Magento alternative

[superpav]

Hi there,

I am currently trialing the demo version of Magento Go which I have been very impressed with. I have however just noticed that the prices of their plans are partly based on how many products (skus) are in your catalogue. As we distribute research biologicals for several different suppliers we offer a large number products (approx 26000). Can anyone recommend a good alternative to Magento who offer competitive payment plans that are not based on the number of products in your catalogue? We are a small family run business and have a relatively small turnover so cannot justify spending large amounts on our website.

Many thanks,
Pav.

 

[Digital Ark]

Hi

I was looking at different options today. I looked at shopfactory, x-cart, zen-cart and a few others. All appear to have different options of pay monthly / outright purchase.

How technical are you? I have just installed Zen-Cart (which is free) into one of my test web sites and appears to be fairly straight forward. However, there is a lot of settings to work through.

Let me know what you find.

Simon

 

[Josh_Farmer]

Hi there,

I am currently trialing the demo version of Magento Go which I have been very impressed with. I have however just noticed that the prices of their plans are partly based on how many products (skus) are in your catalogue. As we distribute research biologicals for several different suppliers we offer a large number products (approx 26000). Can anyone recommend a good alternative to Magento who offer competitive payment plans that are not based on the number of products in your catalogue? We are a small family run business and have a relatively small turnover so cannot justify spending large amounts on our website.

Many thanks,
Pav.

why not go magento no the go?

 

[jamieclick]

Take a look at OpenCart.

We could help a bit more if we knew exactly what features you need also.

Jamie

 

[bargainmania]

Better off with Zencart.
Far better outa the box than opencart.
Especially using easy-populate for so many products.
Send me a pm if you need help with this

Alistair

 

[UK_Web_Design]

If you like Magento then I would recommend you host your own Magento. Then it will not cost you nothing.

You can get hosting for around £14.99 a year. Install Magento yourself and use it for free.

A better option in my opinion is OpenCart. Again you install it on your hosting, unlimited products and unlimited categories and very easy to change the theme and design. Lots of options, modules, lots or free add-ons etc, easy to backup, reviews, earn points, unlimited categories, unlimited products.

Overall, Zen cart has a very generic feel to it. If you don't have a decent web designer you will end up with a very cut and paste looking, unprofessional e-commerce website. I would not recommend Zen Cart. If you look at the live websites on the zen cart website you will see quite unprofessional looking sites. With the exception of 1 or 2.

Wow 26000 products, that's a lot of data entry.

If you need help with hosting, web design, installing etc PM me.
my website is webunit.co.uk

 

[jamieclick]

Just to confirm for the op that tis is totally Alistair's opinion and there will be a lot of people on here that disagree with him.

I have no problem at all if he likes zen cart better than OpenCart but to say that is far better out of the box I am not sure. Could you please explain in some more detail.

Thanks

Better off with Zencart.
Far better outa the box than opencart.
Especially using easy-populate for so many products.
Send me a pm if you need help with this

Alistair

 

[bargainmania]

Of course i can Jamie seeing as you have obviously never used both.
Zencart out of the box does far more than opencart, very simple.
Also the modules that might be needed for Zencart are all free, where opencart
there is a charge involved. Plus i have stated on many other occasion's if you
wish to use the latest 1.5 you will run into all sorts of problems with modules.

As for Mr uk web design, You need to take a proper look at some templates mate,
there is plenty good templates around. Just as there is with opencart. But if a template
need's tweaked it's a lot easier to do with ZEN

Alistair

 

[jamieclick]

There really is a hate mob out for OpenCart isnt there :-s

What I was getting at is that you believe that zen cart is better out the box. This does not mean that it is. Please don't assume things as we have used zen before and presta shop and many more but we prefer OpenCart. This does not mean it is the best, we just like it. We have built 10+ sites now on 1.5+ and have had know problems at all as we have used moduals that are 1.5 ready so that could be the way you have used it or that you have been very unlucky.

Jamie

 

[Parrot Hosting]

I would also recommend Zencart for two reasons, despite a lot of setup fields to complete there are a wide range of add-on's that will allow you to personalise your shopping cart all for FREE.

The second is the ability to having once organised your Zencart template, to download a skeleton .CSV file which will allow you to build your 2,600 products into the site in one single upload (including image links). By far the easiest means of putting your site online.

You can then at later times download the database in a .csv file again and modify prices etc., before again uploading the revised product list.

