Magento vs Miva vs osCom vs Zen Cart - which is better?

[BrandonK]

> Its dead

Yup. It's as dead as Sitepoint. Oh wait a minute, Sitepoint has a PR 7, I wonder what PR osCommerce has. Hmmm.

Qualifying software based on its website's pagerank? This is already off to a good start. Who cares how high the website ranks on the search engines?? Next you're going to say their logo is better than Magento's so therefore Magento sucks.

> Anyone who says differently is selling something.

No, anyone who says differently knows at least A LITTLE BIT about osCommerce.

Let me guess: You're an osC developer?

> If you go this route, you WILL have to get your hands dirty.

Correction. Any route you go, you will have to get your hands dirty. The thing with osCommerce is,it has the MOST amount of paper towels laying around.

That's so very wrong. You do NOT have to get your hands dirty with every other package out there. There are a number of packages where all you have to do is upload a file (using a GUI), tweak your settings (via a GUI) and you're done. Managing a store can be very easy if the software is mature enough.

> If you are not a PHP developer, you will either have to rent one or become one quickly.

If you are developing, this statement pretty much applies to any php software out there.But it totally depends on what you are trying to do. There are people out there in their 60s, who pull in monthly sales in the $xx,xxx area with their fairly standard osCommerce sites and don't know A SINGLE THING about code, scripting or php whatsoever.

Okay, so maybe there are a few edge cases where people are able to enter a market with a stock store, but I highly doubt they are in any type of competitive market. Selling one-off goods is about the only time I see this working. Might as well stick to ebay, I hear people make money there too.

> The modules you buy are not modules but rather instructions on how to hack the core code.


modules you buy??? ok what module did you buy??? and where did you buy it from???

This statement kinda tells me that you are full of it and have no clue what you are talking about. There are over 5,000 add-on "modules" called contributions for osCommerce, which you can simply DOWNLOAD, no purchase necessary.

Also, most companies out there which provide custom developed osCommerce modules offer installation service. Then there are also companies, who will offer installation service for the publicly available contributions. I am really curious to find our which module you bought and from where, if that's indeed the case.

I'll rephrase that to "The contributions you acquire are not modules but rather instructions on how to hack the core code." I stand by that statement. When I said buy, I was including custom work. Cookie cutter contributions are nice, but I rarely find that they work in the real world since each business seems to have its own rules and caveats.
There are over 5,000 contributions? Great, but I'm not impressed. Anyone can write a contribution, and many of them are as simple as adding a new link or an extra button somewhere.

> not modules but rather instructions on how to hack the core code.

Jeeez. Do YOU EVEN KNOW what a module is? Contributions contain instructions how to modify current files. Often there are new files which need to be uploaded in order for the contribution to work properly. Have you ever edited a php.ini that lists the module you want to use and you uncomment it by removing the semicolon at the beginning of the line. What is the difference here?

There's a BIG difference here. First, a module is a separate file that does not make changes to the core code. A module is an add-on, not a hack. As I mentioned earlier, I was loose when I called osC's contributions, modules. Now editing a php.ini file is neither a module or a contribution -- its a config change. Now when you uncomment that line you mentioned, you are installing a module.

> I guess the good news here is that you don't have to worry about updates breaking your hacks
> because there are no updates....


yeah, you guess. You've been guessing a lot lately, haven't you?
This is just another one of these statements which proves your expertise in osCommerce being equivalent to zero. There are more daily updates to contributions than you can possibly handle.

....

The only "updates" that get released are contributions from the community. In the last two years they (meaning the core developers) haven't updated osC 2. And if they have, I'm not seeing it. They have shifted their focus to osC 3, but their progress there has been slow. I think it took them a couple *years* to get this alpha release out...

Read this, a couple times if you have to:
...

Marketing fluff.


Feel free to respond (I'm sure you will), but I'm bowing out of this thread because I don't want to hijack it. I've given my thoughts based on the two osC stores I've worked on, you've given your (based on what ever your credentials are). We'll just have to leave it up to the OP to decide.

[Miraculix]

you said what you had to say and so did I ...end of story....no reason to drag this out.

[2012]

Ok, after reading most of this thread, I have some questions.

First, we looked into moving from a hosted SC to a server side one about 5 months ago & Magento was the only one we found that didn't cost an arm & a leg, & would handle many sites at the same time.

We don't have a lot of products to sell, maybe around 20-25 & we keep adding on more one at a time, but we really need to be able to have all of the domains under one roof so products from our other sites can be recommended during checkout.

So given that we aren't really going to use a catalog type setup like Amazon has, do you still think Magento is going to be too slow on a shared server?

The reason we never moved over, is b/c we need the cart to allow for recurring billing, that means billing every month, & billing for our 3 month payment plan where it stops billing after 3 months & we found it really hard to find a module for that since Magento doesn't seem to care about recurring billing.

