Magento or Oscommerce

[tgstechnosis]

Which is the best solution for ecommerce websites under developers view ? Magento or Oscommerce..

 

[seoswat]

Magento by far if your a developer

 

[tgstechnosis]

Magento by far if your a developer

Why choosing magento only ?.. it is developed from oscommerce.. we found one difference between OSCOM & MGNTO that is MGNTO supports multiple images for each products, but oscommerce supports only single image. We already find a solution for this problem in oscommerce..

What are the major differences you found ?

 

[callumlaird]

Do you not find that Magento is a lot more expensive than it should be?

 

[Cyborg Industries]

I' moved from oscommerce to zencart (an oscommerce derivative) which is much better for development and management, many of our customers love it because it's simple to use and does what it says on the tin.

Magento although having a nice set of features seems very bloated.

 

[ukbf0001]

What are your ecommerce needs ?

What is the 'best' solution depends on what your requirements are. Voucher codes, upselling, specific payment gateway, global product options or price changes, SEO savvy etc etc.

Know your requirements and then find the solution - or get someone else to find it.
Oscommerce - unless they've updated it, is dated. Zencart the same, Prestashop is much more 'Web2' enabled - but still has issues with product option combinations, Magento - steep learning curve, can be heavy on server load.

There are lots of other carts out there - you need to find the best one for you

 

[Cyborg Industries]

The Zencart / oscommerce standard template / layout is dated, which looks rubbish, there's too many people who just change the logo and colours and say tada I've got a site, I think this is why these things get a bad name.

The same will happen with the Magento layout, as people try to avoid paying professional designers and change the logo and maybe a colour or two, the only thing saving it at the moment is it's a bit of a pain to install (even our dedicated server needed additional php modules installed)

With skill and knowledge you can do anything you like with zencart and you can get it to look as modern and unique as you like...

 

[edmondscommerce]

I certainly wouldn't recommend osCommerce, as much as I respect its place in the history of open source ecommerce, for any new site.

 

[tgstechnosis]

The Zencart / oscommerce standard template / layout is dated, which looks rubbish, there's too many people who just change the logo and colours and say tada I've got a site, I think this is why these things get a bad name.

The same will happen with the Magento layout, as people try to avoid paying professional designers and change the logo and maybe a colour or two, the only thing saving it at the moment is it's a bit of a pain to install (even our dedicated server needed additional php modules installed)

With skill and knowledge you can do anything you like with zencart and you can get it to look as modern and unique as you like...

Exactly we do appreciate your statement "With skill and knowledge you can do anything you like with zencart and you can get it to look as modern and unique as you like..."

But only change is oscommerce in place of zencart. I don't know why all people responded in this forum have not a good impact over oscommerce. ?

 

[tgstechnosis]

There are lot of valuable information from developers who posted in this thread..

But how can we conclude this, which ecommerce application is more developer friendly and user friendly..

 

[Cyborg Industries]

completely depends on your skillset.. they are both perfectly good open source ecommerce solutions which in the right hands can be great for most applications..

in the wrong hands... oscommerce will probably work but not look great, magento has a much steeper learning curve so it may not even get off the ground.

That said, the magento marketing team is strong and it's getting more and more popular so as a developer it's not a bad feather to pop in your cap.

One thing I would add, although magento is feature rich, ecommerce is not always about features, often customers want the core functionality and don't require or want all the bells and whistles, many of the big sites don't bother with more than an add to cart button and it works. Features are only good if they are used right and if they add to your customers shopping experience so whatever you go for, remember you may not need all the toys it offers.

 

[Surminga]

Can you not get Magento free with QuickInstall and other hosting accounts installer software?

Or should this be avoided.

I am in the process of setting up an ecommerce site with the idea of using the free install version and as the site grew as well as profits I would install higher and more powerful versions of magento to meet the needs..

Any advice on the free version and has anybody gone down the same route?

 

[AndyMorley]

I would always go for Magento all day long.... much more professional.. OS is an old platform

 

[dx3webs]

I am surprised at how reasonable the opinions on oscommerce are... it is a horrible rats nest of a code base and a nightmare to work with.. compared to any modern shopping cart (magento, open cart, prestashop etc) oscommerce is a joke

We migrated all our clients off this a long time a go and they were universally glad to be rid of it.

 

[ITsoldUK]

Comparing Magneto and Osc?

Really?

Come on guys...OSC is a nightmare to work with, complicated, depreciated, bloated and in some instances incorrectly coded...not to mention the backend is down right ugly and NOT user friendly at all...

There really is no contest in this field IMHO.

 

[wicketts]

Do you not find that Magento is a lot more expensive than it should be?

What? You mean 'more expensive' than free? Do you want the Magento developers to pay you for using their product?