 

[bargainmania]

There really is a hate mob out for OpenCart isnt there :-s

What I was getting at is that you believe that zen cart is better out the box. This does not mean that it is. Please don't assume things as we have used zen before and presta shop and many more but we prefer OpenCart. This does not mean it is the best, we just like it. We have built 10+ sites now on 1.5+ and have had know problems at all as we have used moduals that are 1.5 ready so that could be the way you have used it or that you have been very unlucky.

Jamie

Ok Jamie am not presuming anything btw.. If you prefer Opencart you are saying you prefer working with it???? There is obviously a reason for this?
What does it have that zencart does not? More files to mess about with?
More modules to have to pay for?

Ohhh and btw Opencart is a great piece of kit out of the box if you only
need it's basic function's

Alistair

Alistair

 

[swasa11]

Have a look at zeuscart which is the best open source shopping cart software to create your online store.

 

[searchsouth]

I've used Zen Cart and like it (it's free, which is an obvious bonus!)

But I would add a word of caution. I found that customising Zen Cart to meet relatively basic requirements involved a fair bit of work and quite a degree of technical know-how. I don't know how that compares with Magento, but I would suggest that you'll need to be tecnically minded, or have access to someone else who is.

 

[edmondscommerce]

At this level of products then any self hosted platform.

There is a pretty lively debate regarding which is the best one. Ultimatey though it depends on your specific needs.

Ones to look at include:

Magento, Open Cart, oscommmerce (CRE Loaded,Zen Cart - all basically the same), Presta Shop

There are others but these are the main ones really.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Pav,

as metioned, compare the the Magento hosted and ope source version. If OS has all you need, go for it!

 

[superpav]

Thank you all for your help. I will have a look at your suggestions and see how I get on. I am not very technical, this is why I particularly liked Magento Go as it seems relatively simple to use but looks effective. I want our website to look how I want without having to rely on somebody else to do it for me.

 

[kulture]

At 26,000 products I suspect magento will not be the solution. You would need a serious amount of hosting, probably a dedicated server, and that would cost at lease £100 + a month.

A less feature rich, leaner solution would be cheaper to run.

 

[FreshPage Web Design]

Thank you all for your help. I will have a look at your suggestions and see how I get on. I am not very technical, this is why I particularly liked Magento Go as it seems relatively simple to use but looks effective. I want our website to look how I want without having to rely on somebody else to do it for me.

Be prepared: it will be difficult to get it to look how you want without knowledge of html/css. In fact, every online shop I've made has required a certain amount of changes to the php code too.

 

[edmondscommerce]

At 26,000 products I suspect magento will not be the solution. You would need a serious amount of hosting, probably a dedicated server, and that would cost at lease £100 + a month.

A less feature rich, leaner solution would be cheaper to run.

Don't really agree with this. Perhaps with older versions of Magento but these days its not so much of an issue.

The biggest Magento site we have worked on to date was running around 100k, plenty of clients are running around the 20k mark

 

[ManWithBagOverHisHead]

Don't really agree with this. Perhaps with older versions of Magento but these days its not so much of an issue.

The biggest Magento site we have worked on to date was running around 100k, plenty of clients are running around the 20k mark

I'd say even 20k sounds rather expensive. Is that per year or month?

I found Magento rather slow - seems you either need "specially" tuned magento hosting, or your own powerful server, or probably both if you have a big site. I believe the paid for one has some optimizations to make it much better for large sites but my my, its expensive.

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

I'd say even 20k sounds rather expensive. Is that per year or month?

I think he meant 100,000 products, not pounds

 

[kulture]

However you cut it, Magento is resource hungry. The more complex a package, the more features it has, the more resources it uses. I love Magento and would normally recommend it to anyone. BUT 26,000 products will result in Magento needing a good hosting solution. A decent Virtual Dedicated server or a dedicated server. This will come at a price. Smaller, less feature rich packages will be able to handle the number of products with a cheaper hosting solution.

In the end it depends on the trade off between the needed features vs the monthly hosting costs.

The reason I say this is because the OP said "We are a small family run business and have a relatively small turnover so cannot justify spending large amounts on our website".

 

[edmondscommerce]

fair points

 

[webstoreinnovations-com]

However you cut it, Magento is resource hungry. The more complex a package, the more features it has, the more resources it uses. I love Magento and would normally recommend it to anyone. BUT 26,000 products will result in Magento needing a good hosting solution. A decent Virtual Dedicated server or a dedicated server. This will come at a price. Smaller, less feature rich packages will be able to handle the number of products with a cheaper hosting solution.

