Magento

Discussion by existing Interspire Cart customers regarding potential alternatives.
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bart
Posts: 57
Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2010 5:40 pm
Location: UK

Magento

Post by bart »

After GrantG informed me that Magento can handle multiple websites on different domains (viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1038#p5485) I have been looking at this as a possibility. We currently have three ISC stores and running them through one payment gateway with a single backend would be really make life a lot simpler.

So does anyone have any experience used this cart and developing templates for it?

The templates look a lot more complicated, as does the whole package however there does seem to be a lot more documentation!

Whilst I am happy coding in HTML and CSS, my SQL and PHP skills are, well, best used for dodgy hacks....
grantg
Posts: 112
Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:01 am

Re: Magento

Post by grantg »

Magento is certainly capable and to be honest, I would not advise anyone to use it without php knowledge.

The template system is powerful and fully functional, but is a bit more technical than other template systems I've used. The documentation, especially community produced, is excellent - I think Magento is a great product, but lacks the 'idiots guide' style admin for store owners, like Interspire and CS Cart have.

CS-Cart now has a Multi Vendor edition - I am transferring ISC sites across to CS Cart as we speak, perhaps CS Cart might be of interest to you?
Cupar Garden Centre: CS-Cart Professional 2.2.5 (Converted from ISC 6.0.14 Ultimate)
Online Garden Centre: ISC 6.0.14 Professional
bart
Posts: 57
Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2010 5:40 pm
Location: UK

Re: Magento

Post by bart »

I'll definitely take a look at CS-Cart, after using ISC for a while i really like the simple friendly admin interface. We moved to ISC from Actinic so this kind of simple attractive interface was a revelation to us.
kurt
Posts: 147
Joined: Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:09 am

Re: Magento

Post by kurt »

It took a day but I got Magento community edition installed. Had some permission and memory issues to work out. Also it seems to be massive. I was uploading it with ftp and it was uploading all night. Finally I stopped it and used wget.

Learning curve seems massive. I'm not sure how to install upgrades and maintain a template yet. It's definitely not user friendly. I'm surprised it's so popular. There's lots of addons and such but seems like it would be a nightmare to maintain the product.

Afterthought, I wish there was something awesome like magento, ISC, or lemonstand that runs on windows servers.

I'll probably end up going with a hosted cart in the future such as magentogo, lemonstandnow, or bigcommerce. It seems like all the best carts are heading in that direction. Also, they are beginning to have tons of addons almost like an app store for the cart.

I just hate losing control, example, I don't want to be forced to have "powered by" on the mobile template and facebook app like bigcommerce has.
kurt
Posts: 147
Joined: Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:09 am

Re: Magento

Post by kurt »

One awesome feature magento has is magento mobile app http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/mobile

It's expensive but you get an actual app in the android or iphone app store. I don't' know of any other cart that has that feature.
babyREFLUX
Posts: 337
Joined: Thu Jun 18, 2009 9:38 am

Re: Magento

Post by babyREFLUX »

Magento is probably the best piece of eCommerce software on the market now - and the speed of development on the platform is getting faster and faster.

One word of caution...

Do not use it if you are planning on building the site yourself (for store owners). You will need an accredited developer who knows the software inside out - it's a beast! Without inside knowledge and the ability to configure the hardware properly it will end up being a mess.

That said - magento is a very exciting piece of code now with a massive community of developers building (and maintaining) as many add ons as you can ever wish for.
Tony Barnes
Posts: 744
Joined: Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:59 am

Re: Magento

Post by Tony Barnes »

Big layout for anything other than the community edition though - $14k?!?!
grantg
Posts: 112
Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:01 am

Re: Magento

Post by grantg »

CS-Cart Ultimate...take a look, does the multiple store fronts with one back-end perfectly well.

Will be launching my first CS-Cart Ultimate store in the not so distant future. Must admit I've been impressed with what it can do even though we're only on the first public release (v3.0.1).
Cupar Garden Centre: CS-Cart Professional 2.2.5 (Converted from ISC 6.0.14 Ultimate)
Online Garden Centre: ISC 6.0.14 Professional
Brandeline
Posts: 76
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2010 4:12 am

Re: Magento

Post by Brandeline »

I've been working on getting my ICS store transferred to CS-Cart for the last couple of weeks too. Really the only reason it's taken so long is that I needed to learn their customization system, and I wanted to integrate a few of the free addons that their very helpful forum users and admins have created.

Long story short, I really like CS-Cart so far. It's younger software, without some of the things that would be present in a version 5 or 6 software, but I have no doubt it will get there.

Their addon system is nice, though not well documented yet. No matter, there are plenty of existing addons that come with it to look at and figure out how it works. I particularly like how the addons can be separated from the basic code via hooks, (you can hook things in before, after, or override pieces of code.) which means most of the time, you won't have to reintegrate your changes after updates. I have already written two simple addons of my own just from looking at existing code.

Also, though CS-Cart only give 30 days free support, their support ACTUALLY SUPPORTS you as opposed to that worthless claim of a year's support we got from the BigCommerce/Interspire folks that they never delivered on. (Let's face it, BigCommerce is STILL INTERPIRE even if they are trying to rebrand themselves completely as BigCommerce-- the nasty taste of which cannot be erased by a name change.)

I have sent in two tickets to CS-Cart so far and have never waited longer than 12 hours for a HELPFUL response. One of those they helped me to fix the problem, and on the other they recorded a bug from the 3.02 update and promised to let me know as soon as it was fixed.

So definitely gets a thumbs up from me! Can't complain about the price either! I paid $1800 for interspire. $345 for CS Cart. Functionality is very close!
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