This might sound like a harsh reply and it is meant to be.

What the world does not need is yet another PERL/CGI (sic) programmer churning out yet another poorly designed shopping cart script. It is obvious to me that from Sasquire's post that he does not understand some of the important issues and will be doing his clients a disservice.

A shopping cart is not a simple thing. It definatly isn't something that a beginning perl programmer should be attempting in any other context than a learning one. There are some big issues at stake here:

Performance: How does the app scale? Can it handle peak loads? Talking about '$15p/m' hosting worries me. You won't nearly have the level of control you need.

Security: Is it something I can trust? How are credit card details stored? Can something go wrong and they end up web accessible? What about other customer data? Does the script make any of the obvious mistakes like putting prices in hidden fields?

Stability: Is it going to be up 24x7? Is there any degree of redundancy? Is there a plan for failure (ISP going under, hardware dying, etc)? Are backups done? How secure are these?

Customization: How easy is it to respond to requirement changes? Can the client modify templates? What happens when they want to add features like cross selling? Is the tool powerful enough to handle changes?

For these reasons I would never recommend that a small client bases their business on something written by a somebody who isn't an 'expert'. This is why a platform such as Yahoo Store is a win-win situation for somebody who doesn't want to spend a lot of money.

For more advanced stores there are tools such as such as Interchange and Intershop.

gav^