Great list! I need to create a new cart site for a client of mine pretty soon and this list will come in handy.

Although I have looked at ZEN before it looks simple enough.

Thanks again!

Nice list,
i have problems installing Magento tough.. hmm
Ahh btw.. oscommerce is CRAPPPPP, don’t touch that beast,
because if you have to extend it (addons, templates..) you discover the horrible code architecture (you install addons by using CORE-HACKS!!!!!!!) buahh

Very interesting article with good information.

I recommend PrestaShop !

Magento is a piece of garbage. And I don’t mean to sound dramatic. It does not deserve to be at the top of this list. The creators (Varien) built it in a way that makes upgrading and extending it difficult and dangerous. Our company started with Magento. When a new release came out, we attempted to upgrade, but the way the core code and the modules interact would not allow that. Our store came crashing down, and the only way we would have been able to fix it is by outsourcing the problem to… guess who… Varien. Magento is a racket, in my opinion. And calling it “open source” is wrong, because it lacks any of the real community that true “open source” projects are all about. It is owned and operated by Varien, and if you use it, you will be paying them for it sooner or later.

Very nice list ! Thanks for sharing Ray…

I personally found OpenCart very versatile and a perfect solution for a couple of projects. Previously I’ve also played with VirtueMart+Joomla amd Magento, but OpenCart is definitely my favourite… even if I think that sometime (i.e. micro catalogs with 1-10 products) a simple ad-hoc php script is the best solution

I would choose OpenCart, it is great one, specially for multilanguage.
Thank you.

I’ve used Magento, OSCommerce, Virtuemart and PrestaShop, and for those people without the resources to run Magento, I’d definitely recommend PrestaShop. Its easy to use, fast, and easily customizable.

I started with osCommerce back in the days, then went over to Magento, and am now a happy camper with Prestashop. Its fast, has a small footprint, is powerfull to do most of the things you’ll ever need, easily extendable, a dream to theme and work with. osC is outdated (even v.3) and Magento is a big piece of overengineered junk.

Similar list (with some other eCommerce platforms mentioned) from tripwiremagazine:
http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2010/02/15-open-source-ecommerce-platforms.html

You should also take a look at http://www.nopcommerce.com . .NET based and very powerful. Social networking, live chat, cell phone notification – all built in.

as non-savvy, yet love to explore the tech…i tried zencart with zero knowledge of html. Love it for lots of modules offered, but now I am getting tired of updating manually…

I would choose OpenCart, it is great one, specially for multilanguage.
Thank you.

Excuse me for my English.
OpenCart exceeds Magento and PrestaShop. It is the only MVC structure, not using Smarty, is multi lingual, multi shop and is the fastest.

I’ve been using Magento for the last 2 months and I have to say, it has an extremely steep learning curve. It doesn’t have many decent free plugins/extensions (compared to Wordpress for example) and the template and theming system can, at times, be a complete headache/nightmare. I will give it this however: It is secure, mature and stable, its just a shame its not so clear cut to begin with.

Does anyone know if any of these open source eCommerce platforms are able to integrate with MS Dynamics GP accouting/financial software?

I’ve found magento (free) to be quite convoluted and over engineered. Learning curve for theming is steep. What takes me usually a few hours to a day with a different solution, took me weeks.

There are over 600 editable template files. Every single little module, contains several tpl files, and xml files. The little “search” box? 3 files. Want to add an image to a sidebar? Create a new tpl file and xml file, then modify the main catalog xml file to include your new image.

The OOBE: Many features were broken from right out of the gate. Most of the cart emails are flagged as level 8 or 9 spam unless some serious tweaking is done. Other times emails would not send at all. Many other things broken. I also ran into a glitch where item quantities on the front end would not update. Nor would wish-list items or reviews post. When contacting the developer for help, most of the solutions offered were “hacks” to the application layer that should not even need to be touched by the end user in the first place. One solution (also offered by the developer) was to download a previous build, and rob a file from it to replace the offending module. I was quite upset that the cart would not work as it was meant to without hacking it. If you want to give magento a try, I would not recommend it unless you have unlimited time to invest on the project.

