Thinking of upgrading site - whats the best cart

jastreet1 · Aug 4, 2012

Hi all,

I am looking at upgrading my website but I wondered what the best shopping card would be to use. Magento comes up a lot but it seems very slow to load! I want a site that is FAST and bug free - can anyone recommend (currently using Zen Cart) or is Magento the way to go? Also considering SEO prospects.

Next will be to then find a suitable web designer!

Thanks in advance

Dan_HiHosting · Aug 4, 2012

Hi,

We'd normally recommend OpenCart, it's very easy to use, light weight, and comes highly rated.

Softaculous, the one click installer we use, has ratings and reviews for the most popular options here: http://www.softaculous.com/softaculous/apps/ecommerce

PrestaShop is also highly rated, but we'd normally recommend OpenCart.

You can try a demo here:
http://www.softaculous.com/softaculous/demos/OpenCart

Have you had problems with Zen Cart?

I hope that helps.

Good luck!

Dan

jastreet1 · Aug 4, 2012

Thanks for the post, unfortunately I cannot get the link to work. Zen cart works fine but my site is old and out dated so I want to update it, increase SEO prospects, conversions so on so forth.

I have seen Magento Enterprise its expensive ($14k PA) but the demo looks good?

Leo-InstallingIT · Aug 4, 2012

I'd second that recommendation for OpenCart.

It's definitely fast, however it does have less features than Magento and sometimes misses features in Zen Cart. However it is growing, but it's worth double checking it does everything you need it to.

We have a lot of clients that use it and we use it ourselves for one of our sites.

bargainmania · Aug 4, 2012

Personally we would recommend you stay with what you know.
Nothing much wrong with zencart. Just go for a new custom template.
Would also recommend you lose the 3 columns and go for 2 with larger images
showing, You would also be able to get 4 products accross on you cat pages aswell.

alistair

Dan_HiHosting · Aug 4, 2012

That's good advice.

If Zen Cart meets your needs then that may be more sensible.

It would certainly reduce the work load. So you'd be looking at a cosmetic upgrade.

jastreet1 · Aug 4, 2012

Thanks for your responses guys. Unfortunately I think Zen Cart is holding us back as an online shopping cart as its heavily modified, doesn't have all of the features we would like and looks very dated.

I did see some wired frame solutions from Visual Soft which I liked, but I did not agree with their work ethics (they do not give you the site or the option to have your own hosting so they basically own/control the site which I was not happy with and over charge for the hosting for your site which in my optionion is never yours).

TheGeekestLink · Aug 4, 2012

What's wrong with Magento? Everyone seems to be hopping on board that system right now and I'm going down that road in 2013 (unless I hear to the contrary).

bargainmania · Aug 4, 2012

Hmmmmmm if zencart is not for you anymore then obviously you are looking
to move up, I dont say this very often as quite simply open source and especially
zencart in our opinion is more than suitable for most ecommerce sites.

It sounds as though you want to get away from open source, i would hence have to
recommend a custom solution, Built totally to your specs although this could be very expensive

As for zencart looking dated. I would take it you mean your template which is simple
enough to change for a totally new up to date look.

If you dont mind me asking what features are you missing?
If you would be prepared to make a brief of what your after i am positive
we can come up with a quote you would be more than happy with.

Just depends what your after

mit74 · Aug 4, 2012

Zencart is a dated platform with dated programming architecture which makes scalability harder to implement. I've had many modules break other modules because there's no decent override/hook system. To get them to work I've had to painfully gone through lines of code copy and pasting them into the relevant files.

Go for a MVC solution such as Open Cart or CS Cart. Personally I love programming in CS Cart but Open Cart has better in-built features and better support. I despise Magento with a passion. It's backend is overly complex and bloated with a horrendous XML structure for custom modules not to mention it's performance is very slow. When you've had to work 3 months solid fixing cheap outsourced coding because the so called 'PHP' programmers didn't understand the object orientated Zend Framework and either used JS as a hack or changed the core code you too would despise it

smo · Aug 5, 2012

TheGeekestLink said:
What's wrong with Magento? Everyone seems to be hopping on board that system right now and I'm going down that road in 2013 (unless I hear to the contrary).

Nothing si wrong with Magento, its probably the most versatile and comprehensive platform available - however - without proper configuration and without optimisations in hosting it can be dog slow.

Get it right though and you cant go wrong.

iboxsecurity · Aug 5, 2012

Magento is certainly our cart of choice that we suggest to clients and we have moved people from zencart to magento.

