joomla vs Magneta Vs prestashop which one is mostly recommended

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maz25

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May 29, 2010
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  • #1
    Does anyone know which of these opensource eccomerce is recommended to be used for a small eccomerce site.

    My site requires, online chat linked with Skype and Msn

    Recommendation tabs

    Customer order form.

    Size and colour selection

    Coupn on checkout

    Easy to change banners.

    My site will be B2B which i wanted to add a trademanager as well as it being business to customer.


    Also which is best suited to open a bridal directory??
     
    V

    Vision2

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    Apr 7, 2010
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  • #5
    Magento is basicaly for people who want to do proper business online. If you want a good ground base to work from with scope pick magento.

    If you want something quick / partially dirty go for the others.

    boils down to whether you are more sided towards hobby or full business and going for it with investment.

    People saying that magento is overkill is just crazy, it's not overkill to use a powerful system for a small site. Magento is a major player system, why not use the same tools that the big boys as it were are using to deal with your own site?

    Makes absolutely no sense to retrict yourself.

    But again, it boils down to investment, if you are looking to invest in the £100's, you would be better of with a different system and then moving further down the line. If you are looking to invest couple grand and up, then Magento is a valid choice.

    Also bare in mind that regardless of what system you choose, you will need to invest further into the site with marketing, seo, ongoing work and various other bits and pieces as well as hosting/secure certificates/payment gateways costs. You should also consider what payment gateways you would be using, as some will cost more than others in what they take in % and per purchase out of your costs of sales.

    Bottom line is, a ecommerce site needs investment, if you are on a really severe budget it's not realistically worth dabbling into until you have that investment available to make. It simply won't do anything and will take a considerable amount of time push up.
     
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    C

    CraigieDD

  • #11
    Disagree with people who say Virtuemart is a bad solution. The Joomla/Virtuemart combination is pretty solid.

    Zen-cart is also a great solution.

    But you'll be fine with any of the major e-commerce solutions as they all have great functionality, it's just that developers prefer working with the one they're familiar with.
     
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    A

    ACIDMAGIX

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    Sep 6, 2010
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  • #12
    Sorry had to register on here when I saw people putting Joomla down!Joomla has worked well for us, Have been 'playing' with it for years, tried the rest, no luck with them, Biggest Plus is Google LOVES Joomla. We dont do ANY SEO but yet we are in top 3 in loads of keywords that describe our buisness and products. Brings in 1000's of hits per day and £1000's of orders. Cant complain when some people spend £1000's of pounds on their websites when our Joomla site only costs us our £19.95 per year for hosting and domain name? its a no looser situation and they keep on making it better and better.

    We love it when we get the cold calls claiming to be able to get our search terms up in the top search of google for £99 per month - they soon hang up when I tell them were there already and costs us Zilch!

    BUT Joomla does require a lot of work and you will definantly require a good knowledge of how a website works - I see some hosting companies supplying a joomla ready site with their hosting - could be a good place to start.

    Hope this helps!

    Thanks
     
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    omnivore

    omnivore

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    Feb 21, 2009
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    that london
  • #14
    a very important issue when you are starting up is obviously cost

    megenta is obviously cool with lots of features but if you have a small start up business then the cost of magenta is prohibitive

    also there is no point paying for all the toys on megenta is you are only selling your own hand made garden sculptures for instance

    we use actinic which is easy to use and has a good supply of features whilst being quite cheap
     
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    edmondscommerce

    edmondscommerce

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    Nov 11, 2008
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  • #17
    Thats pretty fair pros and cons paul - though the dedicated hosting thing is not really true - you do need to ensure you are on well optimised hosting though - so not just any old hosting.

    Often local development enviroments (XAMPP etc) aren't particularly well optimsed (or at all) so things can seem very slow.

    As for the design side of things - yes it is a bit of a developers job to implement designs on Magento - though if you are a developer thats good as it lets you do things in a very logical and controlled fashion.

    We do a fair few design implementations for people - they use a designer of their choice (or they are the designer and we are sub contracting) and we then take the PSDs and create the final template.

    One big project recently got a very nice design from 99 designs and we are now implementing it, its looking very nice so far.
     
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    edmondscommerce

    edmondscommerce

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  • #18
    Cheers :)

    don't really major on design - the other guys here keep telling me we need to make it more flashy

    If I was doing serious ecommerce I would choose Magento..

    It has features that I have tried implementing on other carts and found it really quite hard to do. Magento has them built in as standard.. loads of them!!

    Then there is the rapid development cycle - paced a lot higher than most open source carts - probably because Varien has literally millions in finance behind them and has a dedicted team of developers.

    Its a serious piece of kit - and I'm definitely into that.
     
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    B

    bluedreamer

    Free Member
    Nov 12, 2009
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  • #21
    Choosing the right shopping cart for your business can be hard. There are 100's of different cart systems to choose from!

    Here's my advice:

    1. Create a checklist
    Before you look at any cart make a checklist of what you actually need to support your business goals. Write out a list of every single feature you need, right down to the smallest detail. You can then use this list when comparing solutions.

