Why do people still use custom written ecommerce software when there are plenty of great off the shelf solutions?

Back when ecommerce was in its early stages the trend was to custom write each ecommerce solution or at best for each agency to reuse the same code that was used for project before. This approach has many draw backs, especially with the increasing number of security threats which means your site would need constant development work just to be kept up-to-date. This can tie you to one agency as many other web design companies would not like to touch custom written projects, in turn this means you could be charged a figure picked out of the air as they know you have no other alternative.

Fortunately those days are far behind us as there are now some great open source solutions, including Magento and ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT. With 1000s of man hours put into these every month you can benefit from all the security upgrades and usability enhancements free of charge. If that’s not enough, because of the popularity of these products it also means that third party developers have made 1000s of plug-ins which is a massive cost saving in itself. As an example, one of our clients approached us today wanting an improvement to their magneto store. This particular improvement would have taken us around two days to code, test and deploy, however we found a plug-in that matched their needs 100% which saved them a lot of money.

We’re not saying that there isn’t a need for custom written ecommerce solutions, just that with the constant upgrade path you get with an off the shelf commercial product they definitely have to be worth considering.