We found one guy who almost had his add-on doing what we need, but he's really irresponsible, doesn't return e-mails or phone calls & we refuse to give money to someone so unprofessional.

I pleaded with our gateway, but they refused to code for Magento - I guess b/c it's still too new.

Does anyone have any other suggestions, I really really liked Magento & all it's features, & I want to move to it, but we can't afford a dedicated server right now, nor do I want to pay $300 just to get the recurring billing feature.

The move will be very time consuming b/c we are moving EVERYTHING, that means all auto responder e-mails (that's a ton), ad tracker URLs, all bundles, products, etc.

I want to make sure we know exactly what we are getting into before we do that.

We have outgrown 1shoppingcart, it has never implemented any of the changes I wanted & I've been with them 4-5 years already. It's very limiting in fact & I'm sure we've lost sales b/c of their confining setup.

Thanks for any help you can give us.


Michelle

[cuplaweb]

Hi Michelle

First of all, new releases of Magento have had some performance increases, so it may be ok on a standard shared hosting a/c.

I currently host the Magento sites I have developed with SimpleHelix - they specialise in fast servers optimised for Magento. I have been using them for a number of months now with no complaints and their support has been good (and no speed issues with the Magento sites).

A bit more expensive than standard shared but far less than dedicated.

You mention the $300 or so dollars it would cost to code in some recurring billing features to Magento and say you don't want to spend that, but then you mention how you have probably lost sales because of your current store system.

Well, you will know better which is more valuable, increased sales or a $300 dollar once off cost

[2012]

Hi there,

I know, it's just biz is slow right now so $300 is out of the question.

How much do you pay in hosting & what are the speeds they give you? I'm just curious.

Thanks


Michelle

[ecs_Creative]

Could you consider switching merchant account providers? I know authorize . net has a pretty decent recurring billing program. You can get a free auth. net gateway account with a few of the mercant account banks out there. I'm not sure what's available here in TO but I'm just a visitor here.

I use payquake back in the states for most of my merchant needs, the authnet account as an add on is a real savings for my clients.

[2012]

Authorize.net doesn't allow for adult companies. They were the first ones I used way back when, & they cut me off for no reason without even any notice, so IMO, they aren't a good company even though I know tons of people use them.

I like my current gateway & they have reoccurring billing. The gateway isn't the issue, the plugin for Magento is.

What's payquake? the gateway?

Thanks


Michelle

[Miraculix]

I am waiting for the X-cart rep to jump in and say: "Hey, we @ X-cart have a Payquake API, while Magento doesn't ho ho ho"

[import4sale]

I would use zencart and os commerce the most .......haven't use magneto but I am so comfortable with zencart and oscommerce that wouldn't use any other script

Agreed! Important is that we need to know which sites used which scripts that are successful right now and there are lots of gorgeous gzencart-based stores:

http://www.gigasonic.com
http://www.branchhome.com
http://www.eardio.com
http://www.lightinthebox.com
http://www.childsworld.com
http://www.isabelharris.co.nz/shop

... etc.

HUGE POTENTIAL! CUSTOMIZING ...

[2012]

Has anything changed with zen cart so it allows what Magento does?

1. Multiple domains under one roof.
2. Can add different merchant accounts for each domain.
3. Shows other products from other domains to buyer so they can cross buy.

Thanks


Michelle

[X-Cart]

I am waiting for the X-cart rep to jump in and say: "Hey, we @ X-cart have a Payquake API, while Magento doesn't ho ho ho"

Actually, we don't have PayQuake anymore. We had to remove it due to it wasn't popular among X-Cart powered merchants. We removed many rarely used payment gateway integrations to reduce our efforts on their support and concentrated on development of a PA-DSS compliant solution for credit card processing. I am sure you know about the 1st of July - PA-DSS deadline set by VISA and PCI council.

But thank you for asking anyway!

[2012]

I know nothing about X Cart other than it doesn't work for us & I've heard about it.


Michelle

[X-Cart]

I know nothing about X Cart other than it doesn't work for us & I've heard about it.


Michelle

I am sorry to hear that. Let me assume you used an old version (we released v4.4 recently) or X-Cart isn't a good fit for your project indeed. That's normal actually. Every business has its own requirements. That's why many e-commerce solution out there nowadays!

[2012]

Nothing to be sorry about, I'm just stating you don't have what we need, that's all

Michelle

[MartinWann]

X-Cart, can you say smth about store manager software for your cart? I have read creators of this software are some ukrainian development team. Do you cooperate with them?

[gjh42]

exoticpublishing - Have you looked at Zen Cart's MultiSite mod? I know little about it myself, but it is built for having multiple stores on one database, with cross-sell abilities.