Hi, I have a small business client building an online shop as an addon to their offline store and ebay. The volume is not big, so I am not looking for something like Magento (nor does the client has the budget for it). So far I’ve been looking at several providers, both self and cloud hosted. As far as the cloud, the option seems off, since I’ve read some really terrible reviews on Volusion and BigCommerce customer support (including lies in advertising). As far as Shopify I heard it is way too simple. From the Open source, there are very mixed reviews on every cart out there. • Prestashop - Some say Prestashop is good (not sure if those are real reviews), some say that you have to pay for almost every common option out there, and the out of the box software is very stripped down. Paying is not a problem, so if several thousand dollars have to be invested that is fine. Just want to make sure that the cart, as well as the add-ons actually work. • OS Commerce – too old and there are upgraded version of it. • ZEN Cart – currently doing the research, but it is an updated / customized version of OS Commerce • Magento - off the list. From what I understand it’s a very robust platform, but needs some very serious tweaking by coders for many $$$ hours. Also, this is more of an enterprise software, rather than a small shop cart. • OpenCart – did not look into details. Will post once I know more. • Freeway – also do not know the details. Xcart seems to be 1 choice right now, however I have not seen any up to date templates for it anywhere. Everything on the market seems from way back 2001 style. Are there problems with designers or the cart is way out of date now? Also one of the problems shop owners report with it is inability to update the cart if its been customized (seems like a problem with every cart), so all the updates end up costing $$$ and time. Was wondering if you can recommend some carts, from your own experience. It is very important you tried and actually worked with the carts, rather than read research / forums / blogs, as actual users know the real pitfalls of the software. If you used the software, and know the ups and downs, please post them. Would appreciate your input, and I will be back with some info on more carts as I do more research.
OpenCart is fine really and pretty close to Magento. Would go with prestashop next. Nothing wrong with using magento and can totally trick out the ebay end of this and sync it to the online store with this http://m2epro.ess-ua.com/ Simply spend a bit of cash refactoring something similar brand wise and call it a day. Magento is not so bad really but if you go googling up a pro it will certainly be expensive. I have had to do stuff that was largely default template wise, I was done in about 2 hours. Either way, basically grab something nice and not crazy design wise from Themeforest, install, add products.... done. hope that helps, Nigel
Well, I don't code myself, so that part is important to me. Magento seems like a lot of work, and something out of range for now. Also, I'm thinking the only viable option is the Enterprise one, since from what I read they abandoned the free one? Maybe im wrong. I am testing the Presta, Opencart, ZENcart and OS commerce, since got recommendations to not rule it out. Also, I am making a comprehensive list of the must have's features, in my opinion, for any small biz cart, including SEO, payments, conversion optimization etc. If you have some things in mind as far as features please post them here.
Magento community edition is fine and has not been abandoned. I am not a programmer either and I get around that stuff just fine. Its the closest thing to a free, enterprise level solution there is. They just recently rolled out 1.7 http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/comments/magento-enterprise-112-and-community-17-now-available/ Opencart is fine, Prestashop is getting better fast. Zencart and oscommerce are complete pieces of crap so don't even bother heading in the direction... trust me.. N.
They quite simply are as well as completely outdated, bad urls, completely convoluted code, etc. Zencart is just a fork of oscommerce. The code base has never changed to keep up with coding practices from this decade. Nigel
Have you tried Zeuscart, which has more positive reviews in market and its absolutely free script in php.
I would suggest you to give some feedback to client on Magneto as this is really helpful and easy to use. Once done, your client will be very happy. Rest you can go with opencart.