Magento vs. Interspire shopping cart

[Flying Hippy]

Hi,

I am thinking of upgrading from EKM as when my business grows I dont think EKM will be able to handle it.

I was thinking about using Magento but have been told today about Interspire.
I wanted to know what peoples views are and if possible any live sites I can see.

[osicsophie]

Hi,

I am thinking of upgrading from EKM as when my business grows I dont think EKM will be able to handle it.

I was thinking about using Magento but have been told today about Interspire.
I wanted to know what peoples views are and if possible any live sites I can see.

Either is OK for me. Before you choose any shopping cart solution, you should evaluate your specific needs for your site.

You can view live shops powered by Interspire via http://www.interspire.com/shoppingcart/livestores.php

and Magento's via http://www.magentocommerce.com/showcase

Follow this link http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/925-The-PeC-Review-Magento-Is-the-Open-Source-Powerhouse-
you will see a review on Magento
and this link http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/856-Cart-of-the-Week-Interspire-Obsesses-Over-Quality-
see Interspire interview.

Hope they help:)

[nickpp]

Magento gets my vote, but interspire as a company are good, however tin tha past they have killed off their software. Bear this in mind, and Magneto has a good community behind it.

[doughboy]

I am looking to purchase Interspire shopping cart and am sure I have seen some resellers offering discounts on the forum. If you are a licenced partner and want to sell me a licence then please PM me asap :)

[Steve2507]

but interspire as a company are good, however tin tha past they have killed off their software. Bear this in mindWe use their software for email marketing and for an article site.

However we also used to use trackpoint which was fantastic (for our needs). Until they killed it off.

[NuBlue]

I am looking to purchase Interspire shopping cart and am sure I have seen some resellers offering discounts on the forum. If you are a licenced partner and want to sell me a licence then please PM me asap :)

Yep, we're an Interspire partner and the rumours are true, discount is available :)

PM sent

[Flying Hippy]

After looking around I think I will be going for interspire shopping cart just have to check on a few more things. If anyone out their uses it please can you pm me so i can see what server speeds may be like.

[paretowasright]

Hi,

Are there any Magento partners on here?
I will also look at interspire and contact the company mentioned in the thread for a quote.

[NuBlue]

Hi.

We are Magento and Interspire partners if you want to send me a PM.

[iboxsecurity]

we have a handful of magento sites running on our hosting and no issues with speed at all and at least 3 of the magento stores we are running are customers who moved from EKM in the past year.

[FlowDeals]

I Use Interspire much better than Magento. Interspire has whole range of great features that Magento don't. As well as having some great programs that you can connect to the shopping cart to help with your business.

[paretowasright]

Hi Flowdeals,

Yes I have looked at interspire but the template quality is just not there compared to the quality of Magento. I realise Magento is still a bit 'beta' but in the medium term it should be a great bit of ecommerce kit.

[mooshooh]

Magento is good but is quite slow in some environments. We used it recently in a production environment and some pages were loading in around 20 seconds which is way too long. To be fair we were going to tweak it to run better but have decided to put it on the back burner for now until it can be run at decent speed. We were also running it on a shared hosting plan so that would account for some delays too.

[paretowasright]

Dear Mooshooh,

Yes I have heard those concerns so its good to know these things.
I am setting up an online health and beauty store so a premium feel is essential as will be selling skincare and cosmetics @ £20-£60.
One of the attractions of Magento was the quality of the templates as well as the back end, CMS etc BUT I am now contemplating whether I should look at OS Commerce, ZenCart etc.

[mooshooh]

Dear Mooshooh,

Yes I have heard those concerns so its good to know these things.
I am setting up an online health and beauty store so a premium feel is essential as will be selling skincare and cosmetics @ £20-£60.
One of the attractions of Magento was the quality of the templates as well as the back end, CMS etc BUT I am now contemplating whether I should look at OS Commerce, ZenCart etc.

I was experimenting with a few of them and found OS Commerce a good platform but lacks a lot visually, which in hind sight is not necessarily a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, Magento is a good platform but out of the box it's not the best. It all depends where you are in the business cycle...do you have an existing income to justify the cost of a dedicated server to aid performance. Do you have the time and technical ability to play with a few platforms and tweak them?

Personally, I had a little time on my hands so did the basic tweaks with Magento but it still lacked a lot performance wise. The benefit it does have though is the forum is always busy so you can get some good support...I ended up with a list of tweaks for Magento which I never actually tried in the end but they were there if I needed them.

The bottom line is what do you want from the platform and what do you plan to achieve with it?

[LED]

I would recommend Tiger Commerce (www dot tigercommerce dot co dot uk)

very good piece of software

[paretowasright]

I was experimenting with a few of them and found OS Commerce a good platform but lacks a lot visually, which in hind sight is not necessarily a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, Magento is a good platform but out of the box it's not the best. It all depends where you are in the business cycle...do you have an existing income to justify the cost of a dedicated server to aid performance. Do you have the time and technical ability to play with a few platforms and tweak them?

Personally, I had a little time on my hands so did the basic tweaks with Magento but it still lacked a lot performance wise. The benefit it does have though is the forum is always busy so you can get some good support...I ended up with a list of tweaks for Magento which I never actually tried in the end but they were there if I needed them.

The bottom line is what do you want from the platform and what do you plan to achieve with it?

Mooshooh,

Again thanks for your feedback and info.
I am getting a new suite built from scratch with a reasonable budget so I will invest in ongoing technical support as I will need to concentrate my time on SEO, customers, suppliers and logistics. I already know all the health and beauty categories involved as have a heavyweight sales and marketing background in that industry. Clearly I will need to train up on all the features of whatever e-commerce solution I decide to go for.
The attraction of Magento was the visual/graphical quality but clearly it comes with bandwidth and upload speed issues (which google obviously can penalise for). I have now seen some good options with OS Commerce and will look at Tiger as well.

[edmondscommerce]

i vote magento :-)

[Lesya]

My name is Lesya and I'm marketing manager at MagneticOne - innovative software development company.

I would like to announce initial beta release of Store Manager for Magento - Windows application to quickly and effectively manage Magento-based store.

It would be great if you could help us to improve it. I welcome you to download Store manager or join our Beta Group

I appreciate your interest!

[Mearns]

Having used both I found Magento to be excellent for free software BUT you will need a good deal of codeing knowledge to maintain your site, I found Intersire great for a small startup the front end is more userfriendly than Magento.