 

[AndyMorley]

Magento is awesome in my opinion, the back end stuff adds to its awesomeness... The onsite search functionality in the back end is great! Having the option to direct people to certain areas of your site for certain terms your visitors are searching for.

EG... search comes in for "blu widdets" (spelling error) you can redirect any more instances of this to the "blue widgets" product page.

 

[webstore]

OScommerce was great in it's day. It must be about 10-years ago now since it was first launched. Having said that, today there are still large numbers of OScommerce sites still running successfully.

However, for new builds it's the likes of Magento, OpenCart and other OpenSource on-line shop systems that are being used, given OScommerce has not kept up with the pace of new functionality.

 

[edmondscommerce]

Agreed

Also its worth bearing in mind that many currently active "oscommerce" stores are in reality bespoke websites based on a kernel of osCommerce but with so many modifications that they are more bespoke than osC

 

[Metalfrogboss]

Neither. Both shockers and both inflexible, in my experience. Just Google what others say.

 

[webstore]

Neither. Both shockers and both inflexible, in my experience. Just Google what others say.

Regarding Magento, if you visit http://go.magento.com the official hosting services site for Magento Inc. which is owned by eBay Inc. they state the words ". . . the eCommerce Platform Trusted by More than 125,000 Merchants" but the real number will be very much higher given many more companies, such as ourselves, will be hosting sites independently using the Community Edition.

Speculation is that eBay paid $180m+ to acquire Magento Inc in 2011 and I can't see that a shrewd and very successful company such as eBay Inc who also owns PayPal and other businesses, would be buying into ecommerce software as you describe.

OScommerce has equally made a major contribution to the global take up of ecommerce solutions but given its a bit old now, Magento and OpenCart are gaining in popularity for new builds.

 

[Metalfrogboss]

Thanks for your reply. I can only speak as I find and Magento is preferred by retailers because a lot of agencies punt it to them. Anecdotally, having built over 300 online shops in the past 15 years I can give you factual information based upon development issues,seo flexibility, and most importantly user admin ease and integration. Most carts have evolved from OSC. I would say that the best cart for a developer to configure is the one which offers latest technology, user friendliness, best cart integration , seo friendliness and good support. At present unfortunately Magento and OSC do not tick all these boxes. I have retail clients who we are moving from Magento because we have actively proven the pitfalls;factually.
Best regards
Chris

 

[webstore]

. . . I have retail clients who we are moving from Magento because we have actively proven the pitfalls;factually.
Best regards
Chris

Hi Chris - It might be helpful to others in this forum if you can report Magento pitfalls and what you are replacing Magento with. We are new to Magento having previously used OScommerce and having built ASP.net + ASP custom based sites many years ago and using Magento CE 1.7.0.2 we have yet to find any problems. - Ian Web-Store Ltd

 

[Metalfrogboss]

Hi
Firstly, we would not touch .net for web development. It is as inflexible and modular as it gets and Microsoft and Website are 2 words that should be kept well apart in programming terms.
Open source is more flexible, hosting less of an issue and performance is enhanced. Likewise client is not tied in to Microsoft, licensing etc.
To Magento: you asked what issues we have seen - Performance is horrible. Changing a single attribute to a product in the backend takes an average of about a minute to perform, on an otherwise responsive server. AJAX or not, that is absolutely unacceptable. The frontend, despite being cached, is not all that much better. Yes, you are talking about a lot of features here but at the expense of performance to an annoying degree. The latest version is supposed to address certain performance issues, so we’ll keep you posted if that situation changes.
2.Understand. That while some modules have been created by excellent Magento developers, the vast majority have not. Also keep in mind that any module you install to your website has the potential to cause a problem. This may be a major problem that completely breaks your store, or it may be a minor problem that doesn’t isn’t apparent at first, in which case it may be difficult to track down the cause.
These are 2 of many issues, but this said it is certainly better than OSC (not difficult). Years ago we worked with OSC, then moved to ZenCart and now OpenCart. That said, these are all in need of reconfiguration and greater stress testing than the out of the box versions give. As with anything free or open source you cannot expect perfection so my Team and I normally redesign, redevelop and build new modules for any online shopping experience we create.
Hope that helps.
Chris.

 

[webstore]

As we understand one should only be using the latest version of Magento CE 1.7.0.2 in order to fix a serious security vulnerability caused by Zend XMLRPC functionality.

Also one should only be using extensions that are to CE 1.7 compatible and in our opinion it's advisable to run both a development site and production site so as one's client requests new extensions they can be first tested on the development site to ensure there are no extension conflicts.

 

[Metalfrogboss]

That's all well and good and I would concur with your testing procedures but this does not alter build quality, vulnerability and setup issues we have seen. Can you really see a mumpreneur or one man startup being able to cope with this?

