Quick / Simple / Safe e-commerce platform?

[Ichinisan]

I want to start a small business selling online. Just my brother and myself for now. We could keep selling through eBay, but it's important that we build a brand name and have a place to offer support.

What's a quick / simple / safe way to get an e-commerce platform running ASAP?

I do have a basic understanding of HTML, JavaScript, and PHP (mostly from modifying existing documents). I kinda like to know what's going on underneath. If a CMS encapsulates too much, I'll waste too much time fighting with it to get the result I want.

I can get a good domain from NameCheap. I also see these hosting services offered by NameCheap:

• Shared
• WordPress
• Reseller
• VPS
• Dedicated servers
• Private email hosting

Would WordPress be sufficient? Would I need to devote myself to following WordPress news releases regarding security and maintenance updates? Does that also share a machine with other hosted sites? Should I avoid that?

Is Amazon Web Services appropriate for such a small operation?

So I think I need to register a domain name *and* get an SSL certificate. Anything I should know about that?

Thanks!

 

[mxnerd]

https://www.google.com/search?q=affordable e-commerce

So many prebuilt platforms, really no need to build one yourself.

 

[purbeast0]

If you're going to be selling through eBay, having an eCommerce site is kind of pointless as you won't be using any of the eCommerce functionality.

Just make a landing page with all of the information you want to share with people, and just link to that from your eBay listings.

 

[Broheim]

Personally I would build it myself, mostly for fun, but (and this is a big but) I currently work for a company that provides custom, large scale eCommerce solutions (my team handles a Eurostoxx 50 corporation). I am a software engineer, I have experience, I know best practices, I know CMSs (eventhough I would always personally use a headless cms ), I know search engines (not like google, but like Elasticsearch or Solr), I know how to integrate with recommendation engines, transactional/marketing email providers, payment providers, ERP systems, PIM systems, CRM systems and so on.
I'm not saying this to jerk myself off, just to let you know, a good eCommerce solution is complex beast.

If I were in your shoes I'd use something like Squarespace or shopify, and let them deal with all the heavy lifting. Otherwise you risk spending a lot of time building a very subpar solution that will chase away customers.