How to handle monitoring and support while traveling?

[buzzworm]

Hi everybody, this question is not necessarily specific to Thirty Bees or PrestaShop, but would apply to any self-hosted shopping cart (or website).

How do you handle support and monitoring for "emergencies" while traveling and unable to log in or even communicate?

Are there reliable companies that do this for a reasonable price, or should I look for a capable, trustworthy individual to hire for these temporary "on-call" duties?

Thanks!

[dynambee]

What do you mean by "emergencies"? If you mean customer service issues then having staff is the only option.

If you mean having the web site taken care of while you are a way then the cheapest thing for you to do will be to use something like Shopify instead of something you have to support yourself. If you're in the US you can use Shopify Payments and then a Shopify store will only cost you $29 to $79 per month. It's not as flexible as TB of course but that will be the cheapest way to go.

If you want to use TB and have it supported there will be options out there but you will certainly pay more than $29 or even $79 per month for such service.

[buzzworm]

@dynambee Hi, yes I mean technical "emergencies" regarding the website. We have employees in our store which could handle customer-service issues, but I'm the only one around who could deal with technical issues that might happen with the site. Thanks for your answer, that makes sense.

[dynambee]

It's also going to depend on how often you expect to be unavailable and how much it would cost you to be down for a period of time, assuming the worst should happen.

Although I suggested Shopify above, it's certainly not a perfect platform. If you need extra features most of them are monthly subscriptions which adds to your monthly cost. If you need a bunch of them it can result in things getting quite pricey, especially if you have multiple websites. Shopify is also pretty inflexible with their shipping options which can be an issue for some businesses.

If it is going to cost you thousands of dollars per day in lost sales then clearly having some sort of emergency plan in place is going to be a good idea. However if it's going to cost you a few hundred dollars in lost sales to be down for a week, it's not likely going to be worth the cost to have any sort of emergency system in place if you go away a few weekends per year.

In the end only you can make this calculation for your specific scenario.