eCommerce site builder

[Groundbased]

Can anyone recommend an off the shelf eCommerce site builder?

The broad requirements are:

Account creation and management (revocation etc, a mySQL database would be adequate)
Document management system (we upload word, pdf and excel files for people to download)
Ability to host web forms (we use them for surveys)
Shopping cart
Integration to card payment processing (visa, mastercard)
RSS feeds

The initial quote I've had seems to be very expensive for what seems to be relatively straightforward. I'm not averse to paying as it's a commercial enterprise, but I wonder if there is something I could use more or less out of the box for a licence fee.

Thanks,
GB

[mixture]

Groundbased,

Honestly, if you're on a budget, you should be looking at a hosted solution.

Cheap software and e-commerce don't mix... you'll end up leaving yourself open to hackers with their SQL injection attacks and other niceties.

[Mike-Bracknell]

^^^^ Listen to the man. eCommerce is one of the most expensive parts of our operation (IT support & web design).

[ExGrunt]

With respect I disagree with the last two posters. There is a perfectly acceptable freeware ecommerce package called interchange which will do everything you require.

see: www.icdevgroup.org

However, in fairness to the previous posters, it does require a significant investment of time to get up to speed on the intricacies of programming and managing an interchange site.

EG

[mixture]

perfectly acceptable ecommerce package called interchange which will do everything you require.

Just for the record, I was not saying there's nothing out there, or that off-the-shelf e-commerce "doesn't exist". Infact one of my very first e-commerce ventures used off-the-shelf software from Intershop.

What I was trying to put in no uncertain terms is what you have also hit the nail on the head with...... i.e.

intricacies of programming and managing

If the original poster thinks e-commerce software is like a copy of Microsoft Office that you can buy, install and forget about, he is very much mistaken.

The maintenance requirements are not to be underestimated. Failure to do so will at the very least result in weird and wonderful bugs cropping up .... and at the worst, will result in a hacker exploiting an SQL injection attack or similar, something which is more likely with free or low-cost e-commerce software because they tend to be coded in a very sloppy and haphazard manner where security is the last concern on anyone's mind.

Personally, I think he should focus on his core business and outsource the hassle of implementing and managing the software to someone else. Volusion,Actinic,Clickandbuy, DigitalRiver (also their Share*it division), or many of the other names out there that are commonly used by software developers and other types of companies selling intellectual property for download.

[Groundbased]

All,

Thanks for the replies, and I didn't mean to start an argument here.

Like everything this is a balance, I appreciate the ideal will give us security, doing it ourselves (and I'm not proposing to do this) gives risk. For a small business (t/o c£150k pa ) it is a case of balancing the risk with the investment required, or perhaps scaling back our requirements a bit to what is achievable.

What you have all given me is some solutions I can research in more detail to help me balance that risk/investment decision, and thanks for that.

Cheers,

G