Many of my customers are having to ask themselves this same question. They know they want to have the best e-commerce platform out there (who doesn’t?) but the struggle in deciding which of the 4 platforms to choose from. perhaps I can help guide you through the decision process.

Are you planning on running your store inside of DotNetNuke? If the answer to this is yes, then you will for sure want the ML/DotNetNuke version of the software. If not, let’s move on.

Will your site be hosted on a 64-bit version of Windows Server in order to accommodate the volume of traffic your site is expected? If yes, keep in mind that the ML/64-bit version of ASPDNSF will not support certain payment gateways (Bank of America via Cybersource, CyberSource, IATS TicketMaster and PlugNPay). Also note that if are running your site on a 64-bit server, you can still run any of the other versions, you just won’t gain the speed that comes along with the full 64-bit system.

This narrows your search down to either ML/Express and ML version of AspDotNetStorefront. To make things easier, I’ll list a series of functions that if you can’t live without any ONE of them, then you should step up to the full ML version. We’ll start with what I think are the most important first.

• Will you always be shipping physical (as opposed to digital) products? Express version will not support digital download products like the full version will.
• Will your site never grow beyond 500 items? This is the cap on the number of products you can have in your store. Of course, with ASPDNSF’s variants, size and color options, this can represent a large number of items.
• Can you live without offering Google Checkout to your customers? This is a significant question if you intend to do AdWords advertising. If your site offers GC, then your AdWord ads can have the Google Checkout logo next to them making them stand out from other options.
• Speaking of Google, will you be able to live without conversion tools in Google Analytics? You should be able to embed the raw Analytics code into your templates but you won’t be able to do more in-depth e-commerce conversion tracking.
• Can you live with no more than 100 topics in your site? For most sites, this is probably true but for many, in particular those who are looking to do many landing pages on their site, this might be a deal killer.
• Can your site survive without any modifications to the source code (including code-behinds)? The XMLPackages that ASPDNSF uses to control the display of data on web pages gives you a great deal of flexibility but it appears that the Express version comes pre-compiled which removes access to “mid-range” changes to the code-behinds as well as significant changes that require access to the full source code.
• If you need to work with drop shippers, plan on working a little harder. The full version has a series of very handy tools to work with drop shippers that you’ll have to do manually in the Express version of ASPDNSF.
• Other features you’ll have to live without are Product Ratings & Reviews, Customer Levels (including wholesale), Affiliate programs, Recently Viewed Products and Customers who Bought X also bought Y type features.
• If you feel that your site can live without kits or packs, then you should be good to go. If not, then it is time to step up.
• Only need simple shipping options? Great. If you need more complex shipping rules such as calculating by Order weight & Zone or Order Total & Zone, then you will need ML. You will also give up shipping calculations from DHL International, Australia Post and Canada Post. You also will not be able to set up customer levels that allow for free shipping or use multiple ship-to addresses per order.
• Given that you have less than 500 products, you should be ok with not having XML imports, Web Services Automation Imports or Event Notifications or callbacks to external web services.
• You will similarly have to give up the Gift Registry and Wish Lists. If your business model requires these features, then Express is not for you.
• Se habla e-commerce? If you are looking to build a store that supports multiple languages, then look to the full ML version.
• Will you be using PayPal for your CC transactions? If so, you should be good as the Express version only supports 7 other credit card gateways while the full ML supports over 40 different gateways.

To see the complete list you can see it at http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com/t-features.aspx but we’ve found most of our customers can make a decision pretty quickly by working their way through the list shown above.