To date, the drawback of the hosted approach is that customization options have been limited. For example, hosted shopping cart providers often have predefined templates that an online merchant can choose from to customize look and feel, which may limit how much software modification is possible.
APIs and applications have always allowed organizations to build custom logic, but this isn't the same as having the ability to change core functionality. To address this, some hosted shopping cart providers have taken the innovative step of making source code available to developers and designers, giving them total control over the code and design of stores as well as the end-user experience. Developers can change anything they want to — e.g., web design, extra features and even core functionality — as well as easily extend store capabilities.
- Companies:
- Amazon.com