If you are considering the DIY route of online sales and order fulfillment, consider Photocart. Here is a Sneak Peak of the upcoming release.

Excellent product, great user community, great support and great price... $279.00 one time, free upgrade for life.

No, I don't work for them but I am a very happy user and I just want to spread the word.

Not sure if my connection was off, but the audio is all screwed up. Was the audio good for you?

Nonetheless, this looks like an exciting new release! Photocart is an incredible solution for those who want a full-featured, fully customizable cart. Very robust and easily integrates into your website. And the CS is tops!!

The audio worked fine for me, and it looks like a really great product. We might have to switch!

What are you using now?

Yeah, the audio was messed up for me too. I love my photocart too! How do we get the new release?

Yeah, the audio was kind of off/You will receive an email. Remember Free upgrade!!! YES!!!You have any questions about it, let me know.

David, this looks really good. Thanx for posting it. I think I may switch to this. I assume that once you pay for it, there are no other fees, since it's your own hosted solution right?

The audio was jacked on my machine too...

Made me want to take a screwdriver to my forehead..

Not sure what good that would do ... do you really want a lobotomy?

Made me want to shut off the presentation.

Yes, you got it! No hidden cost, just plain good product.

What would you recommend for hosting and how much space do your think is necessary for someone that shoots around 15 weddings and maybe 10-15 portrait sessions a year? Thanx.

Sweeeeet! I have PhotoCart and LOVE it! Do you think the update will be free to past customers?

I believe it has always been free upgrade.It depends if you want to upload full rs or web res images. I upload web res images 700x700 72 pixels. and I use Godaddy and it cost me $79 a year for hosting (I think is the middle package).Also look at the bandwith allotment.Just make sure it is a reliable service.In the Photocart website there is a list of suggested hosting services.

I've been using PhotoCart for about a year and I love it. I tried EZPhotoSales and Collages.net. PhotoCart has them both beat by a long shot.

H

So how do these kinds of things work? Do they go through the lab of your choice or what? I'm trying to understand the simple process.

Right now we're using Instaproofs. Which is... fine. I guess.

Is there a way to see what the client sees initially?
Is it a storefront looking concept, or a list of events ?
Anyone mind me taking a peek into one of theirs to see that?

yeah i uh, stopped watching about 15 seconds in... lame audio capture.

im still holding out for AfterShutter anyway.... I'd rather support OSPers like Carey.

Photocart is a program that you buy and runs in your own server or hosting company, usually the same one that host your webpage. You can customize it to make it look like part of your website/branding. You upload the images, notify your clients and they com, look and purchase images. You c reate your own packages and sale any product you wish.

Once you receive an order you and the money, you then place the order in your lab of choice. I personally use WHCC and they drop ship the orders for me.

So you run it, you have total control. One time cost to buy... $279... and it has the store fron (what your client see) and the backend (your admin area) where you keep track of your event, set up prices, keep track of orders, customers, etc.

You can check mine

There are some open events. Plus if you go to Photocart site you can see the back end too.

You can have it like a store front, a list of events with or withou images or just a access page. Is totally customizable. The only thing I can compare it to is Pickpic.

You can also embed the SIW slide shows as splash page for your clients, and can have an accessory store where you can sell anything you want.

It also have multiple language support which is further being enhance in the new upgrade.

Hey David,

Thanks so much for posting about this! I have been looking into photocart, as well as others and am very intrigued. I looked on their list of hosting companies that it will run and work on, but did not see liveBooks. Do you have any idea if liveBooks would be a "GO"?

Thanks David. I appreciate your response.

NO GO on Livebooks. Same with BigFolio.
You can get a 2nd domain and host it & run it on the 2nd domain w/different hosting.
Livebooks will not give you the access you need for any system like Photocart, EZ (AS soon), PickPic, Skooks, RedCart, ITDR.
The 2nd domain comes in handy if you want to run a blog/showIt/cart anyway, so it's good to have.