    2. Have a budget
    Every ecommerce site will take time and money to build and maintain. Sure you can download and use some software at "no cost" but you will need to look at the total cost of ownership as well, such as building the site, software updates, and regular maintenance. Time = money!

    3. Don't rule out commercial cart systems
    Spending £200 on a good quality cart system may save you £000's in the long run. Not always, but open source software can sometimes require more frequent updating resulting in higher running costs.

    4. Don't skimp on hosting
    If your business relies on your online presence it pays to buy good quality hosting with good quality support. If there's a problem with your (cheap) host it will cost you in lost sales.

    5. Think about technical support
    Granted it's normally rare but if there's a problem with the software who's going to fix it? Typically with "free" open source software you're on your own, or you have to pay for support. With commercial software support is often included with your licence or a small annual fee for peace of mind.

    6. Test drive as many cart systems as you can
    That's right, try them out! Most carts have online demos you can have a poke around. Use your checklist to see if your desired features are supported, is the admin interface easy to use for you an your staff? Look at things like managing orders, adding products etc - some carts are better than others when you start using them on a real site.
     
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    V

    Vision2

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    Apr 7, 2010
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  • #22
    paulfeakins said:
    One of the items on my list of Magento Pros and Cons was to do with poor performance - I recently got my web host to move me to a new server, although not dedicated, it's now really fast so the performance issues probably weren't with Magento itself!

    Paul.
    www .AntropyConsulting.com
    Click to expand...

    Magento requires hosting, not shoestring hosting. :)

    You can't host magento on a couple quid a year hosting, i wouldnt host any business on that.

    Just crazy.

    Magento's performance has moved on a lot, but again, it boils down to cost.

    You can't run a website spending a quid here and there, if you want to make money you have to spend money.
     
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    V

    Vision2

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    Apr 7, 2010
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  • #24
    WebsiteDesigner said:
    Magento, expensive though!
    Click to expand...

    not true.

    Magento is a long term system, by investing now it's acturally cheaper than it would be to deploy onto a poor system and then shift to magento. Cost isn't just about how much it costs to pay someone to deploy/design, you also need to factor in everything else.

    not everything is as it seems, and you need to look at the bigger picture.

    Spend couple grand now for a system that has long term growth, or spend half that or quarter of that on a sub par system that hasn't got the scope etc.

    It's incredibly hard to show people that there is more to ecommerce than meets the eye and far too many people are looking for the cheap fix that doesn't work.
     
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    edmondscommerce

    edmondscommerce

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    Nov 11, 2008
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  • #26
    Agreed Magento definitely isn't targeted or optimised for shoestring DIY development

    At that end of the market there are definitely easier platforms to work with.

    Expensive is totally subjective though, I think for a lot of businesses, the amount of potential, power and functionality available with Magento is amazingly good value - its free - though it does require an experienced Developer to make sure its set up properly.

    At that end of the market though (SME upwards) an experienced developer is going to be involved either way so on that basis its an excellent choice.
     
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    antropy

    antropy

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    Aug 2, 2010
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  • #35
    JohnStevenson said:
    if there was at least a free version to get known with and like the program....
    Click to expand...

    Yes exactly, as a software developer, I like to get paid for what I do and of course these companies should get paid for their excellent work too but unless there is a cut-down free version it's very hard for people to try a piece of software and decide if it's easy to work with.

    It's fine to provide an online demo but unless you actually have access to the code you aren't going to know if it's going to be easy for developers to work with and customise.
     
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    G

    Grantd

  • #36
    I did a lot of research and Magento has proved excellent (although finding a company that can implement it properly is more difficult).

    Here are some sites for you to get a good idea:

    www.endclothing.co.uk
    www.vubasupplies.co.uk (mine)
    www.cantonteaco.com

    All excellent sites in my opinion. And I know each is doing very well commercially. SEO friendly, lots of features and lots of plugins.

    If anyone wants to talk about how to choose the best Magento provider, or how to 'tender' it then speak to me. I lost a lot of money and time by doing it all wrong and having to start again, so no need to waste your money!
     
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    D

    DPOM

  • #37
    I think one or two have already mentioned it, but i'd recommend Zen Cart - I've used it a fair bit, you can customise it quite extensively, its easy to update and there's LOTS of modules you can add to offer differing functionality.

    With a bit of time and patience a relative novice could customise it nicely...In my opinion.
     
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    M

    martin33

  • #38
    I've managed to use magento on a tight shoestring. Almost everything has been developed myself with a little bit of help from overseas freelancers. I'm quite happy with the site. Its way more advanced than most ecommerce sites out there and more importantly the SEO on the site is pretty good.

    One thing that really annoys me about magento is the lack or disinterested magento developers. I must have contacted about 50 developers that specialise in magento regarding potential projects over this past year and only 1-2 have contacted me back. This has forced me to develop mostly by myself, hence saving alot of money, but spending alot of time.

    Grantd, if you know of any good magento developers let me know. Your magento site is pretty good.
     
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