You don’t have to use one of the paid services. I’ve used free open source ecommerce carts that you host yourself, mainly because I had a website development & hosting business and could modify the code to my needs. You don’t need to be a coder to use any of these open source carts, and there are a number to choose from.
osCommerce is one of the oldest, and one I used a lot. It was always a decent cart.
WooCommerce has a WordPress plugin that works well, and you also have a blog which is a plus.
Magento is better than the three aforementioned carts, but it has a higher learning curve.
My recommendation for noobs is PrestaShop. You can automate it with Inventory Source. It’s probably one of the easiest carts to use. It has a large number of themes and modules, such as the Prestashop to WordPress Module which allows you to add the cart, categories, manufacturers, new products, specials and top sellers to a WordPress installation.
The best part about the open source carts is there is no ongoing cost to use it. It’s always free. The only cost to you is hosting, which isn’t expensive. A good VPS could be had to about $30/month.
That’s my two cents.