~Carey

I run it and highly recommend it. For $30 Tim (the author, offers amazing support for the product) will install on your hosting company. There is a list of hosting companies that it will work with on the site. http://www.picturespro.com/pages/web_hosting.html

ezps (soon to be AS) staff (matt and Carey) will install ezps for free

Your welcome. Just that I am so happy and satisfy with photocart and what Tim has done for us that I just want people to know.

Not sure. worst case scenario you can get an outside hosting and have livebooks do a link to photocart. That is what I was doing until recently when I started to move over my site.

David
Thanks for letting me peek.
How long did it take you to do all the initial setup?
Is there a way to send a 'time to purchase' email - or capture those email addresses?

I just wanted to chime in since I started a huge topic that talked about a lot of this stuff here: Best Combo System for Printing

I saw a customized Photocart site through the help of a gracious OSPer and I have to say the abilities and look of the product are MUCH better than the demo suggests.

David,
You sound like you know Tim. If you do, you really should recommend he updates the demo section because it really turns off the potential customers. The typos and other small errors give a lack of professionalism to interested buyers. Without OSP, I would have assumed it was a "blah" cart.

I compared EZPS and Photocart, and right now Photocart is much better in every way except price. Photocart still isn't quite to the level of PickPic, but it is also 1/4th of the price.

I totally agree with you that the demo does not do justice to the product. IN fact, that is what kept me from buying it for a long time. It was after OSPers that uses Photocart allow me to see their carts and I started to checkout the carts from other users that I was convinced.

To that concern he answered that the problem is that because he allows people to go into the admin side to play with it and see the depth of customization, they end up messing up the looks of the demo. I too think he should find a way that the demo, specially the part the client sees, look as awesome as possible.

I also compared EZPS and Photocart, and EZPS lacks the depth of custamization of Photocart. My appreciation was that EZPS is for people that want simple carts. bth products are not comparable.

Photocart can only be compare to Pickpic and Skooks and the only real difference I have found is that when the image is crop, in Pickpic and Skooks, you can move the image within the crop while in Photocart (up to now) you see the crop and your are told that it is a center crop meaning that the final cut will be correct. I don't think that difference is worth $1k more.

One thing Photocart does that no other system that I have check does is to allow you to create a cart for other languages. It is a multi language cart. The user can click for Spanish and most of the instructions and information change to Spanish. For me that was a clincher. I understand that in the new upgrade that feature will be enhanced.

Photocart with its add ons (slide shows and accessory store) does the same and more than Pickpic and Skooks for $1,000 less.



Your more than welcome. There are people that have done a better job customizing. My is in a transition state because I am re-doing my site.

From installation to operational it took me between 30 to 45 minutes.
Installation is straightforward. That took me about 10 minutes. The rest was playing with looks.
If you going to get a hosting, make sure you check his recommendations. I believe he recommend a linux hosting server over a MS hosting service.
You have to have access to your hosting admin to be able to create a sql database. That will give you some information that you will need when you run setup for the cart (it comes with instructions).
Then, you upload the cart to your site, and then run the setup, enter the info required and you are up. All that took 10 minutes and I didn't know much about databases...

Or, you can pay $30 to have him install it for you. He usually do it within 48 hours.

Then, you play with your set ups to learn them and get the look you want.

Not sure I understand your second question about emails, but in the admin section, just like you did in Pictage, you enter the client name and information. Once the event happens and you create a gallery for the event (with as many sub-galleries you want - and liek you did in Pictage, if you organize your images in folders, like Bride, Groom, Couple, etc, when you upload those folders to the system (via FTP) Photocart automatically knows that you want to create sub galleries. You can also select the imnage that will represent the sub gallery.) Then you can send, from within Photocart, an email notifying the client that the event is live. You can completely change the content of the email but should leave the code that insert the password.

