Q: What are your thoughts on shopping cart and affiliate software? Buy your own or pay monthly? Which product do you recommend?

A: I personally think the shopping cart and affiliate software be an all in one solution. I’ve tried using both separate systems and all in ones and the all in ones always turn out easier to manage. Whether you should buy your own depends how willing are you to support your own programs. If you have a developer or someone who’s technicall savvy you can call on at a moment’s notice, buying your own isn’t a bad idea because you don’t pay monthly fees. If you don’t have someone who can support your script for you, paying monthly isn’t a bad idea. The biggest motivation to pay a hosted monthly service is the ease of mind. By outsourcing this, you get a chance to concentrate on marketing and the nitty gritty, updates, backups, hacking etc is left for someone else to worry about.

So it all comes back to what you’re willing to put up with. I find a lot of times the hassles of buying and supporting your own software is under estimated. There’s nothing more irritating than needing to email your affiliates or customers and the email feature breaks and your developer takes time to fix this and it affects your marketing.

Here’s what I recommend for monthly shopping carts with affiliate software – 1ShoppingCart

For buy your own, I’ve heard good things about X-Cart or you might want to take a look at Ashop Deluxe which I liked, but it was a bit picky and my web host just wasn’t compatible with it.

I also recently purchased JV Manager for my own use but haven’t had the chance to put it into action yet. However I purchased it under some good personal recommendations so my expectations are pretty high 🙂

Finally, you might want to review this article : Scripts or Hosted Solution?