Opencart or Prestashop?

I am recommending PrestaShop - also the 1.5 brings lot of new features. I even made small overview with pictures - what are the main changes. You can look it here: http://prestaportal.com/thread-2528.html
I myself using PrestaShop from version 0.8

 

Open cart is the best option. as all people here are giving you the same idea.

 

One doubt folks....open cart doesnt have much free template available.I searched for entertainment template.And it showed only 1.Whereas I was once using zencart it has quite a lot free templates.

What about zencart?

 

Hello,

I tried i think all online shops tools, like wordpress, opencart, magento, yoomla, prestashop and other. For begginer user i recommend OpenCart its easy to create, all examples, themes, additional services you can find easy to internet.

 

I prefer Prestashop simple to use and easy to customize.

 

Why does opencart backend login page is looking like this(snapshot attached)

 

I tried OC and found it to be a nightmare in several ways. First, the admin section in incomprehensible to anyone who isn't an internet junkie, second the bells and whistles are just a dog and pony show. Clearly, the geeks who design these templates are only in the business of selling templates -NOT e-commerce products. I doubt they even understand e-commerce (or even care to) and how or why people buy online. Third, because of all that BS code they apply your site becomes really sluggish. And fourth, customer service (contact information etc) is deplorable. I'm still waiting for a response to a "ticket" (imagine that -I had to send a "ticket") that I submitted several days ago asking the phantom geeks to suggest some viable options. I doubt I'll ever hear from them.

I'm guessing the other alternatives aren't much better -hopefully not much worse. For those of us who actually have a life and don't spend our waking hours mesmerized by the glow of a computer screen, all the geek "logic" can be a major headache.

If anyone has a better solution, I'd love to hear about it.

 

Opencart is better than Prestashop. I think that Opencart is more easy and flexible while doing customization.

 

I voted for Opencart.

 

Definitely Prestashop. The developers at Opencart are extremely rude and routinely degrade and humiliate their users. Comments such as "if you can use the toilet by yourself then you should be able to do this" are common replies from the developers to even the most basic questions asked.

Plus, and this is a big plus, Opencart cares nothing about security. Just do a quick google search and you will see this is so.

Now in contrast the developers at Prestashop are courteous and helpful. Nothing is better than being able to get help when you find yourself in a bind.

 

I've heard the same of Prestashop developers though. We don't know the full story. Most developers here know that some users have no interest in learning to do some things, and often practically demand developers to spoon feed them.

We are currently trying both though. Strangely, neither has the ability to easily bulk change attributes/categories of products

 

I prefer Prestashop

You can see that Prestashop able to work more better than open cart with those feature below:
Front-office

Featured products on homepage
Top sellers on homepage
New items on homepage
'Free shipping' offers
Cross-selling (Accessories)
Product image zoom
Order out-of-stock items
Customer subscription & user accounts
Payment by bank wire
Google Checkout module
Cash-On-Delivery (COD)
Preconfigured for Paypal
Back-office

Unlimited categories & subcategories, product attribute combinations, product specs, images, currencies, tax settings, carriers & destinations
Real-time currency exchange rates
Inventory management
Unlimited languages & dialects
100% modifiable graphic themes
Newsletter contact export
Alias search
SSL encryption
Visitors online
Customer groups

 

Opencart I think is more easy

 

We've tried a bit of everything. Presta is VERY appealing at first, but when you delve down, into practice, OpenCart seemed to be the far better option for long term (at least for us), unless you only want a basic site.

========Prestashop===========
+ Looks the prettiest out of the box (but, you wouldn't use the default theme anyway)
+ Most feature-some out of the box
* Medium stability
+ Imap support looks interesting, and would benefit stores with many employees, as communications are centralised
- Development on Prestashop more painful, and less efficient then OpenCart. Still far better than Magento.
- We tried the REST API, and we had serious issues with it (but that was a few months ago).
* Practical long term maintenance is a bit questionable (due to no VQMOD, although, plugins could be used alternatively, but they take more effort to work with).
- Only commercial plugins are promoted on the main website.. The development community also seemed very small (or at least far less exposed than the OpenCart crowd)..
+ Easy to use

========OpenCart======
* Looks OK out of the box.. But, easy to get themes which look as good as Prestashop. As an example, I feel that our companies website looks good: http://jayvee.com.au/ , and whilst sliders and such aren't available out of the box it does show that many such features are EASILY added.
+ Opencart runs monthly theme contests, which means a strong outlook for high quality themes long-term. There are already many though.
+ Very broad collection of good free and commercial plugins available from site.
+ VERY stable (we have experienced NO noticeable bugs thus far in the past few months).
* No IMAP support, but, there are bridges to CRM systems
+ VQMOD support centralises customisations and allows for quick hacking without modifying any code code
+ VERY easy/quick to customise.
* Less features out of box than Prestashop, BUT very easy to add them.
+ Very easy to train newbies on how to hack at the code
* Commercial REST API available
- Not many developers working on the project. But Daniel does seem committed.
+ Easy to use (seriously, I'm not sure why people are saying its hard, as everyone on staff picked it up within 10mins at our business)
Prestashop is nice out of the box, but, the moment you want to customise it and stand out , Opencart seems to be the better choice. VQMOD's also make it very easy to develop/hack for and maintain.