There are several emails you can send for different reasons from Photocart and they all can be changed. I have mine in Spanish and English. I also understand this is another area that will be enhanced in the new Photocart.

Also, if a person want to see the event, they will have to register (if you want them to and you also determine how much info they have to supply) and request access to the event. you then receive an email request.

The admin area shows you how many visitors, who they were and you can even track to see where they cam from. At the moment I have over 20,000 images and Photocart has worked flawless.

Tim opened a thread to request from users enhancement they wanted to see.

Let me know if that answered you question about emails.

I'm SO glad that I bought Photocart yesterday! I love it and I'm just in the customizing stage right now. It's an amazing product. Also, Tim has been super helpful and quick to respond to emails and answer all questions!

How much of a pain is it going to be to upgrade from 4.1 to the upcoming 4.2? Just drag/drop the new source code in? Is the customization code separated well enough that I won't have to spend too long to save the customizations while upgrading?

Tim is the only one that will be able to answer that for sure, but I have spent a good amount of time digging through the code and my guess is the upgrade will be simple replacing of the code.

I wonder if anyone has told the Picturespro people that they should take this video down. This does nothing to build consumer confidence. The product is good. I appreciate them trying to build anticipation but I feel this video is more likely to do damage.

Bill

What was so bad about the video? It worked fine for me and it was insightful.

Did you watch the whole thing? Did you not have a problem like others have stated with the audio?

If you haven't that is great, but that also means they did not do cross browser/platform checks.

To me it sounded as if the audio was garbled during portions of it.

Bill

Yep, watched the whole thing and there were no problems at all.

In the first place the audio is not that bad as to condemn it.

In the second place, the video was not released to the general public but it was posted by Tim for those Photocart user's that wanted to have a taste for the new features. I shared it here because I believe in the product.

I do agree that I would like to see its site refreshed.

But I rather have Tim work on the final release of the Photocart than worry about something inconsequential.

The audio issue applies to people who have the latest flash version being incompatible with the recording software that Tim uses.

I just got photocart and so far am loving it. I kept waiting for aftershutter but I just couldn't wait any longer. I paid Tim $30 to set it up and it was done in no time.

Purchased & installed this yesterday.

I'm a fan! Really really easy to set up as well.


We'll see how the clients like it in a few weeks once I get this past weekends wedding loaded into it and released to them!

Does photocart allow the client to select and save their favorites to a folder?

Yep. But it doesn't allow you to share those with others (as far as I know).

Great thank you!

Does anyone know when this version on Photo Cart will be released? I'm just starting with them, and so far I love it and this version is going to rock.

I bought Photocart in January, again thanks to a couple OSPers who let me peek at their sites (I agree about the online demo... didn't make me love it). I love how completely customizable it is (much more so than EZPS, which I was also considering).

I just did a fundraiser for our local MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group which was 70 different families, each of whom received a free 8x10. I set up one large gallery with 70 different subgalleries (one for each family), issued coupon codes for the freebie, and it made me love Photocart even more. I set up a special set of prices for the group (we were offering packages mainly). The coupons took some time to input because there isn't a way to do a batch import without knowing a lot more about SQL or something than I do, but totally worth it.

My hosting company (ICDSoft) is not on Tim's list, but before I bought it I emailed them a link to his hosting requirements page to confirm with them that they could run it and they responded right away with a yes. The install was pretty straightforward, I thought, didn't need to pony up for the help.

david would you be kind enough to take a couple of screen shots of your back end of the program not your arss. LOL thanks!

Does anyone know when the new version comes out?

yes... me too? Inquiring minds want to know!

There is no definitive date yet. Tim expected it to be out sooner but it got delayed. But it will be soon.

I have seen and tested some of the new feature and I assure it will worth the wait,

As far as the back-end (sorry for the delay answer) You have access to the backend at the photocart website, so you can play with it.

I feel like I have been waiting for months, not just several days or a couple of weeks! Haha!