In the end it depends on the trade off between the needed features vs the monthly hosting costs.

The reason I say this is because the OP said "We are a small family run business and have a relatively small turnover so cannot justify spending large amounts on our website".

This is not strictly true if the software/framework you are using has some sort of inversion of control container which only loads objects on an as-needed basis. With large amounts of products what is probably more important is that the database server has the required resources available to it.

 

[ManWithBagOverHisHead]

This is not strictly true if the software/framework you are using has some sort of inversion of control container which only loads objects on an as-needed basis. With large amounts of products what is probably more important is that the database server has the required resources available to it.

Definitely true - I've used 2 other packages (both asp.net as it happens). Pretty good performance on bog shared windows hosting, one of them with 100,000 products (since moved to dedicated server as catalogue rose to 500,000).

 

[ORDERED WEB]

There is lot of old tosh been pedalled in this thread

The zencart/oscommerce/CREloaded family of carts are fine, but lack any real finesse (out of the box). Templating is no easier or harder than anything else

You can import a CSV file with most cart packages, including magento, zencart, virtuemart etc. etc

When choosing the best fit cart you need to consider things like

- how will a customer find a product
- what organisation do you want with your products
- how can products be related
- what customer experience do you want/need
- is it easily secured and compliant
- what additional features (besides the obvious) do you need
- How is the store integrating with your own existing systems
- do you need third party integrations (feeds, CRM, supply chain etc)

The thing is, for me, the questions raised above pretty much determine the outcome of the Zencart vs Magento debate

If you have 25000 products, you MUST have a really good front end organisation and presentation of them, and customers will need help choosing between the products, and things like filters, nested categories, product attribute management will make or break the efficacy of the store

The next thing to differentiate the good carts from the less good ones are things like bundles, catalogue discount rules etc..

 

[Dominic Taylor]

I'm going to throw Prestashop into the ring

Regarding number of products, 10,000 and even 100,000 are small numbers for any database but it's the software itself which adds complexity / configures the db correctly...I've seen old oscommerce installs take an age (10 seconds +) to process a page due to not having the right indexes in place, and have seen (configured ) Magento installs which respond in under half a second or so.

I'd pick a piece of software based on its features but most ecommerce software is free so you can try at no cost (except your time of course) then choose whichever works best.

Regarding hosted solutions, they can be good if you want a total no-hassle service but I'd say any hosting account with an auto-installer is just as convenient, more flexible, and much lower cost too.

In terms of budget £15 - £50/year max gets you a good shared hosting account, then £30 - £100/month gets you a good managed virtual server, and upwards from there is dedicated (but beware that a cheap dedicated will likely be worse than a high-end managed virtual server).

 

[mattlast005]

I'm going to throw Tiger Commerce in the ring also. Unlimited products and unlimited pages. Only £17.99 + VAT a month as a pay as you go option or just pay for the first year at £99 + VAT and you get a .co.uk domain with 3 e-mail accounts also.

Have a look at our packages - http://www.tigercommerce.co.uk/packages-pricing

I also work for Tiger Commerce just to avoid any confusion.

 

[stuart31]

I own a few very successful sites all using zencart

my web developer says its easy to manipulate than any of the others (we tried and sampled lots)

the interface is not as easy on the eye as some of the others but in terms of the functionality and add ons available - i'd definatly recommend.

It copes easily with my large product list

 

[stuart31]

I own a few very successful sites all using zencart

my web developer says its easy to manipulate than any of the others (we tried and sampled lots)

the interface is not as easy on the eye as some of the others but in terms of the functionality and add ons available - i'd definitely recommend.

It copes easily with my large product list

 

[stuart31]

so good i said it twice!!!

doh!

 

[Parrot Hosting]

I own a few very successful sites all using zencart

my web developer says its easy to manipulate than any of the others (we tried and sampled lots)

the interface is not as easy on the eye as some of the others but in terms of the functionality and add ons available - i'd definatly recommend.

It copes easily with my large product list

I am currently developing an ecommerce site for an established client who has 95% of their business via their website. We have been looking at Zencart and Tienda because they now both integrate completely into joomla and their site is joomla-based.

I am continually amazed at the progress of these two products which I am sure mirrors that of others in the market but, I do have to totally agree - with the above statement. Zencart certainly works for me (and will for them). One of the main criteria is that Streamline provide an api link for zencart which makes it the favourite but even if it didn't the PayPal Pro API would do the business for them.

