still using oscommerce/cre loaded/zen cart?

[edmondscommerce]

Just wondering how many of the ecommerce readers are still running sites based on oscommerce, CRE Loaded or Zen Cart (all the same basic platform).

We still have quiet a few clients running it..

Are you thinking to upgrade or are you running such a massively modified store you can't bear the thought of migrating and losing all your finely tuned functionality?

I'm actually a bit of a closet osCommerce fan...

 

[kaifu]

Personally I think that Magento and OpenCart are the best eCommerce solutions available right now in terms of flexibility and ease of use for developers and store administrators.

osCommerce is a fantastic eCommerce system, but its code base is starting to feel a bit bloated.

 

[florenceij]

We do have a few clients using this that are very satisfied as it meets their daily and basic needs. Oscommerce never had the perfect coding layout but has an extensive network of developers. It's quite sad that there has been no update for awhile. Creloaded and Zencart seem to be progressing with update and releases although this seems slow.

Magento however is more stable and better long term investment. The support so far is great. This makes them a more stable option but this solution is not for all clients as some start ups on a tight budget need something to start off with and sometimes solutions like joomla, oscommerce or EKMpowershop etc seems to be their best option. I don't advise anyone to host magento on a shared hosting plan.

 

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

Recently I have been developing in Opencart as the general user interface and layout is a bit more modern.

Today though I have been doing a Zen Cart store for a client who has another Zen store and it's actually been a nice change.

One problem I have with Opencart is it's not the most flexible, the MVC model separates the header/sideboxes/main/footer so to move the cart detail to the header you need to find and copy the controller code, same to move information pages to the footer.

The work i've been doing today in Zen Cart has brought the thought back to me if I spent a bit of time working on a base template that incorporated the more modern layout of Opencart/Prestashop/Magento the backend and features in Zen Cart would allow a very powerful store.

I don't know what's happening with Zen Cart 2 but if it's a full rewrite it just become a competitor to the more modern carts but all the existing functionality and addons would be obsolete.

 

[onesixtyfourth]

Sticking with it for now (ZenCart) as I am comfortable with it and changing over s a lot of work. I have been looking into Drupal/Ubercart and that is what I would like to use when I do eventually change over.

 

[Alicatt]

We switched our main ecommerce site from oscommerce last year - still worked pretty well but badly needed a facelift and I wanted to integrate the content pages better with the shop.

Went for a bespoke solution in the end, but if I'd known more about Magento I would probably have been tempted.

 

[Jeff FV]

I don't advise anyone to host magento on a shared hosting plan.

Could you expand on why?

Not because I disagree, but because I'm trying to learn & make a good, informed decision.

I have a 'hand built' website for our 'public' customers and a zen cart powered site for our trade customers.

I can see that possibily within the next 12 months we may well re-do our 'public customers' site and I've been hearing good things about Magneto, so its on the long list of possibles.

Jeff

 

[H22SolutionsLtd]

OpenCart is growly in popularity. Updates seem to be a bit too regular though.

 

[edmondscommerce]

Could you expand on why?

Jeff

I also wouldn't recommend Magento for the kind of client that is going to be hosting on a £60 per year..

something like CRE or Zen would be a better choice for this kind of client

 

[edmondscommerce]

OpenCart is growly in popularity. Updates seem to be a bit too regular though.

too regular?

 

[sanjiv]

Could you expand on why?

Not because I disagree, but because I'm trying to learn & make a good, informed decision.

I have a 'hand built' website for our 'public' customers and a zen cart powered site for our trade customers.

I can see that possibily within the next 12 months we may well re-do our 'public customers' site and I've been hearing good things about Magneto, so its on the long list of possibles.

Jeff

You could do all of that in CRE Loaded B2B edition instead of having to have two separate stores.

 

[iboxsecurity]

Magento is really becoming the defacto choice for most of our clients who have taken it upon themselves to find soltuions. Magento is a great tool as long as you set it up correctly and have someone to look after it now and again I think.

