E-commerce From Scratch Or Not
Solution 1:
Two DJango e-commerce solutions you might try:
As far as PHP goes, we've used osCommerce (demo).
Solution 2:
I've no experience with Django. I develop websites using Wordpress and a year ago I tested Magento (not tested it since).
I was surprised of how user friendly Magento was. Both front end and backend. It was really easy to set up. You can easily customize the layout as well using Magento template API.
Here are some pros and cons:
Pros
- Don't develop your own e-commerce site. It's a lot of work to re-invent the wheel.
- By using a well know e-commerce product, you will also find support.
- E-commerce platforms like Magento are easy to set up and offer the option of changing the look and feel to match the rest of the web site.
- You can easily combine CMS and e-commerce
- E-commerce platforms like Magento offer the option for custom static / dynamic pages (like a mini cms)
- You will save money (development time) by using something that is already developed
- Most e-commerce sites handle payment towards different banking providers.
Cons
- Magento does not work on all servers (server configuration). This however might have changed in the past year.
- If free e-commerce products like Magento do not satisfy your needs, you need to buy licenses. And that costs a lot of money.
- It takes a lot of time developing your own e-commerce site if you want quality and usability. There is no way you can develop a good e-commerce site from scratch in just 3 months.
Solution 3:
If you are leaning between Magento/Satchmo and you prefer Django, definitely go with Satch. I've worked with both and frankly Magento is a nightmare to work with (if that looks like a fun time go for it). In my experience Django/Satchmo are much more flexible and easier to customize, as well as easier to maintain, plus you can take advantage of Django's rich ecosystem of packages. And seriously Python > PHP.
In the long run I think you'll be much better off with Django/Satchmo. At some point in the distant future (because no project is ever truly finished, nor as simple as your initial requirements might imply) your client will come back and say "Oh, well...we really wanted X to happen when user Y does Z". And at that point you'll either say "Sure no problem, your site is built on Django so that's a piece of cake!" or go into convulsions because you'll think of all the work that will entail with Magento.
Solution 4:
This is past the time constrains of the original poster, but if you're using Django, Cartridge/Mezzanine is a nice setup for e-commerce. It has an Ubuntu deploy script, Stripe integration, and is customizable. Mezzanine is
You can add Mezzanine to an existing Django project. http://mezzanine.jupo.org/docs/frequently-asked-questions.html#how-can-i-add-mezzanine-to-an-existing-django-project
Nice Mezzanine tutorial: http://www.rosslaird.com/blog/first-steps-with-mezzanine/
Solution 5:
I don't know anything about Django, but I faced this exact same problem a few years ago after our company decided to stop using share-it for sales and develop our own solution in PHP. Our problem with hosted platforms like share-it (and I assume shopify, although I've never used it) is that their fees are much higher than you would incur by just rolling your own solution and processing your orders with Paypal or something.
So you may consider doing what we did: buying pre-built shopping cart software and then extensively customizing it. We used Digishop, which is designed more for a online catalog-type store than our software site, but after about 2-4 weeks of adding necessary functionality it was good to go. Although out of the box Digishop was way too bloated for our needs, if you're familiar with PHP it should be a breeze to navigate through it and selectively add or remove features as you see fit.
Good luck!
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