CPShop

Any Cafepress shop, or any combination of Cafepress Shops. Incoming content can be filtered by name, product type, or other parameters.

Provides a simple text menu of "StoreIDs" (sections/categories) which are defined in CPShop admin. This can be disabled and replaced with fully customized navigation.

Many opportunities for customization, including:

1. Template(s): The CPShop installation can use a single HTML template, separate templates for sections and products, or unique templates for each section and the products within that section; or any combination of these, defined individually by StoreIDs.

2. Text replacement for Cafepress content and/or images. (This is pretty flexible, and where it doesn’t do what’s wanted there is an after market extension that performs even more replacements.)

3. "Hooks", which are special tags in a CPShop template. Hooks allow you to place a tag in your template that loads custom content when certain conditions are met in the current page. These conditions include Product Number, Section Number, StoreID, and other parameters.

4. Other tags can load specific content into a template; these include product names and product descriptions. Not all tags work in every kind of page, though.

5. Meta Tags: Can be the same throughout the shop (not a good idea), can be varied by using multiple templates, or can be varied using the CPShop tags described in #4 – note, though, that not all CPShop tags work on all kinds of pages.

If you’re building an affiliate site you can add your own affiliate ID to the sales links. Optionally, you can accept incoming affiliate IDs so that others can make an affiliate commission on your sales.

$19.77; unlimited license allows you to install CPShop in as many shops and on as many domains as you like.

As needed to adapt to changes at Cafepress. Usually there’s a very short delay between a problem and its solution.

Perl. Can also be used within a PHP page, which opens other possibilities for customization.

CPshop is the oldest and most mature of these scripts. For that reason it has the widest variety of features and, in general, good and timely support from the author and from other users.

Zazzle Store Builder

Any Zazzle store or store section; Zazzle Marketplace (filtered by keywords). ZSB only displays product thumbnail pages – when shoppers click on a thumbnail they’re sent to the product page on the Zazzle site.

Not provided in output; must be added in your template(s). A ZSB page is displaying a product feed, so it doesn’t "know" anything about your custom site’s structure the way the other scripts do.

Yes. In fact, pagination of ZSB pages is more consistent and reliable than in Zazzle store pages.

Uses a separate HTML template for each "section" you create. This is flexible, but it can mean you’re going to need a bunch of templates. Each of these can include external files, though: so changing the site’s framing HTML can still be a matter of changing just a couple of files. Because the Zazzle Store Builder is written in PHP, it can be further modified if you’re fluent in PHP.

Uses your own affiliate ID to give you commissions on your ZSB sales.

Free, with an unlimited license.

Infrequent

PHP

ZSB is only about a year old as I write this. Its most interesting feature is that it loads in feeds of products rather than reading and analyzing the contents of the source store(s). As written it has very little in the way of other features, but it’s expandable given a knowledge of PHP. Of course, it’s a free product. In my book, the fact that your custom store doesn’t host the actual product pages is a major problem with ZSB.

MyPFstore

Any one Printfection store.

In its "Basic" mode, myPFstore creates an exact duplicate of the Printfection Store, simply changing all links to point to the pages at your own domain. (For reasons having to do with SEO and duplicate content I don’t recommend Basic mode.) In its "Advanced" mode, the navigation and site design can be completely replaced, with some limitations (though in fact those limitations probably affect very few people).

1. All CSS from Printfection and from the source store can be replaced. In “Advanced” mode, custom HTML can replace the HTML used by the source store.

2. However… even in Advanced mode a single template is used and some meta tags (and other content) will be the same throughout the store unless you do some major customization. Because it’s written in PHP it’s possible to modify myPFStore in major, fundamental ways if you’re fluent in PHP and Javascript.

3. Text replacement (and image replacement) of Printfection content is possible through a provided include file.

Not supported because Printfection has no affiliate sales program.

$40; may be used any number of times within a single domain (additional domains will require additional licenses).

Emergency updates are pretty rapid, judging by a single incident.

PHP

I spent (by far) the most time wrestling with the myPFStore installation – that’s because I wanted it to do more with it than it was meant to do. So although I had to work at it, I eventually came to love what I was able to get out of the system – and I’ll probably try to retrofit my ZSB installation to use some of what I learned.

As I write this, though, Printfection has another solution that might work for some people – they’ll now remap your Printfection store to your own domain – and if you also use their "MyBrand" service there will be almost no reference to Printfection in the store that now, for all intents and purposes, is located at your own web site.

This wouldn’t have been a good solution for me, since my goal was to create a single web site that combined products from multiple PODs. But it’s probably a great idea for some. I don’t know what this new service means to the future of myPFStore.