Magento totally sucks in my opinion 1. Its hard to install on godaddy hosting service, but i manage to do it 2. you cant create you own menus with your custom image button which sucks...? if anyone knows how to do this please i will hire you to teach me
@uppedr : I must say you must give it a second chance. Magento is a great tool and a money-generator for me. Looks professional, inspire trust to the customer and it's pretty easy to work with. Before choosing a hosting for it try to read some tips from the magento community. Shared hosting for example might not work. Spend some time here : http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/
you are absolutely right, really tough and magento is not a user friendly cart. I found AJ Shopping cart as right one for my shop. Going well.
uppedr You should really give the Magento the second chance, be welcome to contact us by following the signature below, if having any problems or questions concerning this topic. our website company will help you in solving any Magento problems
I have to agree with you uppedr. Magento is not user friendly and can take up a lot of resources which ends up you paying more $$ for dedicated hosting. Not to mention, if you encounter a problem or two, well your wallet won't be too happy after you hire a Magento programmer to keep your store from collapsing.
My experience with Magento was terrible. Too much confussion, in my opinion. As far as I can see, it is way too complicated for the options it offers. Way too much.
In my opinion, Magento is a good platform but it needs further improvement. For example, checkout procedure is quite long and complicated. Therefore, you can use a Magento extension in order to facilitate it. You can find many different free and paid modules. The best one to streamline checkout procedure is GoMage LightCheckout. It is not expensive and of a good quality. See more information here http://www.gomage.com/extensions/lightcheckout.html
There's a large learning curve with Magento but if you're going to launch a store, it's better to do it right and rather than do it twice and Magento is scalable enough to work with you for a while... just make sure you test your niche and product line before making the investment.
Ok, we started use Magento in our business with my partner less then a year ago. And my use of magento will be more associated with running a business, when my partner was handling all technical and IT side of it. YES MAGENTO HARD TO USE WHEN YOU NEW TO IT, BUT THATS THE REAL THING, there is no other software that can offer everything that magento does. You can do with it anything you need for your online store. Who ever there saying "magento does not have this or that, or checkout too complicated or anything else" - is ridiculous. Yes, not everything comes in install version, but there 1000s of modules to add anything you need specifically for your type of business and your needs. Our site is our only income, pays living, mortgage and so on. But my partner suddenly passed away 2 months ago and I am facing to run it alone. Its scary and complicated but I know for sure that there is no way I can achieve that quality site, performance and give that level of confidence of customers to place order with any other software (orders value can be over £1000). So if you are just playing - magento is not for you, but if you really determinant to build proper store online - go for magento and learn it
I wouldnt mess with any pay or proprietary software soultion. A free, full featured shopping cart is Ubercart. ttp://www.ubercart.org/ It can do almost anything you want. Look at these features: ttp://www.ubercart.org/contrib If you need help installing or configuring this, let me know.
AJ Shopping is not free, it is commercial. But It provides excellent features with 24 hrs customer support. If you need free cart then you can select zeuscart.