I'm partway through the design process ecommerce aspect for my business, and I'm a stumbling a bit over the potential options.

Currently, I maintain a low-traffic 512 running a well-tuned LAMP installation and Wordpress. I plan on upgrading this server when it's ecommerce time.

Looking from a practicality standpoint alone, does it make sense to jump up to the 1024, install Magento, and develop for that? I googled a bit, looking into achieving PCI compliance and all of that. Seems entirely possible to do this with a Linode, but am I looking at a mire if I think the 1024 is going to cut it with Magento and a low average load?

I've been exploring Shopify, but I'd rather not get into a SaaS unless there's a huge benefit to having them deal with the security and traffic. Again, this is all cost-agnostic.

Anyone able to weigh in? Had a similar decision to make?

In general, you do not want to handle credit card information at all, not even in a pass-through capacity, if you can avoid it. Check to see if your payment gateway supports "transparent redirect" (and which ecommerce systems they know of that've integrated with it). This will make your life about 500x easier in the long run.

If yours doesn't, my favoritest is Braintree, but there's probably others out there too.

I don't generally work with ecommerce systems, so I'm not sure what's considered "good" nowadays. I always underestimate the resources required for PHP applications in general, but ecommerce systems seem particularly rotund. (I dunno, maybe it's the sales tax tables.)

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Good call on the payment gateway. I've seen Braintree recommended thrice elsewhere, and it's on my list of things to research for this project. Each mention has been of a good thing about them. Further, both Magento and Shopify support them as a gateway. Glad to hear it reinforced here!

I don't believe they're the least expensive out there, but... I dunno. Every time I've made price the key deciding factor for Something I Rely On, I've come to regret it.

(This is why my wife is now in charge of car maintenance. Who woulda thought that old UPS batteries would lose that much voltage when they get cold... sigh.)

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