For Completeness sake, I'll add Magento too..

=========Magento===========
+ Very large range of Commercial plugins / Themes
+ Large Community
- Very buggy. We came across major/obvious bugs almost every (if not every) release
- Difficult to develop for. Basically, no 3rd year computing student is going to delve into the code, and understand it within 2 weeks.
- Very poor documentation. Documentation often not there, or outdated..
- Upgrade and pray.. Minor things get broken almost every major release, and they aren't clearly documented, so, there are regularly long threads by baffled users most releases.
+ Commercial support available (but prohibitly expensive). 10K for a Magento system that works?
- Allows various page and product to be customised independently of one another through XML. This is also its biggest downfall. The XML isn't well documented, and sometimes even changes (so, there are at least 3 layers which can break on Magento on a new release, making debugging notoriously difficult).
- Now owned by Ebay, who has NO incentive to actively support the project (new releases have slowed down dramatically already). Ebay makes 7% each sale on Ebay, and makes 3% for Paypal transactions. Magento community earns them no commission, and less guarantee of 2-3% commission on Paypal (since, almost every other credit card processor is cheaper, companies are less likely to use Paypal on Magento).
- Mainly beneficial for web developers. Since they know that the client will be unable to maintain the system without them..
- One telltale sign that Magento is losing steam, is that when you check directories of Magento sites, many have switched from Magento to other systems. And most sites which use Magento are either extremely large, or ones which were successful before eCommerce became successful.

Don't bother with Magento unless 10K is small change for you, and you have a large development team. Even then, consider your options. Prestashop is good if you just want a shop which looks pretty out of the box, with minimum effort. OpenCart, if you want to tweak your site, and make it stand out long-term. If its for someone who isn't tech Savvy, you might be best off with something like Shopify though (which I haven't tested). That being said, all 3 are very good solutions, and the developers deserve a pat on the back. In Magento's case (the pat on the back should go to Varien though, not eBay).

And yes, there has been a lot of discussions in all 3 projects about how poorly users are treated by the developers. However, in all threads I have seen with incidents, the users weren't the least bit courteous, had no real interest in learning about the system (and wanted to avoid internals completely, which is CRAZY for online stores), and acted like royalty..

 

Hi All,
I wish I found this before I tried a bunch. I have not tried OC yet. i will after I post what I know now.
I have created and handed over a few shopping cart sites with godaddy. i am not technical at all.
The GD problem is that you pay for for everything and they are suppossed to have help. That is far from the truth.
Over the years the hold time has increase to an averagre of 45 min. The number of time the person who answers know the answer is about 1 in 10. that aside. Why call GD so much if the program is so easy?? Because it is not if you have more then 50 items with constant price changes. Stay away from false help.
QI am now trying the FREE SHOPPING CARTS
I tried PS first. That did not go well as I read how easy it was. I was not and when contacting them I was told "Hey, it's free".
I jummped ship ASAP.
I tried Zencart, Magento, and a few other off names. (Magento and Zen the worst for me)

I decide to try PS again and try and learn as much as possible and bit the bullet and have the site take 30 days to be ready.

The forum although vast has a lot of the same questions being asked over and over. PS staffers post and mark questions as solved yet they are only solved by them. if you ask me to change code I am lost. You can if you read A LOT find help. The community itself tries.
There are also youtube videos. For a non-tech savvy person PS is the better of all the evils.


To get help from PS the have a $400 min service plan. I was going to purchase before finding this blog.
I will shortly try the OC and report back. Sound like OC is a better starting program.

Pete

 

I must be real bad. I click download for OC and it just keeps giving me files to open. To start not easy.

 

Hands down, pound for pound, PrestaShop is AWESOME! See for yourself!

 

Prestashop has a real bad problem with shipping. The default is always free shipping. A LOT of users have written about it. I ( ) even came up with a "work around" it is not perfect but will move things along.
Still trying to get OC to work. I cannot use with current hosting (Hostgator) unless I put a lot of effort into in to it. Not worth it. Going with a hosted that already supports OC.

 

Okay. I have run the gauntlet!!!
Unless you really want to pay a lot, which once a basic site generates enough funds to do, Prestashop it is.
Going ahead with all the behind the seems items (they are most important) PS is better the OC.

If the site looks great but no one can find you, what good is that.
In the future I may spend the $400 PS to help. The site needs to make that first. If a company comes out with a program like PS but offers a reasonable monthly (paid monthly ) fee I would jump on board.
GD is 25 per month and does it all. I would pay that to a company that answers the phone when called and helps.

MY 2cents

Cheers

Pistol Petes Store

 

I am using Interspire shopping cart. It is much better than opencart and prestashop. It is easy to use and manage, tons of free templates & plugins. But Recently Interspire is closed and merged with bigcommerce. But I am still getting helps from them.