Cloud Store or CMS

The last time we talked about creating a website based on CMS or from scratch, but there is another way to do it - development with the help of online services. Now we will compare the development of a store based on CMS and cloud services.

Let's suppose that you have decided to develop an online store and you can't choose whether to create it in the cloud (for example, Shopify or Horoshop) or to develop a store on a CMS. We will compare these two approaches by several criteria:

• store design
• functionality
• costs

Usually, designing from scratch is an advantage, because in this approach you have full control over what exactly you need, and very often nothing is impossible with this option. But if you do not need something unique, but just a working store, or you are still at the stage of testing your idea, then by choosing a cloud service, you can meet your needs.

Almost all online services offer you to choose a template for your future store at the beginning, before you start filling the store with goods. Therefore, in just a few minutes, you get a project with a ready-made design where your customers can already buy something.

If you have chosen the option of developing a store with a unique design, then a solution based on cloud services does not look so obvious for several reasons. You cannot implement everything you want. Online services cannot provide you with all the possibilities, because there are many stores and needs, but it is impossible to implement everything at once, so some functions are not available. Another reason is that it is not easy to add missing features, so you have to add bad code or rewrite large parts of the templates, which can be more expensive than if you use CMS. The third reason is that very often when creating a store based on online services, the design is not created from scratch, developers take the default template and already modify what is needed, and this can lead to the fact that there may be many spots in the project that simply will not be used, but will affect the page loading speed or Google page speed rating.

When you develop an online store based on CMS, you can install everything yourself, i.e. buy a hosting, do everything you need according to the installation instructions, install a free or purchased theme for the site and get a ready-made store. In this case, you will not pay developers, but only for hosting. However, you will not get a modern store with a unique design.

Or you can ask the developers to customize everything to your needs according to your design. A good coder can design everything you want, develop the most correct layout and page markup. Next, the developers will "pull" your layout on the CMS and install it on the hosting. In this case, you pay for the layout and development, and then, just like with your own installation, you pay only for hosting.

If you have decided to create an online store based on a cloud service, you can also do everything by yourself or ask the developers. But in the case of payments, you will need to pay a commission for using the service every month. For example, Shopify charges a fee depending on how much you have sold through the store. Horoshop has the same price, but at the same time, they limit the number of products in the store.

In any case, for all options, it is possible to involve developers at every stage.

All services and CMSs give you the ability to manage all the content on your website. But as your business grows, so do your needs, and one day you will want to finalize your admin panel. In this case, you cannot avoid the work of a developer.

Shopify has the ability to add add-ons to expand the capabilities of the store's admin panel, while Horoshop does not. But in-house development generally gives you full control and there are no restrictions in terms of finalizing the admin panel.

When developing any project, it is important to keep up with updates - these can be both updates with new functionality, bug fixes, or those that contain fixes for security issues.

When using online services, these updates are performed automatically, so you can skip this step. However, if you have finalized your admin panel or use some additional custom developments, then keeping track of updates becomes a critical issue, because some of them may remove the old functionality or change it. Unfortunately, you can't influence the updates in any way, so you'll just have to follow them.

When developing on a CMS, the situation with updates is almost the same, but you need to install them manually. If you developed the project on your own, you can usually update it in the admin panel. It is important to understand that not all CMSs have the ability to update through the admin panel, so only the developer can add changes for them. In any case, the update process is fully controlled and if you don't have time for it now, or the update is not critical, you can leave it off.

Before starting work on creating your store, you need to balance the pros and cons. If you want to do everything on your own, you should keep in mind that you will be the one who will monitor the store and keep it in good working order. If you want to spend more time on your business, it is better to find developers. Everything else is a matter of taste and expediency. Over time, it is possible that you will switch from a cloud service to a CMS or even to your own development, or vice versa.

You can develop an online store with us. We work with CMS Sylius - a platform that allows you to develop an online store and has a very powerful ability to expand. This platform is developed on the basis of the Symfony framework, has good documentation, many plugins, and most importantly, we are qualified Sylius specialists. If you are interested, please contact us via the feedback form.