When you want to take your reseller business to new heights, it is must to have an online presence. To be more specific, you need to start your own online store, which will give you an excellent opportunity to reach a wider audience.

There are different options available in the market to open an ecommerce store. You definitely want to choose a platform that enables you to start your online business in a hassle-free manner. Right? The following blog explains 3 main options with its pros and cons to run an online store.

Fully Hosted

Looking to launch your Ecommerce Store in the easiest way possible? Don’t want to face the early headaches of starting your site? The answer lies in using a fully hosted ecommerce platform.

If you don’t want to deal with the inconveniences of starting an online store, choose this type of Ecommerce Solution. From setup to launch, you are completely covered by the company that provides you a highly customizable ecommerce platform and moreover handles all the technicalities of running your online business.

From development to maintenance needs, you can completely rely on their technical support. Most companies offering fully hosted solution provide free 24/7 lifetime tech support. So if you require any additional customization, technical assistance is just a phone call away. No wonder, getting started online is one of the easiest things with a cloud-based ecommerce platform.
A fully-hosted Ecommerce software comes with a drag and drop interface that will allow you to design a professional store without hiring any website developer. So even if you are new to ecommerce, hosted solution makes it pretty easier for you to develop a fully functional store in a span of few hours.

As an IT reseller using fully hosted solution, you are taken care of from start to finish. As a result, you have ample time to focus on the most important area of your online business: marketing. You can spend a majority of your resources in devising effective marketing strategies that will play a key role in growing your business.
Also, you pay a reasonable amount of money on a monthly subscription basis to your service provider; hence this is an affordable option for startups that are on a tight budget.

Open Source

There are entrepreneurs who prefer open source platforms simply because they are available for free. However, one of the biggest drawbacks of open source solutions is that you have to deal with the conventional hassles of starting an online store. From setting up your own server to installing the software, to managing all the infrastructure, you are involved in every aspect of running your online store.

If this was not enough, you also need to have good knowledge of coding and design skills. You have to be a self-learner or hire IT professionals to design and manage a good-looking website. Even if you have limited web design or coding knowledge, it might not be sufficient to launch a store with open source platforms.
With open source platform, you need to have your own web hosting and are fully responsible for its maintenance. Unlike fully hosted platforms, open source solutions do not have a dedicated support system, making it difficult to add customizations in your store.

Content Management System

A content management system like WordPress can also help you to launch your online business. Although it is a free software, to be honest, it hasn’t been designed to run an online store. It is essentially a blog platform used for maintaining blogs on the site. Hence, you have to incorporate additional functionality in the form of plugins to start an ecommerce store.

To be more specific, ecommerce plugins are a must to make your site capable of selling physical products and services. So, it can be rather tedious to start an ecommerce business on this site. You will have to pay a hefty sum to host and maintain your store on the site.
On the whole, if you don’t want to go through the tedious activity of setting up your website from scratch, go for fully hosted Ecommerce Software applications. It completely eliminates the need to host your website yourself so that you can focus on selling your products.

Author's Bio: 

Arnaldo is an American writer for various digital news publications. After being in the ecommerce industry for more than 15 years, he has a good understanding of what it takes to make an ecommerce business successful.