I think you were right into looking at the Magento demo - that said the free version is probably more than enough for what you need and it can be with the right hosting and performance tweaks be very fast.

Optegris · Aug 6, 2012

James, considering the amount of business you put through your site I would strongly recommend avoiding open source carts. In your case Magento is probably the way to go, we can certainly tweak your server so that it would fly, but get a professional Magento company on board.

Have a chat with http://www.edmondscommerce.co.uk/ as they are specialists with Magento.

I would recommend our own solution but knowing your systems it would need an awful lot of modifications out of the box...

jaydenharris98 · Aug 6, 2012

I have used ZenCart for a couple of years. I tried osCommerce a couple of months ago. It operates very well and is easily upgraded to newer versions with security patches.

Thanks !

Deleted member 27344 · Aug 6, 2012

Open source apps:
- OSCommerce - Welcome to the late 90's
- Zen Cart - Ugly and cumbersome
- Magento - Perfect if you have a huge product range, top server set-up and a very good developer to call on 24/7 or very deep pockets
- Prestashop - Very flexible, totally customisable

It really depends on what you're selling, what functions you need etc but, on the surface I would either recommend Prestashop or Jigoshop (WordPress plugin).
But, as I said, it depends on your needs.

79level · Aug 6, 2012

I would defenitly suggest using Drupal Commerce ( based on Drupal 7 ) I believe its most flexibile eCommerce solution ever

you can built on it basically anything you want, and onsite website optimization with Drupal Commerce is amazing, the only one downfall of it is the fact, that it can be quite expensive, but defenitly cheaper then magento

max99 · Aug 6, 2012

Magento is slow if its on a poor hosting thats not dedicated to magento.

If you get hosting that is designed for magento then it will be fast

like my sites

Chris Ashdown · Aug 6, 2012

A different solution

We use Sellerdeck (ex actinic) which offers the following

The company has upgrades ever 12-18 months with new features all backward compatible and has its own support teams

It has plenty of professional companies offering extra add ons to improve the version to your precise needs

offers either access or Microsoft SQL versions both multi user with stock control

Operates from the box without needing anyone else to set it up, but plenty of designers to customise it to your specs, links to sage line 50

Yes you have to pay for it, and it's not bug free (is any software), but UK made and supported and totally different to actinic of say three-four years ago

I have run my company on various versions for last 7 years and just suggest you give it a look, a lot of designers seem to like offering open software where they can make good money without cost, this is an alternative system

antropy · Aug 7, 2012

Another vote for OpenCart here, it's fast and simple to work with from a development perspective meaning you can get more customisation for your money.

I reviewed some of the most popular carts here:
http://www.antropy.co.uk/blog/shopping-cart-review/

kulture · Aug 7, 2012

LOL, three pages of recommendations and not one person asking what you sell, what features you require, and how many products etc etc etc. It looks like only one poster has actually looked at your site and made an informed recommendation.

From a brief look at your site, Magento will do it virtually out of the box. There are a few third party extensions that would help to get the nice "special product" tags on some images. The filtering is standard Magento Layered navigation. Likewise the product reviews.

There is no need to go for the expensive enterprise edition, the free one will be fine.

You should however ensure that you use a host that knows Magento and has configured their servers to better run it.

Optegris · Aug 7, 2012

kulture said:
LOL, three pages of recommendations and not one person asking what you sell, what features you require, and how many products etc etc etc. It looks like only one poster has actually looked at your site and made an informed recommendation.

From a brief look at your site, Magento will do it virtually out of the box. There are a few third party extensions that would help to get the nice "special product" tags on some images. The filtering is standard Magento Layered navigation. Likewise the product reviews.

There is no need to go for the expensive enterprise edition, the free one will be fine.

You should however ensure that you use a host that knows Magento and has configured their servers to better run it.

No need as we are James's host

jastreet1 · Aug 7, 2012

Open Minded Hosting are our hosts and give us a dedicated server at a reasonable price. Its all in hand and we are happy with them.

P.s. Phil did you get the test link?

Optegris · Aug 7, 2012

I did yes, looks good so far...

EcommerceKing · Aug 8, 2012

I've just posted this on another thread and I'm starting to feel like a spammer but I would recommend VP-ASP.

They are an Australian company (I recently moved to Aus) and I have become acquainted with their ecommerce solutions after using them in a project for one of my clients.

They are a small company but have been around for years and their feature list is huge, it definitely compares with the big names.

The are definitely worth taking a look at.

Hope this helps!

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