 

[Cyborg Industries]

There's a lot of DOS and windows 3.1 based business systems about which just work.. it's not all about smooth edges, and drop downs, I find most businesses appreciate stuff that works, sales people like to sell stuff that looks pretty.

 

[Metalfrogboss]

What we have see in latest version as issues:
Cache updating and need for complete re-indexing on upgrade.
Cache actually gets disabled on upgrade so re-indexing is a must!
Not good!
Importing old csv data files is a joke. They show up back end but not front until the right product set us shown. Admin says this is the case but isn't .
Also many SagePay integration issues. Especially with Sage 200 and auto barcode inventory control parameters.

 

[Metalfrogboss]

Coming from early DOS era I agree Cyborg!

 

[webstore]

Can you really see a mumpreneur or one man startup being able to cope with this?

We only recommend Magento to clients who have somebody tech savvy on board and who say want feature rich functionality including bulk .csv product import containing configurable, grouped, bundled, virtual products plus options of eBay, Amazon, Google Product Search integration etc etc.

For the mumpreneur or one man startup OpenCart has to be the ideal solution. The lead OpenCart developer is Daniel Kerr who did a lot of development work on OScommerce so OpenCart comes with a very good pedigree.

 

[Metalfrogboss]

Interesting comments webstore. I personally would not expect any of my clients to be tech savvier and once delivered would want them to be able to become masters of their own destiny, with our continued Dev and Design team backup and support offered free of charge for the duration of the relationship.

 

[dx3webs]

We host plenty of non-techy clients successfully running their own magento stores quite happily. Once installed there are only a few required tasks ie add or remove products. It really is not all that difficult.

 

[14Steve14]

My current store uses oscommerce. It took ages to add the features that were required, some of them very basic features which were missing. I have argued on the oscommerce forums that it needs to be brought up to date. The only people that disagree with this, are the developers who sell oscommerce to clients and charge to add this basic functionality. What a suprise.

Oscommerce works. Just. The latest version does unfortunately use the 960 grid system, which it never should have, but for some reason it was included. It has multi image functions which is great, and it is easy to add, remove and alter products. Its backend reporting does take a bit of sorting out, but is just usable.

I have tried magneto, and just cant seem to get along with it. It is also bulky and occasionally slow. Not too good for your customers.

Finding a cheap ecommerce system is really down to how much time and money you can afford to get it as you want it. You either have to learn to do it your self, or pay someone to do it for you. This does go to show that there is nothing like a free ecommerce system.

 

[zimumahi]

First, list the features you need for your store then check if it's offered yet by each platform. For general requirement, I do think that at the moment Magento is the better one.

For long-term development. If you willing to pay for additional features, there's nothing say any more. If you are waiting for free features then choose the one that has bigger/stronger community support. Once again, I think magento is better platform for general requirement.

Good luck!

 

[antropy]

Magento or osCommerce? Neither, here's why:

Magento is complex in terms of its code and usage, the free version also doesn't support full page caching which means it runs slowly. Complex code - why is this a bad thing? Because you'll need to pay more for development work and new featuers.

osCommerce - was once a great system but is now old. Over time the codebase has got messy and it hasn't kept pace with new developments.

So I'd suggest taking a look at www.OpenCart.com.

Here's a comparison of OpenCart and Magento: http://www.antropy.co.uk/blog/opencart-vs-magento/

 

[dx3webs]

there is nothing slow about magento... we have sites running community with 10 000 + products running on (well setup) shared hosting running as fast as any other shopping cart. It is a lot more complicated than does it have a full page cache or does it not.

 

[optik]

If you want something that is easy to manage the Inzu is great, but it will need setting up by a web designer as it's not template based, which is a good thing in my opinion.

 

[WHUK]

I would go with Magento. it provides with the perfect features for establishing an efficient eCommerce website. The best thing about Magento is that it makes things easy for the people.

 

[Surminga]

As with any product there will be a divide of people for and against it. Magento is a huge company and also as mentioned owned by eBay. The ecommerce platform itself provides an ecommerce based for hundreds of thousands of business which certainly tells me they are doing something right and have a good product.

I had been uhming and ahing for a while over which ecommerce platform to use and in the end opted with magento and looking for an ots theme in which I can modify myself with basic skills - so far so good and not a problem, if I have had any issues magento have a wealth of resources in the forms of forums and support.

 

[bigbeandigital]

If you just want to "skin" it's out of the box features, Magento is by far a much more sensible choice, but it has a bloated architecture, which means anything that isn't out of the box, is very expensive to develop.

Zencart is dated, if you are looking for something that is easy for developers to customise and adapt, I would recommend opencart, they did have some security issues, but they have now been addressed, it's simple and lightweight.

Regards