Prestashop or Magento?

[Chris34]

I am trying to find the best package to set up my first website and would like some advice as to which is the best package for me.

My website will be selling items that are mainstream products such as electrical goods and will need the capacity to have up to 5,000 items. It needs to be easy to update as I will be having new items to add on a regular basis and I will be the website builder/designer.

I am fairly computer literate but I have very limited experience of website building. I have dabbled with Visual Basic and have written 'Hello World' in HTML but that's about it as far as my language skills are concerned.

What I need is something that is quick to get up and running but also looks professional. If it means taking extra time for a professional looking website then so be it but I need it up and running asap.

I have looked at Prestashop and Magento websites and they do look really impressive but are these going to be out of my depth when it comes to developing?

Any advice is much appreciated.



Chris.

[edmondscommerce]

Hi Chris

If you are only at the "hello world" stage with HTML then to be honest you are going to struggle with any of these packages. They are both PHP based and of course HTML.

That means you are going to need an outside developer whichever platform you go for.

I would advise going for Magento as it is currently by far the most powerful, actively developed and fully featured open source ecommerce package out there.

The other package you could look at is osCommerce, or preferably one of the loaded versions which have a better feature set and tend to be easier to launch. I would suggest CREloaded (the open source version).

I used to work almost exclusively on osCommerce sites, but these days I reckon I am doing about 50/50 osCommerce and Magento. Magento is definitely gaining market share rapidly, with many osCommerce webmasters looking to migrate to Magento - tempted by features such as multiple store fronts etc.

[enigma1]

My opinion is to test the open source packages and see which one if easier for you to follow. Things like community support forums, plugins/addons available for each package are a major factor to customize and further develop your store.

I would try oscommerce despite that is old is simple to learn and you don't need to have oop or extensive programming background. Same goes for its derivatives too.

I just can't recommend magento I haven't even see it (cannot download it) they havent published the package in one of the open source repository sites and you need something like an account to download it. Therefore I consider it equivalent to a closed source cart.

Prestashop is ok but again you will need to customize it for your needs. There are other open source carts too like the OpenCart in my opinion is the simplest and most powerful of all, when looking at the framework as a programmer.

However as a merchant you care about the end result, that is, generating sales and from the aforementioned carts only oscommerce and its derivatives stand up because the do follow the principles of ecommerce to maximize support of different browsers and browser settings and the merchant has maximum efficiency selling products due to the simple cart features where the package operates pretty much in every environment. That's my opinion of course.

[Big J]

have you tried www dot itseeze dot co dot uk?

I know a couple of businesses that are using this and you don't need any technical ability to use it. Also every different product you have has it's own unique seo panel.

[consultant]

oscommerce, and the likes of creloaded and zencart, offer more add-ins and features than possibly any other cart out there. There are also more templates/designs for this system

Magento is the most promising development in years, but may require server/hosting tweaking. Also, it is a lot harder to learn the guts of how it works.

Another one to look at is a combination of Joomla/virtuemart, which is you want a really dynamic site, is one of the better options!

[Chris34]

Thank you all for taking the time to reply, it is very much appreciated and is very helpful.

By the sounds of it Magento is the best solution for somebody who is a web designer as it has a lot of scope for developing quite an advanced website. Although it sounds great I cannot afford to be either learning how to use it or paying for a website, so this effectively rules out Magento for the time being.

OSCommerce sounds like it is worth a try as nobody seems to have a bad opinion about it and the sites I have seen are perfectly adequate for what I want. My aim is to be selling products for profit through a website and as long as the site looks professional and is not to difficult to learn how to use the software to build the site then it will be good enough for the time being.

Once profits reach a certain level then I may review more complex web sites but I think as it is at the moment I need to keep everything as simple, cost effective and time efficient as possible and OSCommerce sounds like it strikes the right balance.

If anyone feels that I might be making the wrong decision then please do let me know as I appreciate any further opinions/advice.


Cheers,



Chris.

[Duncan_W]

I would add my vote to the CRE. We develop e-commerce sites in this system, and although it is not the simplest to develop (I agree you may need some professional help) but it results in a great shop with all the features you could want (Front & back end) to run a real on-line business.

Check out some of the site we have developed in CRE:

http://www.bsamarketing.com/sitegallery.htm

[WhiskyFive]

I have used OSCommerce for about 6 years and did my first site without any advanced HTML or PHP knowledge.

The CRE Loaded version has loads of functionality added on to OSCommerce, and you can buy and then tweak a good range of templates...or start from scratch.

Magento is great (we're doing a site now using it), but it does require experience of XML for the layout, which I think you'll find is a bit beyond you right now.

For people who want a simple shop that is a doddle to set-up, I have put them on to Shopify.

If you do go down the OSCommerce route, I'd recommend getting a professional designer to do your templates, and then cut them up in Fireworks and implement yourself.

It will take you a bit of time to do (and learn), but you will get a professional looking site (because a professional designed it) but at a much lower cost, because you won't be spending more than £500 on graphics, and most agencies would start at around £2K for a professionally designed site that they code for you.

[Lesya]

Magento or Prestashop - this question worries many people. Well ,certainly each of us wants the best for our store. So that shopping carts meet all our needs right away. But the thing is that with time - the store itself and business needs change. That's why more people move their stores from osCommerce to Magento and Prestashop lately.

I think that's the right thing to do. Plus it's easy to switch to either of them Prestashop or Magento. Check Cart2Cart service in google - that's what they do.

[Lesya]

Regardless which one you chose - main thing is that it's good for your business. But when you decide to do that please think about your data safety. You can try service like shopping-cart-migration.com which have plenty of experience and you can be sure your information is secure and won't be lost.

[andykinsey]

if you can afford it get a bespoke system made or retailored to you like the one I've created for my clients, other than that I would advise presta from your list as its a nice package and great seo wise, magento is harder to work with for less results. I would also recommend looking at zencart as its established and if you can't code you can simply find a free template nice and easy.

if you need any help with this or anything else give me a shout.

[MH1]

I've been happy with prestashop, apart from a couple of simple things which took approx 1 hr to alter after a bit of reading it's been very easy to work with overall, much easier than OS IMO.

[Ibrow Media Ltd]

Just my opinion but I would try selling your products on ebay first - if you make money then it's worth getting a professional web designer to build a site in Magento for you. If you don't manage to sell through ebay (at a profit that is) then at least you have saved your sanity. My experience of Magento is extremely positive but I was lucky enough to have the tome to work on a live project at my own pace - so I 'learned and earned'.!

[edmondscommerce]

good advice, if you are totally new to ecommerce then its definitely good to get your toe in the water somehow first

its also good for prototyping ideas with very little outlay

one caveat though is that not all products will sell well on ebay, and some potentially profitable items will not make profit on ebay so it could be misleading