# Remote e-commerce developer, anywhere in France > I am based in Schirmeck, in the Grand Est region of France, with no office or branch anywhere else. Outside my own region the work is entirely remote. This page gathers what actually differs from one shop to the next: not the client’s town, but what the shop sells. - Source canonique : [https://allaux.fr/en/freelance/developpeur-e-commerce-a-distance](https://allaux.fr/en/freelance/developpeur-e-commerce-a-distance) - Langue : EN - Dernière mise à jour : 2026-09-30 ## A shop lives on a server, not on your premises Working remotely is not a concession, it is the normal shape of this trade. Your shop is not in your back room: it is on a server, at a hosting company. Code, database, error logs and scheduled tasks are read over SFTP, over SSH and from the hosting panel, in the same way from the next room or from Alsace. What distance does not cover is specific: an in-store till, a label printer, a local network, a payment terminal to plug in. Hands on hardware means someone on site, and that will not be me. The software layer of those subjects — the till-to-shop bridge, the label file format, the call to the terminal’s API — is handled remotely. Outside the Grand Est there are no on-site meetings. ## Industry and B2B: selling references, not articles Many shops sell not to consumers but to distributors, workshops and resellers. The catalogue is often not public, prices vary by customer account, and an order goes through an internally approved quote. WooCommerce allows this with user roles and price rules per group, PrestaShop with customer groups and specific prices, but neither provides it by default: that access logic has to be built, not switched on. In aerospace and industrial subcontracting, traceability is added: a batch number, sometimes a certificate of conformity and a downloadable datasheet, attached to each reference. That needs dedicated fields and document storage tied to the product, not a free-text block. Past a certain volume, a quote flow built into the shop reaches its limits: the question becomes the connection to a management system. ## Food, fresh produce and alcoholic drinks Fresh produce and use-by dates A short-life product is not managed like an ordinary reference: batches and their dates must be tracked, the product pulled from sale before it runs out, sometimes several use-by dates held for one reference. PrestaShop tracks stock per reference, not natively per batch and date — hence a specialised module or bespoke development. Regulatory labelling (allergens, origin, storage) calls for structured fields editable in bulk, not free text. And shipping fresh goods narrows the list of workable carriers, which feeds into the shipping costs shown. Wine and spirits French law imposes wording on any advertising for an alcoholic drink, product pages and banners included. In practice: age verification before the catalogue is reachable, and systematic wording on imagery. On export, excise duties and accompanying documents change with the destination country and the status of the recipient, and some destinations are closed — for the United States the rule varies from state to state. Then there is breakage, which carrier choice mitigates without removing. ## wp-content/themes/mon-theme-enfant/functions.php ``` get_shipping_class() === 'frais') { unset($rates['flat_rate:3'], $rates['free_shipping:1']); break; } } return $rates; }, 10, 2); ``` ## Cosmetics, parapharmacy and regulated references Selling cosmetics means displaying the composition under the INCI nomenclature, which many consumer product pages leave out. Some references treated as medical devices, or requiring pharmaceutical advice, cannot stay on open sale: you need to block them at checkout. These products also follow demand peaks driven by the weather rather than the commercial calendar — sun protection, after-sun care — which calls for well-set stock alerts rather than a frozen supply plan. ## Returns, borders and export invoicing Among merchants who inherited the mail-order tradition, a return is not a favour but an acquired right: a return that can be started from the customer account, credit notes and size exchanges handled without going back through a full order. As soon as a border is involved, configuration changes in nature. A neighbouring country deserves its own delivery zone, with its own shipping costs and pickup points, rather than a generic European Union zone. Outside the European Union it is the invoicing that shifts: French VAT does not apply the same way, some invoices must be issued excluding tax, some shipments need a customs declaration. PrestaShop handles customer groups and tax rules per zone, but a French shop installed with defaults does not activate them: without that setup, an order to a non-EU country is invoiced as a domestic one. ## Established brand or first shop: two ways of stepping in When the shop is run by a team — e-commerce manager, project manager, sometimes an agency — I do not start from a blank page: approved brand guide, already customised theme, tag manager, e-mailing tool, loyalty programme. The job is to fit into that without breaking what works: read the code before touching it. Performance becomes a subject in itself, because those third-party tools load requests of their own. At the other end, a small business selling online for the first time has the opposite need: fewer features, more hand-over. The right delivery is the one the person running the shop can use alone — add a product, process an order, issue a credit note. I work alone: for a need requiring several profiles in parallel on a tight deadline, I say so before starting. ## Compliance stays shared > I build the technical machinery: age verification, labelling fields, blocked references, tax and destination rules. The regulatory accuracy of the content — allergens, alcohol advertising wording, INCI composition, customs declarations — remains the company’s responsibility. ## The sector rather than the town - **Wine, beer and spirits** — Age verification, mandatory wording, excise duties and destinations closed to export. ([/secteurs/vin-biere-spiritueux](/secteurs/vin-biere-spiritueux)) - **Grocery and food products** — Batches, use-by dates, structured labelling and carriers able to hold the cold chain. ([/secteurs/epicerie-produits-alimentaires](/secteurs/epicerie-produits-alimentaires)) - **Cosmetics and perfumery** — INCI composition, references blocked from open sale, seasonal stock swings. ([/secteurs/cosmetique-parfumerie](/secteurs/cosmetique-parfumerie)) - **Wholesalers and B2B selling** — Closed catalogue, prices per customer account, orders preceded by a quote. ([/secteurs/grossistes-vente-b2b](/secteurs/grossistes-vente-b2b)) - **Industry and technical equipment** — Batch numbers, certificates of conformity and datasheets per reference. ([/secteurs/industrie-equipements-techniques](/secteurs/industrie-equipements-techniques)) - **Are you in the Grand Est?** — Strasbourg, Colmar, Mulhouse, Metz: an occasional visit is possible there. ([/freelance](/freelance)) ## Describe your shop, not your town > The platform, what you sell and the problem you hit are enough for me to tell you whether it is within my reach. ## FAQ ### Do you work on site? Only in the Grand Est, where I am established, and case by case. Elsewhere, no: I will not advertise a visit I would not make. Diagnosis and repair happen from a workstation and a server connection. ### What access should I prepare? Depending on the job: an admin account in my name, SFTP or SSH access, the database and sometimes the hosting panel. Create dedicated accounts rather than sharing yours — you revoke them in one click at the end. ### Do you take charge of my sector’s regulatory compliance? I put the technical machinery in place: age verification, allergen or composition fields, blocking of certain references, destination restrictions, tax rules. The regulatory content itself and its validation stay on your side, possibly with a lawyer or an accountant. ### Do you work as a subcontractor for agencies? Yes, and it is a setup that works well remotely: the agency keeps the client relationship and the steering, I take the PrestaShop or WooCommerce work it does not cover in house, within the confidentiality terms it sets. ### Does the rate depend on where I am? No, it depends on the nature of the work. Working remotely justifies neither a surcharge nor a discount tied to a town, and there are no travel costs to pass on since there is no travel.