to an increase in customer retention as they become more satisfied. Read on to learn the benefits of choosing the custom over subscription-based for E-commerce re-platforming.
1. Vendor Lock-in
In the case of the subscription-based options, businesses need help with issues like vendor lock-in, as It's hard to migrate in the future due to the cost involved in APIs and data migration. At the end of the day, you are locked in and feel envious seeing others using the latest technology in the industry as they select custom E-commerce solutions. Businesses are leveraging better results using frameworks like nop commerce and Sitefinity and programming languages like c# (dot net core). Such technologies comprise the custom E-commerce solution. When you choose subscription-based models, you depend entirely on them to develop new features. You cannot do anything on your own. The upfront cost of switching will always keep you at it. You are locked in. And you will need more customisation and control over the code. What if you grow into a large business? Subscription-based models only support small and medium-sized enterprises.
2. Subscription and transaction fee
Subscription-based models charge a monthly subscription fee; for example, Shopifu can charge from £22.99 to £237.07 monthly. The charges increase when we opt for more features and apps. The same applies to subscription-based models like Bigcommerce, WooCommerce, or Magento. Moreover, they also charge from 0.2% to 2.9% as a transaction fee, which also applies to the even new Shopify payment feature. The point is you must pay for each transaction, which is a significant loss on a large scale. Also, such services provide various themes and templates for customisation, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Contrary to this, by opting for custom E-commerce solutions, you only incur a one-time cost. Think of a situation where you collect £3 million monthly. 2% of this will be £60000s. In 12 months, this will amount to £720,000! With a custom web solution, you earn full ownership of your application, so you don't have to pay to use it.
3. Opt for a better future by embracing new technologies
The subscription-based models do not provide more comprehensive features. For example, Shopify only provides some basic AI and AR/VR-based features. On the other hand, custom E-commerce solutions like the dot net core offer more flexibility and opportunities for implementing AI and AR/VR on a broader scale. Take an example of payment systems. While Subscription-based models provide a long list of payment options, they charge a transaction fee, and there are forex charges when you do international business.
In other words, implementing mobile payments or digital wallets is more expensive on Subscription-based models than in custom E-commerce solutions, where you pay only upfront and one time. You do not need to pay each month. Also, digital payment integration is cheaper in custom E-commerce solutions than Subscription-based models, and we have more customisation options in .NET Core programming, which is one of the most popular technologies for implementing custom E-commerce solutions. Moreover, you can personalise the payment experience more specifically through dot net core programming than Shopify. It is a Low-level programming, and it can be convenient in the 21st century. Whether it is scaling or control over the set-up through the middleware, you will always find yourself in a better position with custom development.
4. Better SEO opportunities
When it comes to selecting E-commerce solutions, businesses need to think about SEO functionalities like website loading speed, shopping cart abandonment, and user experience. Opting for a custom approach is beneficial, as we can better handle these issues through custom E-commerce solutions. Additionally, the Integration with specialised SEO tools for backlink analysis and SEO audits, dynamic content personalisation, internationalisation and localisation are better served through the custom platforms than subscription-based models. Subscription-based solutions like Shopify, Bigcommerce and WooCommerce are closed platforms where we can only slightly modify code for SEO. Custom E-commerce solutions like .NET core combined with nopcommerce and Sitefinity, which are popular frameworks, provide more flexibility and control over the code.
It helps businesses better manage their SEO requirements. Some limitations of a Subscription model like Shopify are the inability to edit tag pages, duplicate page titles, duplicate content, forced URL structure, locked robots.txt, limits on page titles, no customisation of pages and meta descriptions, and poor initial template selection; these issues can be better served through custom E-commerce solutions.
5. Scalability and speed
Custom E-commerce platforms are more accessible to scale than subscription-based models and offer better speed. Subscription-based models are meant for small to medium-scale businesses. Though they support good scaling features, they have limitations like the number of inventory locations supported and are not the right solution for large-scale companies.
Factors to Take into Consideration when Choosing a Custom E-commerce Solution
Read through to have detailed knowledge:
1. Evaluating the business requirements
When it comes to choosing an E-commerce solution, the first thing you need to do is evaluate your business requirements. Think of the type of E-commerce solution you require, your business objectives, the features you require in an E-commerce platform, and the list of products and their count that you want to sell. For instance, if you have an extensive product catalogue, you require an E-commerce solution that can cope with a large volume of products. However, if you have a small product catalogue, you might only require the features of a high-end E-commerce platform.
2. Feature Comparison
When it comes to choosing a custom E-commerce solution, we must compare features like user experience, performance, speed, shopping cart abandonment, SEO, and other functionalities. With custom E-commerce solutions, businesses have endless opportunities, and the Sky's the limit. Companies can select their own feature list when they deal with custom E-commerce solutions like DotNet Core.
3. Security
Security is an essential factor when selecting an E-commerce solution. Furthermore, your E-commerce platform must be secure to protect your customers' sensitive information, such as credit card details, etc. Look for an E-commerce solution that offers robust security features, including payment gateway security as well as SSL certification.
Conclusion
Not only do custom E-commerce solutions provide businesses with customised features, but they also provide freedom from third-party tools and better scalability, making them the superior choice for large businesses looking to re-platform their obsolete stores. It is a must for larger enterprises with complex business structures as subscription costs accumulate over time and can be heavy. Are you looking to upgrade your E-commerce platform? At Syngis Software Development, we focus mainly on custom E-commerce replatforming and helping large companies with legacy E-commerce solutions transform their businesses with a customised approach, as well as small and medium companies expecting to transform into large firms in the near future. Whether your E-commerce business has outgrown its existing E-commerce solution, become more complex, or just needs upgraded functionality for its E-commerce platform, we can help you.
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