 

[edmondscommerce]

Agree with that.. there are a few occasions when Magento isn't a good fit but this is becoming increasingly rare.

I certainly wouldn't pay for a non free version of CRE (B2B edition) over having Magento for free!

 

[EliteIntegrity]

Prestashop is so easy to use and quite well featured as well. So many tasks that involve editing source files in others can be done with a click in Prestashop.

Even Magento has nasty little procedures for things like block management that Prestashop does with a click.

True Magento still has more features/modules but Prestashop is moving fast and gets my vote.

Love it

 

[edmondscommerce]

I also like Prestashop, but I must admit that its squeezed between osCommerce for comprehensive features and available extensions/themes and the ability to run on the cheapest hosting on one side and Magento for the latest and greatest and most powerful platform on the other site.

So that means Presta is in the middle ground and I don't really find a case to recommend it over one of those two. Its also competing with platforms like Open Cart etc. Its crowded in the middle basically.

 

[Martin W]

Hi,
I have a big experience in working with different shopping carts and must say that each of them have their pros and cons.
osCommerce is pretty easy to use and set up, but if you need to customize it, it can be really tough. CRE Loaded has a lot of contributions from Oscommerce but some of them can be difficult to install. Magento is very difficult in use. It has a complicated technical documentation and very hard coding style. So if you want to use it you will probably need some help in managing your Magento Store. Besides it is designed more for big stores. Zen Cart and CubeCart are very simple in use, but they lack features and funktionality.
So anyways there is no a single shopping cart that will meet all your needs. That's why it is recommended to use an aditional software to help you manage your shopping cart. Not long ago I started to use a Store Manager, developed by MagneticOne. It significantly simplifies all your standard tasks like editing new products,attributes,categories, import/export files, managing customers and orders. It works really good!

 

[Martin W]

Hi, everyone!
I am still using CRE Loaded and I´m pretty happy with it. I have got an aditional software - Store Manager for CRE Loaded from MagneticOne. With this software I have no problems in managing my CRE Loaded store. It allows to import/export products, categories etc, create reports, manage orders/etc automatically and in a short period of time. With store manager I can apply changes to thousands of products at once, what is really convenient and saves a huge amount of time. Since I'm using store manager I can't even imagine doing all this things manually! It is really worth trying!

 

[chalkie99]

Not even clever spam.

 

[gibby]

We did use oscommerce for a while but had too many issues with it, but it was free.
Tried several others & found cube cart to fit us best.

I have played about with Magento and not been that impressed but to be fair not had alot of time to get to know it.
One of our suppliers use it as a wholesale site but its always slow & has issues even though they moved to a dedicated server recently.
Some new customers have been telling us they now use us as a competitors site is almost useless since they moved to a new site & it is Magento they are using.

Saying that I have seen some cracking site with Magento so maybe its how its used

G

 

[edmondscommerce]

yep its definitely how its used

also as Magento is still pretty new (well its been around a couple of years) a lot of agencies are still cutting their teeth and perhaps getting in over their heads.

Ultimately is their client that suffers because the whole thing has not been done properly.

Magento is complex and is definitely not designed for anyone to be able to pick up and start customising.

We've been working almost exclusively on it for ages now and we are still learning new things about the platform every day.

To me it's like a long novel - it can be hard to get into at first, but once your a few hundred pages in, the depth and power of the story is way better than a shorter novel simply because the story and the characters can become so deep.

Nice analogy actually - I just came up with that now

 

[cmcp]

Beautiful!

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

The majority of our gateway customers use the likes of osCommerce, Zen Cart and ekmpowershop. However, we are seeing that Magento and OpenCart are becoming more and more popular with developers and as such we are due to integrate these with our EcomMerchant payment gateway shortly.

 

[edmondscommerce]

Beautiful!

cheers, artistic moment - must be because its sunny

 

[cmcp]

it's sunny up here too. bloody freezing though!

 

[edmondscommerce]

yep welcome to winter