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 There is more to our review of NetCatalog than meets the eye.
We conducted one of our most extensive surveys of software ever in searching through and looking for the answer to the application of the millennium: shopping
cart software. We settled on NetCatalog, and gave it five stars, because it offered the best combination of features and price anyone could want in such a program.
We then turned around and bought it for our own use on our sales site, www.the-e-mall.net. The screen shots are from the E-Mall, or, if you want to look
at NetCatalog in action, you can use the link above to simply go to the site.
In the survey of available options, we quickly learned there are two primary ways to go with
shopping cart software. Host it yourself or use someone else's setup. By that we don't mean you need to park a server in your business or home and worry about it, it just means you maintain your
own site – much as if you buy remote hosting services for your web page – or you buy a service which has the shopping cart software on its site and you configure it remotely.
Truth be known, we found a couple of attractive deals with remote shopping carts. But the kicker was primarily that you never own the software. That means that every month you have to
ante up a rental fee, if you will, for the cart. You never pay for the software.
The other consideration was that wefound more flexibility in the good shopping carft software
you can buy than in the shopping cart software you "rent." That wasn't always the case: some of the better "rental" deals were more flexible in what you could do than the lesser software for
purchase. But, generally, comparing top-of-the-line to top-of-the-line (or, honestly, the middle-of-the-line to middle-of-the-line), we found the software you bought gave you more options.
We cast aspersions at no one, but we've been in this business for nearly 20 years and if there is one thing which seems constant, it is that companies go out of business. If Joe's Shopping Cart
Rental goes belly up, you do, too. Even if you make a backup (if you can), where are you going to use your data. It Stan's Shopping Cart Sales Company goes belly up, you still have the program,
you still have it running on your server and you can probably use it for years to come. You will eventually have to replace it, but you always have to replace software. At least your shopping cart site is humming along.
We ask you to welcome Ann Martin to our reviewing ranks. Her first review appears in November of 1999. We believe you will enjoy Ann's reviews.
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