I have a bunch of clients who all use different versions of eCommerce web sites. Some are custom made. Some use osCommerce. Some use various flavors of VirtueMart on Joomla. Parts of this stuff don’t work with PHP 5 (imagine that!).
Maintaining all this zoo is a nightmare.
The idea was born to move all these clients to one most modern piece of open source software available. At least the maintenance would be bearable, plus supporting single type of store is times easier than getting around the zoo.
The must-haves: truly open source, nothing like “just two files are Zend encrypted”. LinkPoint payment available. Currently in development (so osCommerce doesn’t fit). Easy on server resources.
The should-haves: UPS shipping, SEO URLs, CSV or Excel import-export, order stats. Developed in PHP/mySQL.
The nice-haves: cute looking stats that you can understand from the first glance, fully implemented UPS shipping with their XML API (rates, shipping, labels), ability to support multiple languages, ability to support multiple sites.
I would prefer feedback from people who actually used whatever they will write about so that it will really be useful.
I currently use exclusively Magento Commerce for ecommerce. When starting my ecommerce business (side business besides web agency), I looked at every solution I could find. Magento is, in my opinion, superior. It’s free, open-source, should provide all of the features mentioned above, it’s easy to use and has a pretty admin panel.
The downside is that it’s quite complex and could be time-consuming if you’d ever want to develop your own extension or add new features. Luckily, there are loads of extensions out there already.
If I were to try another solution, I’d go for Interspire Shopping Cart. I’ve had nice experiences working with their products and it would be interesting to try it out.
Used Drupal’s Ubercart module for a project last year and while it works and may be easier to set up, it’s not nearly as good-looking, simple to use or feature-filled as Magento.
Leaving aside the shameless plug that you’ve sent what I meant by “osCommerce doesn’t fit” is that the latest stable 2.2 branch (which is still release candidate 2 and requires 2 patches after install) was released on January 15, 2008. That’s over 2 years ago. Latest from branch 3.0 was the release of Alpha 5 on March 15, 2009 which is exactly a year ago - and it’s an alpha release which makes me reluctant to put it on production web site.
Do I even want to discuss the script that cannot create thumbnails of uploaded images for me automatically, out of the box, given that the year is 2010 already? No
Even VirtueMart, being as slow as they are, have released final 1.1.4 in October last year. Plus, if you check their site, they are hiring new team for version 1.5, which makes me feel like the project is alive and well - at least for now.
We are looking at Magento as well, I want to have more flexibility in making the decision. However, judging by all the information I was able to gather so far, there are not that many choices.
[QUOTE=zealus;4529724]Leaving aside the shameless plug that you’ve sent what I meant by "[QUOTE]
Oh man … now how am ever going to be able
to post …I’m all about the shameless plug? LOL
So here is goes … as a webmaster, don’t you
also look at the business side of the deal?
If you’re out custom coding all these sites,
there’s a limit to how many you can build
each year.
And if there’s no passive, recurring income,
from the site, your income is automatically
limited by your available time / productivity.
There’s an old business saying; “the more
you turn, the more you earn” …so when
you look at solutions, you need to look at
turning customer projects into completed
payments.
The faster you can do this, the more you’ll
earn even if you charge less because you
used a “pre-canned” solution. Now throw
in a little lifetime recurring, passive income
and you’re moving into a new tax bracket.
No doubt - WebAsyst Shop-Script! I think it has all the features you need. I work with it for 2 years. This is a good ecommerce solution for me. Extra - skillful support team.
WebAsyst Shop-Script— ecommerce platform for creating online stores. Easy to work with. 100% opensource. It offers 150+ features, and integrated with many online payment processors. Easy to install and customize.
Use WebAsyst promo code 521727 and get 5% discount any time.
Right now they have special offer valid through March 31st.
what I meant by “osCommerce doesn’t fit” is that the latest stable 2.2 branch (which is still release candidate 2 and requires 2 patches after install) was released on January 15, 2008. That’s over 2 years ago. Latest from branch 3.0 was the release of Alpha 5 on March 15, 2009 which is exactly a year ago - and it’s an alpha release which makes me reluctant to put it on production web site.