 

[stuart31]

we use worldpay and streamline and the integration took ME (not my web developer) less than 10 mins to set up once the worldpay module was set up

the search engines also love how zencart builds a site (we also use a URL editing add in which makes the URLs better for the search engines) so you get a few points from google for having an easy to crawl site

 

[Karolina]

We've been working for a while with Magento and implemented several shops. If you can use Magento "as is" it's a perfect solution. But when you require different business logic for your products it will be rather hard.For sure the hosted BigCommerce is a great solution.

Honestly, in my opinion hosted solutions are the way to go. Therefore, we recently released our own very flexible solution: 21webmerce.

We wanted to make it as innovative as possible. SEO friendly, connectable to ERP and CRM systems, mobile and social media ready and able to manage many shops from one place. Fell free to browse our website and give us some feedback.

 

[Dominic Taylor]

We've been working for a while with Magento and implemented several shops. If you can use Magento "as is" it's a perfect solution. But when you require different business logic for your products it will be rather hard.For sure the hosted BigCommerce is a great solution.

Honestly, in my opinion hosted solutions are the way to go. Therefore, we recently released our own very flexible solution: 21webmerce.

We wanted to make it as innovative as possible. SEO friendly, connectable to ERP and CRM systems, mobile and social media ready and able to manage many shops from one place. Fell free to browse our website and give us some feedback.

But what happens when your client wants to customise your software, or get a backup, or host it on their own systems

 

[Parrot Hosting]

Honestly, in my opinion hosted solutions are the way to go. Therefore, we recently released our own very flexible solution: 21webmerce.

You have to be kidding me. A system that is free open source, totally portable, well known and used and trusted by millions of developers globally, infinitely customisable yet true to its original form, FREE to install, use, own, modify, develop or enhance without copyright infringement, royalties or compiled code against a 'privately hosted solution' ???????

Some of the best php developers in the world work on these opensource products full time and with massive teams - I could not think of a more secure, safer more viable way for anyone to go than any of the opensource solutions offered in previous posts.

 

[Karolina]

Our product was designed for more demanding customers. It's highly customizable and thus works for clients that own big shops or even multiple shop. 21webmerce was developed by one of the best ASP.NET MVC programmers and can be configured according to the needs of a specific customer unlike opensource solutions.

Some of the best C programmers work on Linux and still 90% of users prefer Microsoft Windows. It's all a matter of a specific business' needs.

Talking about security I have lately heard that opensource solutions may not be so secure. I can't post you an url (not enough posts here) but just browse: ECommerce Sites Based on Open Source Code Under Attack if you need confirmation.

If it comes to small eshops than I can agree that an opensource solution is sufficient but for bigger enterprises it would be easier and eventually cheaper to use a more dedicated platform.

 

[Dominic Taylor]

Some of the best C programmers work on Linux and still 90% of users prefer Microsoft Windows. It's all a matter of a specific business' needs.

Are you a real person or a spambot?

If you're a real person, stop posting drivel because it makes your employer look stupid.

 

[Parrot Hosting]

If it comes to small eshops than I can agree that an opensource solution is sufficient but for bigger enterprises it would be easier and eventually cheaper to use a more dedicated platform.

Tesco's uses joomla - I know its not ecommerce on its own but it tells you what a load of tosh that your statement is.

I would guarantee that if clients chose your solution that they would pay a heavy price to try and get anything done, and if they wanted to move away, that you would have them handcuffed and nailed to the floor.

 

[Karolina]

Of course I'm a real person. I was just trying to make my point, if that was to ironic then I'm sorry.
In my opinion every business should have a choice and some people prefer more ready solutions.
You're also representing some companies and the fact that you're trying to convince people that our idea for e-commerce is wrong is quite obvious but there are plenty solutions similar to ours and everybody can choose whatever they need or want. You would agree probably that each business is different and has different needs, so I'm not pushing anyone towards buying something that won't be useful.
Your offer probably works great for your clients and will work for your future clients perfect as well and I respect that.

I wouldn't dream even of handcuffing anyone to our product, if the person doesn't like it or finds the offer not suitable there's plenty of time to resign and choose something more adjusted. The customers get full access to the back-end and can do whatever they wish with it.

I again am not trying to discourage anyone from using other solutions but it's all a matter of choice.

Thank you for such a productive conversation anyway!