If you are thinking about hosting an eCommerce Shopping Cart yourself, you should take several factors into account before you do. While it sounds easy and cost effective, are you really getting what you think out of the solution?
First, do you have the technical resources (whether in house or on a contract basis) to support the application. Or, you might be technically inclined yourself. Regardless of the answer, you better be able to answer the question who is going to respond to that 3am call that your shopping cart is down. Or better yet, will you even know that it is down? Monitoring of the site is required so that you even know that corrective action is required.
Second, how are you going to upgrade the shopping cart? While you might think the current set of features is all you will ever need, if your business is expanding and sales are coming in, you will want more functionality (e.g., split tests, advanced coupons, etc). Upgrading is not as simple as dropping in a new version - even if that is how the cart advertises. You only have to read of peoples bad experiences are talk with someone who has been bitten and you will realize that you can do massive damage to your online presence with a single botched upgrade. And I haven't even talked about mandatory upgrades due to security issues and bug fixes that you will most certainly have to perform.
Third, most business start small and then think about how to use their software in more creative ways to increase their competitive advantage. Does your software have a mechanism to easily customize it and extend it's functionality to meet your needs? This is a twist on question #1, as the technical resources required here are usually very different than running the site. Most small business are at the mercy of "expert" consultants to modify their software. And then the trap is sprung and you will never be able to upgrade without using a consultant again to migrate your custom changes to the next version.
Fourth, do you have a fail over plan? When your data center loses power, what do you do? Do you have your shopping cart hosted in multiple locations so that you can fail over at 3am when your primary data center goes offline. This one is guaranteed to happen if you use the majority of hosting companies out there and is almost certain to happen if you are running on your own servers on a DSL/cable line.
Fifth, do you have the required resources to run the system in a performant and scalable manner. Most system require more just setting up a server. If you send email, display images, have large product launches or for any reason stress the system you will need to ensure you have adequate hardware and bandwidth to meet the demands of your users. The large internet firms (e.g., Google, Amazon, eBay, etc) have found that increases in the time it takes for you shopping cart pages to loads reduces your sales. The threshold for that time is measure in sub second increments - not seconds. Are you loading your pages quick enough?
Sixth, do you have an adequate backup plan. What happens if you lose a hard drive on your system, or memory is corrupted or your servers are stolen (don't laugh - this happened at a secure data center we know about). Is your data backed up adequately. And not just your data, your files, the application code and the configuration code. This plays into #4 a bit as you will need to identify these for fail over as well.
Hosting an eCommerce Shopping Cart is a very serious business decision you will need to make. Getting it right can allow you to work on your business and not worry about whether the technical aspects are operating correctly. Choosing the right platform and partner are critical to your success.