I looked like a complete renob to my client. The estimate I gave for the timeline was based upon previous ecommerce sites I’ve setup + fudge time for learning a new system. I underestimated this by over a month and almost got hung out to dry for it. This was due to the over-engineered and needlessly complex file-system, themeing process, and above all – the slow response times from Varien who offered hacks which worked “some” of the time. There was no way I could anticipate this as I’ve never worked with a product that was put together this badly, with such counter-intuitively planned architecture.

The only reason I offered it up in the first place was because of the gleaming reviews it got from Envato, the features it boasted, that the demo passed validation checks, and the urls looked SEO friendly.

Updating the cart to a newer version is a crapshoot, and the odds will not be in your favor. 9 times out of 10 this will break your installation completely.

I’m quite turned off by Varien… Since they are a consulting company I can’t help but to wonder if they make most of their money troubleshooting their broken and buggy software.

I’m not the only one with this experience. However, I do have to say that some of my colleagues use Magento with no real problems aside from the steep learning curve because under the hood it’s not like ANY other cart out there. The experiences I hear from people seem to be one or the other; either bliss or complete hell. Unfortunately my experience was in the latter category.

In the end I ended up porting everything over to OpenCart. It took me about 3 or 4 hours tops to theme it. After configuration I have not run into any real glitches yet. I’m sure it will have it’s issues once I run through all the pre-flight checks but we’ll see…

Hi,

I have tried many different ecommerce solutions over the years, but I keep coming back to OSCommerce!

Granted, your not going to get a professional looking store out of the box with it, but from a development point of view it is so easy to work with.

People ask me to add all sorts of extra features, with OSCommerce it’s easy. You do have to hack the core code, but once you get your head around they way it works it’s not difficult.

I looked at Magento and it does look great, but really does need a dedicated server. The basic installation comes in at around 6500 files! If you want to add a feature that isn’t included, or isn’t one of the available extensions, then you’d better have deep pockets.

TomatoCart has caught my eye recently, a really innovative admin console, and a pretty light installation.

I agree with your comments about Opencart, so much so, that I have created a free ecommerce website based on Opencart at HSTORES dot com.

Cheers
Steve

We like Opencart the best.

Just tried Magento and I was extremely dissapointed. Its very unituitive. For example after you add products they don’t show up until you click the attributes, then “add them to your website” then you have to add display widgets to the home page. There is barely any community and good luck finding the forum from their website. I mean I’m an experienced developer and I shouldn’t have to watch a video just to get some products displayed on the home page, you know what I mean? Iv’e used ubercart before and I loved it and drupal, but it is way too much for afew products. I’m going to try openCart next.

magento.. 600 or more tables, core files difficult to edit… best out of box, but do not touch it. works well on dedicated server, poor performance on shared sever.

prestashop, difficult to edit, buggy, most of addons not free. good looking, smarty templates, good option out of box.

zencart, fork of oscommerce, advance features, easy to edit, outdated storefront not easy to modify. excellent speed.

tomato cart, good… too advanced, second best out of box.

oscommerce, very poor out of box, but is the mos versatile, editable, ample support, and upgradeable; the sky is the limit… new version tableless.

opencart, is the future.

Opencart is great if you don’t need help. Ask a question on the forum and you’ll receive heavy sarcasm for being stupid enough to ask the question in the first place. Complaints are dealt with in an innovative way also….they just delete your post!
Opencart looks great but is backed by a shit attitude

@evolgenius Thanks for your review of magento. I think you might have saved me from a lot of headache. I’ve been on the search for a platform to migrate over to that is simple, low cost, and easy to skin.

BTW – if your a designer or developer don’t be afraid to give me a quote. Use the contact form on my site.