Ask HN: Is an ecommerce saas platform a good idea? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is an ecommerce saas platform a good idea?

4 pointsmirceasoaica9 comments

I am thinking about creating a saas ecommerce (like shopify, bigcommerce, selz etc.) platform and I would like to know some opinions from the HN community regarding the business model and features.

1. Do you think there is room for another player? There are a lot of platforms out there, some better than others and with different pricing and business model (fixed subscription, transaction fee etc.). 2. What are the main features that would convince you to ditch the platform you are using now (including OSS like WooCommerce and PrestaShop)? 3. What is the business model that would attract you? Would you pay more for a subscription and no transaction fee, or lower subscription and a small transaction fee (like 2%)?

Thanks!

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What would be the perfect ecommerce platform? One that sent me very large checks and required no work at all. No dealing with transactions, no listing merchandise, no managing inventory, no dealing with suppliers, no upfront costs, etc.

If that happens, I wouldn't care about rates...except maybe in some abstract manner where money is a way of keeping score. The reason I wouldn't care all those activities create first order problems when they fail and the rate is only relevant once all the other pieces are working to the point I'm making sales.

Further down the list of things that matter are the business model of the ecommerce platform. I probably care about my business model many many times more.

Anyway, what I see is that successful ecommerce platforms are successful not due to their business model but because they solve problems for the seller. Etsy, Amazon, Alibabba, Ebay, etc. solve problems related to transactions for a specific type of seller. In the cases where logistics are important, the platform has expanded to handle those.

Good luck.

There is some room for Enterprise platform built on a modern stack. We were actually planning to build one few years back but funding fell through. ATG, Hybris & Websphere Commerce are all riddled with tech debt and take a very long time to customize and deploy. You are unlikely to do this with VC funding though it requires very sizable investment and it would take close to 2 years to build an MVP.

I was thinking about bootstrapping business and target the small - medium businesses. If I want to tackle the enterprise business it might take 2 years for an MVP, but an alternative for a WooCommerce store shouldn't take that long.

It's so crowded unless you have some special angle you will need to spend a truckload on marketing

https://moltin.com/ are a YC company who have raised a couple of rounds to do ecommerce in an interesting way, so clearly someone thinks there's a market for new SaaS platforms in that space.

(I have no affiliation, but I've met them and they're nice guys.)

I know about moltin.com.

They basically offer you a backend and a set of APIs to create your store. It's a great tool to use if you want to be in control of your store behaviour. On the other hand it requires you to have some technical knowledge.

Oracle is out with a version of this called Commerce Cloud (https://cloud.oracle.com/commerce-cloud). It is based on their existing market leading ATG/Oracle commerce product.

To be honest I don't really trust Oracle software. They are usually very expensive and they kinda lock you in their products.

In the case of Commerce Cloud I don't see any pricing information, so I can only presume it's going to cost a lot.

Also a few days ago Oracle bought NetSuite for $9.3 billion. One of their product is SuiteCommerce (http://www.netsuite.com/portal/products/netsuite/suitecommer...)

Agree with most of your points. I was only pointing out that Oracle now wants a piece of that pie. BTW, they support both revenue share and number of click model.

From https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/commerce-cloud?tabID=14306513...

Usage Model - Tiered-pricing structure based on annual storefront page views Revenue Share Model - Percentage of GMV

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