
Ask HN: Building an e-commerce site in 2016 - J-dawg
A friend is starting a fashion business and has asked for advice about setting up an online store.<p>Do you recommend a particular framework (e.g. Magento)? Is it worth building something from scratch?
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herbst
I would use everything but Magento. Actually, if i want something simple for
someone who is not IT person themself i would probably use Shopify. For
something personal, where i know i am going to hack some functionality into i
really like Woocommerce because its so simple and comes with so many free
plugins. Nice to get started.

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J-dawg
Thanks, this is helpful. I'm not sure yet how involved I want to be. Can you
give an example of the kind of custom stuff you can do in Woocommerce that
wouldn't be possible in Shopify?

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herbst
I am not 100% sure how strong the API of shopify is. But you depend on it. For
woocommerce i can just write _bots_ that query the Database and create actions
based on this. Next to the API, Monkey Patching, Plugins, Hooks and whatever
else it ships with.

You always have more and better possibilities if you host yourself.

As concrete example. I am in the progress of automating a dropship business.
Not sure how easy that would be with shopify.

