Types of E-commerce Platforms
When talking about e-commerce, it is important to get to know the varieties of type of such business form. Classification of e-commerce business platforms is done by basing it on the model of licensing, the scenario of sales, and the exchange of data. The first would be on-premises e-commerce. The licensing fees for this kind of e-commerce require initial one-time purchase investment. Its advantages include higher levels of customizability, secure data storage, and high performance. Its disadvantages include an initial investment of large size, self-maintenance, and technical knowledge.
The second is SaaS (software as a service) e-commerce. The delivery model of this e-commerce is cloud-based. Applications are managed and hosted in the data center of the service provider. Its advantages include solutions with great affordability, host and upgrade, scalability, and availability. Its disadvantages include limited system control and limited integration with back-end systems. The third type is Fully Managed (FM) E-commerce. The FM e-commerce begins as PaaS (Platform as a Service). It offers software and hardware for e-commerce. Services provided by FM e-commerce include marketing consulting, customer support, data management, image editing, and picture taking. B2B solution is the typical stores that receive FM e-commerce. The sales volume would be used as the licensing model.
The last type of e-commerce would be the open source e-commerce. Open source e-commerce is free of charge, meaning it does not come with licensing slot dana 5k fees. Users of this e-commerce are directly responsible for everything from installation, maintenance, security, to configuration of the software right on their own servers. Open source e-commerce calls for technical expertise in terms of web design and development. Its advantages include a system that’s free of charge, a great range of extensions/plugins/add-ons, and higher levels of flexibility. Its disadvantages include requirement of technical knowledge, costs of hosting, and absence of standard integration with back-end systems.