Oh noooooooo – 1ShoppingCart.com raised their prices! …And panic ensued … And the questions flooded my email …And I answered them …And then I thought – this is GREAT blog material!

And so, here we are (and pay attention, because I can probably save you some $$ here).

After the recent 1SC shopping cart price increase from $99-$129 on the professional level account (which… in my opinion was pretty steep considering the “upgrades” they gave), people started exploring other options.

“What about using free WordPress plugins or other programs for an online store or affiliate program? asked one person.

As far as plugins and stuff – you can certainly accomplish setting up a store, affiliate program, and doing a newsletter with lots of different moving pieces. It will definitely work. The problem, is that in the end, you will spend more time and money than you will save, trying to manage it and get your contacts in one place, and keep it all together. So, the cost-savings is undeterminable (especially if you are using a team to make it work.)

“I’ve heard great things about Infusionsoft. If we’re going to spend the money, we might as well get the big one,” mentioned someone else.

As far as Infusionsoft goes – I’ve heard great things about it, however most people don’t need it. In my opinion, it’s only worth it if you have a lot of contacts and a lot going on. I’m sure a Ferrari is worth the money too, but getting one to drive my kids 3 blocks down the road to school would be overkill. It would be super fun, and all our friends would be impressed …but not really necessary.

“Someone I know uses eJunkie. It’s super cheap. Maybe we should switch,” was another comment.

First thing…cheaper does not always = better. Would you eat at the $1 sushi place? Not me! Think of how much money you could save eating off the $1 menu at McDonalds every day! Ugh… Ejunkie… eh, it makes me weary. Also – keep in mind that there is a daily limit on free downloads and checkouts depending on the plan you have. So, if you have less than 10 products, you can only have 100 people a day download something for free (i.e.: register for your free call / download an e-book /etc.). This might not be a big deal at first, but if you are growing, you don’t want to have to worry about that in the future. Honestly, I just don’t know enough about their other features to make a recommendation about this company, but feel free to check them out.

So, what’s the verdict?

In the end, I think that 1SC is still the best overall cart/email/affiliate combo service around. The cart just works. Everthing works together, and I think that’s important. No scrambling to import and export contact names or add up affiliate commissions or figure out what goes where. No keeping offline backups of who’s unsubscribed from different places. It just…works. And it’s beatiful.

Keep in mind – we are “1SC people.” We don’t spend our days searching for other alternatives because we love 1ShoppingCart. We have, on occasion, checked other things out, but just haven’t found anything that we love as much.

If you use a WordPress plugin for a shopping cart, and another program for your email marketing, and yet something ELSE for your affiliate management, you won’t have the combined functionality of it all. For instance, if someone buys from another cart, you still have to manually put them into your email marketing program (and with some, like Aweber – you can’t!)

The truth is, you can find any gazillion combinations of things that will work. So, if you’re deciding between putting food on the table and which cart to use, we say just go with the PayPal cart or one of those lower end carts, which is basically free. BUT – when you are setting the foundation to build a big business, that kicks ass, I say go with what you know works and does what you need in the best way possible.

Top Secret 1SC cost savings tip below!

Most of our clients use the 1ShoppingCart pro level for the affiliate management. AND – a lot of people just need the affiliate management part when they are doing a launch. Did you know – if you just need the affiliate part for a launch, you can set it up, upgrade, and use it, and then turn it off (downgrade your account) until your next launch, AND – you don’t lose your settings, and your affiliates stay in the system. (They just can’t promote while you have it turned off, but they can again once it’s turned back on.) That saves you $50/month when you aren’t using your affiliate program.

You’re welcome.

What do YOU think about the price increase and what I said? Comments welcome!