Subscription based Vs Owned Ecommerce System

Often we get queries from people who want to build a Ecommerce store whether they should go for subscription based Ecommerce services or get a ecommerce software and design a theme inhouse.Specifically subscription based services seem to be effective in terms of price, feasibility and maintainance. The subscription based services offer a full package including webhosting , payment processors and a lot more within the subscription fees.

However before you sign up with these subscription based ecommerce services , following things be given some thought.

• Payment processing – Australian Market does not currently have cost effective subscription based ecommerce service hosted within Australia. That means if your customer put in his/her credit card information they get redirected to a US hosting server(Middleman) to process the Payment. This is bad because laws applicable for Internet commerce in Australia may not necessarily apply to the transactions occured outside Australia. This may have larger legal implications for you as a local business.
• Search Engine optimization – As an australian business using a US server may have negative impact on your website’s ranking on search engines locally. Matt – a google engineer seems to have an Explanation .
• Support – Most of the subscription based services offer support during their local business time.For an Australian business running an Ecommerce store local support is as essential and lifesupport of the business.Imagine advertising on Google under sponsored listing and your site going down ? Support ?
• Tax claims : I am sure these have some intresting implications.

Apart from these factors one also needs to consider Privacy , Data collection policies , disclaimers and many other things that may vary based on the location of a subscription based service.