Question by Jo: How can I get a car sales software for an online car sales website like cars.com or autotrader.com?
All I see when I try to google the question is car dealership software only. How do I get a software (either free or for sale, but preffarably free) like the type that cars.com or autotrader.com uses where people can register and put up their cars for sale? Or, any ideas on a social networking software that can be adapted for the same purpose?

Best answer:

Answer by Sage
While they’re probably based on standard back-end technologies and tools, the reason why autotrader and cars.com’s web application software isn’t available for free download is because they’re one-off pieces of software both companies have spent millions developing to meet their very specific requirements. They’re not likely to give it way, nor are many developers likely to create large, specialized e-commerce infrastructures for the sake of doing so.

Even if they did, the administrative requirements for a private individual would be staggering. The best solution would be to opt for one of the many pre-packaged e-commerce packages that are meant to serve a variety of purposes but include a handful of customizable features. The developers typically allow price their “one size fits all” software very reasonably and then customize their software to suit particular needs for standard development fees.

Standard popular web forum software like PHP and others also have very robust add-in features and an “open” customizable design. Legions of programmers have become very adept at customizing them further to meet the very specific needs of many community forum hosts and some include interfaces for powerful e-commerce modules.

You’re not likely to find what you’re looking for without a fairly sizable bank balance.

Best of luck. I hope this helps.

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