Shopping Cart:
Under Unix, we
offer Miva Merchant and Miva Order.
Under Windows2000, we offer Cart32. Of
the three systems, Miva Merchant is
the most advanced and the easiest
shopping cart solution for the
Internet merchants. Miva Merchant is a
self contained online store management
platform that includes development
tool, management tool, and
auto-publishing tool. They are all
web-based so you don't need to install
any programs on your end. If you are
looking for a solution that can best
approximate the shopping carts that
you see at stores such as Amazon.com,
Miva Merchant is your solution. It
also enjoys a wide support among many
third party developers. The latest
version also includes affiliate
program management, inventory tracking
and store statistics. Commerce Gold
Plus Unix and above comes bundled with
Miva Merchant.
Miva Order is a simple secure one page
order form that is perfect for stores
that have only one or two items. It
does not support pictures. It also
comes with a web-based store
management tool to help you with the
order fulfillment. It is available
with Commerce Gold Unix.
Cart32, which is offered with our
Windows2000 plans, comes close to Miva
Merchant in terms of functionality.
Unlike Miva Merchant, however, it's
not a 100% self contained system.
Building the store requires cutting
and pasting the html code into your
regular web page. The generation of
the html code is done using a
easy-to-use web-based wizard that we
provide. Therefore, it is recommended
only for those with some knowledge of
html and those who have a separate web
site building tool. The advantage of
Cart32 is that it allows for greater
flexibility in integrating your store
with your web site. The store
management is done through a web-based
interface just like it is with Miva
Merchant.
Ease of use:
Over the years,
many resources have been poured into
both UNIX and Windows®2000 platforms
to make hosting as easy as possible.
Today, there are no differences in
terms of ease of use between these
platforms. If you are an advanced user
who prefers to work in shell
environment, then UNIX is your choice.
However, if you are a beginner, you
will find both platforms user
friendly, especially with a help of
Hostway's control panel, SiteControl.
Reliability:
The industry
consensus is that UNIX is more
reliable. However, Hostway has made
sure that the reliability of the
Windows®2000 platform closely matches
that of UNIX's. What this means is
that you can make your decision based
on the differences in features rather
than on reliability.
Speed:
There is no
difference in terms of speed between
the two platforms.
Functionality:
This is where
two platforms differ the most. There
isn’t much that can be achieved in
one platform that can’t be on the
other one. The main difference is how
the end is achieved. For example, if
you need a database driven web site,
you can choose either PHP/MySQL
combination under UNIX or ASP/MS SQL
combination under Windows®2000. The
trend is for solutions to be supported
in both platforms. For example,
Microsoft FrontPage, one of the most
popular web site editors out there, is
supported on both UNIX and Windows®2000.
Please see below for the list of
supported features.
Price:
Here UNIX holds
a slight edge due to the fact that the
most of the software licenses are free
and that it’s easier to maintain
UNIX servers than Windows®2000
servers for the same level of
reliability and performance. You will
see that our hosting prices reflect
this. Unless you specifically plan to
use Windows®2000 platform specific
features (see below), it probably
makes sense to choose the UNIX
platform.
