Magento, osCommerce, Zencart, or Wordpress - who is the winner?

Hello all,

While a veteran developer, I am a newbie when it comes to ecommerce. I have decide to develop my first ecommerce store, and I would like to know which open source ecommerce scripts you would recommend and why.

One very important thing for me is the support and the popularity of the solution - it could be the best solution out there, but if it's not popular and there are not many people familiar with it, then it would be useless if a bug is discovered...

Things to consider:

1) features
2) ease of use
3) security
4) customization
5) plugins, addons, support, popularity etc

I consider myself a wordpress expert, but I hear that it's really bad when it comes to ecommerce, and based on my experience I would have to agree since I don't see how WP could offer many ecommerce features. These are the kind of things that I would like to see in this thread - from people who have used those scripts and know what they are talking about. In other words, a post such as "magento is the best" wouldn't really help anyone. Tell us why you think it's the best (or the worst for that matter).

Thanks in advance to everyone who posts here!

P.S. If you know of any other open source ecommerce solution, then feel free to recommend it!

 

It is sacrilege to use Magento in the the same sentence as Zen Cart and Oscommerce(complete trainwreck).

You simply can not compare Magento to that stuff. Magento provides an enterprise level solution out of the box. There are some paid mods I use all the time but for good reason.

hope that helps,
Nigel

 

I'm looking forward to more inputs. Currently I am using Wordpress shopp but thinking of switching to Magento.
This thread will be a big help ... keep inputs coming  

 

Magento is good.........

 

Magento is awesome. I can't remember if eBay or Amazon bought it but nevertheless it's a good indication of its quality.
OpenCart is also great. I recently found it and I loved it immediately.

Some other good solutions are PrestaShop (uses Smarty, though) and TomatoCart. 

 

Im currently using webasyst shopscript. It's probably not in English, so no use for you,
but
the main reason why I chose it is that it has facebook integration.
I think you should consider including this function too.

 

if you seriously consider amount of plugins available for an eCommerce platform your choice is Magento  For today, its community is growing very fast http://blog.aheadworks.com/2011/08/magento-connect-july-statistics/ 

 

I would say magento, but i am a big wordpress fan so i am going with wordpress. Continues security updates, countless themes and plugins, very very stable, developed and maintained by a world wide community. You just have to find the right plugin and theme that fits your liking.

 

Magento is a powerfull option to go with, however i have experienced it loads very slow. Even on a dedicated server. Its just too heavy alone. Everyone says so too.

 

I have messed with all of them and I will say magento by far. It is the hardest to customize but really with all the features in it, its awesome. THe store in my link is running magento, thats on a shared server.

 

You have missed some other cart script too. I would like to add AJ Shopping Cart script in it which is good for my store.

 

I will vote to Wordpress and according to me,Wordpress is the winner and better than Zencart,Magento and Oscommerce

 

from a strictly e-commerce point of view = magento wins.

wordpress is a blog platform. Whilst it has some fantastic plugins still doesn't compare for the e-commerce purpose.

IMHO.

been working with both for over 5 years. Have had a number of custom features developed for both platforms.

 

I love zencart... tried using the others and wasnt as user friendly imo....

my site (signature) is using zencart, I have no problems so far and definitely customized it easily.

 

Ofcouse magento templates is winner . Like an article said : " Magento themes has a ton of credentials in its pocket from some very big e-solution players. Magento Enterprise Edition, a commercial version aimed at larger companies, was launched just a month ago. The CMS includes such advanced features as marketing, promotional and SEO tools; analytics and reporting; mobile commerce; catalog-management tools. And Magento users have the freedom to customize their store with new themes, templates and plug-ins. "

 

Personally I consider OS Commerce and Magento commerce shopping carts to be the best and easy-to-use.
Also many people prefer them.

just my 2 cents.

 

Easy to use and have a lot beautyful magento templates to use , very easy to have a nice shop onlineg

 

every tool for own functionality so depend upon your choice .

 

I like Magento.

 

I only have experience from Magento, Wordpress, (Joomla) and right now I'm personally using bigcommerce, which is hosted but very good solution. From your choises I would definately recommend Magento for bigger ecommerce solution and Wordpress only if there is only a few products and you can use something like Paypal in payment gateway. After all WP is made for blogs.

Actually Magento is good ecommerce CMS but pretty heavy and slow and you can use one install for multiple sites. But I would not use it for webshops with only a few products.