Thread

Which Shopping Cart do you use?

I’m deciding on which cart to use as a headache-free alternative to oscommerce.

I’m looking at Magento, but there is a learning curve involved in modifying it as it is based upon the Zend Framework.
I’ve also played with cubecart and it looks easy to pull apart, but I’m being pulled in by Magento’s expandability and glossy marketing.
I was wondering which carts folks use and why? A prerequisite is the ability to talk to Cybersource.

I’m looking at openfreeway.org at the moment which seems interesting.

Magento looks pretty amazing, no support for downloadable goods at the moment though :(

Oh i’m also pretty much finished making my own shopping system using CI.

First recommendation is dont use osCommerce… ever! There is not even a common header file or templating as standard!

We have used CubeCart in the past but it was more because ‘it did the job’.

The ones to watch are:

Magento - although I feel it might be too feature rich for some clients)
PrestaShop - look promising but I could never get it to install correctly and access admin :(

First recommendation is dont use osCommerce… ever!

Indeed.

Magento looks good, I suppose the best thing to do is make a spec of what I need exactly, and see how flexible it is…

Magento does look nice.. Just waiting for digital downloads.

Just wanted to see if anyone has used Pinnacle Cart before and have any opinions?

http://www.pinnaclecart.com/

(The site intro looks a bit like ExpressionEngines!)

Just wanted to see if anyone has used Pinnacle Cart before and have any opinions?

http://www.pinnaclecart.com/

(The site intro looks a bit like ExpressionEngines!)

Hello everyone,

As a designer/developer,not only do I have some input for you guys here, but I have experience using these applications.

I started looking onto eCommerce a few years back. After playing with open source projects such as OsCommerce, you find that with too many hands in the cookie jar so-to-speak, the codebase is less than uniform and adding on features becomes “buggy”. Clearly I needed support. I gave Magento a try thinking that it was a more refined application that better suited my needs… until I actually NEEDED support. Do the math on their cheapest support plan and each ticket was costing me $60. Not a solid feeling when you need something as simple as help uploading images in bulk.

After struggling with Magento I went looking for a better support alternative with a more reasonable support plan and Pinancle was what I ended up with. Not only are they based out of the US, my first cart came with a years worth of email support and now my support plan is much less and doesn’t charge me everytime I need it. Although Megento didn’t make bringing my customers over a breeze, I’m certainly happy I stuck it out.

Tamara

Hi all,

Here’s my two cents… I recently set up store for a client using SquirrelCart.

This was my criteria for a shopping cart:

- made for PHP/MySQL
- low budget client
- many many payment gateways
- customized products, including file uploads
- download delivery module, purchased separately (cheap)
- easy modular theme customizations
- very easy interface for non-tech savvy client

Based on the circumstances it worked great.

Yeah and before that I tried Magento, there are no product uploads.  Was relatively much more complicated and had unclear documentation.  Lots of potential but too many features that most clients don’t actually need.  And not the ones they do.. but that’s only my opinion.

tried this prestashop !
like it! no probs with the installation, very nice code-architecture.

This is very interesting.  We’ll be making an online store system pretty soon and we’ll definitely need a shopping cart system.

wfcart (http://www.webforcecart.com/): “a free PHP shopping cart class you can use a component of a PHP based online store. It’s designed as a component for PHP developers who would rather write their own store rather than a complete solution.”

Had to modify the class to have it play nice with db_sessions (allow users to save their carts, create “wishlists”, etc). Not really a “shopping cart solution”, but it gives me the basics and allows me to create the rest.

Why would you want to go this route? I find that my clients have specific demands for their cart system. I also wanted a cart system that would easily integrate with CI. Also, I *love* knowing all the little details of the web app as a whole. If I were to use a 3rd party cart, I would have had to sit there and learn all the details (classes, methods, functions, db structure, logic, etc) of that system which would (a) require time and (b) “lock” me into using that particular cart.

So, I found wfcart and used it as the foundation and built all the other stuff on top of that. Maybe that was dumb and a time waster, but I believe that (time spent developing it) + (time needed to debug it) < (time required to “master” a 3rd party cart) + (time spent debugging extensions/hooks for the 3rd party app)

I am using Oscommerce and i would be moving to Viart Shopping Cart http://www.viart.com

Viart is the only feature robust cart i have found online. I have tested almost all the carts , paid to free but none compares to viart in terms of speed and features.

In my world view there are only two viable well coded options:

An affordable paid cart that has so many features and the code is as elegant as codeignitor:
Interspire Shopping Cart

Interspire has simple code and a ton of features not to mention that they really put your money to good use and add a ton more features every 6 months like clock work and add bug fixes every week or so.  You even get free upgrades and support for a year.  Then after that there is a friendly forum community.

UPDATED:
I no longer recommend Magento…the code is very cryptic and convoluted and I think it may be intentionally done by Varian.  You will notice that their documentation does very little to help with development while a lot for themeing and administering the site.  Also it is a SLOW application and would have a difficult time running on a shared server with heavy load and many other websites.  The main goal of Varian is to make boat loads on the cart and you can see their support, pro cart pricing and code shows that intention.  I’m not saying it’s not possible to modify it but plan on spending two to three times the development time doing it and having to charge your clients to do so.  With practice you may get quick but not quicker then with other carts that are well coded. 

I don’t have any update for a recommended open source cart because I have only used and coded with oscommerce and its branches, virtuemart, magento and opencart.  Out of all those the only one well coded was opencart.  It is MVC based and to boot the loader class and other code is just like CI BUT it is seriously lacking in features and thats the only reason I can’t recommend it yet.

—-SEE UPDATE—
Then Magento which the code is a bit cryptic and slightly boxed in but the quality of the code is light years ahead of oscommerce and any of it’s derivatives.  Once you build an extension or two and if you understand overloading of classes and configuration based frameworks it will click and you will love it.
—-

Now I highly recommend and almost insist that anyone building an eccomerce site stay away from oscommerce or it’s branches like zen cart and many others.  They are insecure and they break when server technology is updated.  They are completely buggy and a lot of the modules are created by inexperienced programmers.  I know a couple of oscommerce sites myself that have been hacked or show errors all over the place.

There’s my rant…thanks for listening!

I second interspire, looks bloody brilliant, we use their e-mail platform and it is superb. I tried the demo of the shop last week and am loving how you customise the layout. Excellent.

Magento looks like the most flexible and modern cart at the moment, definitely give it a go.