The Best e-commerce + Pro's and Con's & Whats Your Favourite E-Commerce ?

[keeron]

Hi guys, im going to give pros and cons on the best e-commerce platforms.
And im curious on what your favourite e-commerce platform is ??

Ive tried nearly all of them, over 15 of them and they all have postives and negatives to them. I will list the pros and cons of some of the more popular ones. Im only briefly touching the pros and cons from my experience ,im not going in depth.

Magento :
Pros : Alot of control over your store, lots of options, lots of customization. loads of great themes and good modules and add ons.
Cons : Has a fairly big learning curve for the average pc user, will annoy you if you dont have some knowledge of devs or html etc.

Joomla :
Pros :Easy to use, Good modules, A massive amount of great Themes, Easy to keep track of your stock etc. Anyone should be able to use it.
Cons:The shopping cart kinda sucks, to get your shop to look like a store takes a while, lack of integration with ecommerce, virtue mart is rubbish compared to magento eccomerce options .

Drupal :
Pros :Easy to use, Good Themes, Good Control over your store
Cons : Ugly looking back office, design of back office looks sub-par to other platforms.

Prestashop :
Pros :Easy as hell to use, Great Looking back office, Very easy to set up, A few good themes, Good Modules.
Cons: Lacks alot of good themes, some features dont work, the export products tool does not work.

Zencart:
Pros: Simple to use
Cons : Rubbish Back Office design and navigation imo, Sub- Par compared to other ecommerce platforms, lacking in themes.

Wordpress:
Pros: Most popular CMS so it has thousands of amazing themes, it has thousands of modules and the options are endless, decent back office navigation, easy to use.
Cons: Woocommerce is sub-par compared to magento or prestashops ecommerce features, the back-office seems cluttered compared to magento, joomla or prestashop.

Overall, compared to a decade ago, we are very lucky as bulding a website would of cost a few thousand, now we can do it for less than £100 in less than a week.

Each CMS and E-Commerce Platfrom has advantages or disadvantages, none of them are perfect, so you are going to choose one to which you prefer.

I like magento, joomla, prestashop and wordpress.
I would reccomend joomla & wordpress for outstanding themes and for blogs and for those who want a sub-par shop, as the ecommerce is rubbish on wordpress & joomla, the ecommerce modules are very basic.
I would reccomend magento and prestashop for more serious e-commerce businesses, as they are far superior.

I would NEVER reccomend shopify.com or bigcommerce or any other website builder type of service.
In 1 year of shopify you will pay around £1400 for the same features of magento which will cost me £50 a year, and thats paying for my web hosting everything else is free.

And spotify take a commission of your sales, i would never go with them. Get a webhosting service. <needless rant removed by moderator>
Whats your favourite ?

 

[keeron]

I forgot to talk about Opencart lol, which is great and is on the same level as Prestashop or joomla.

 

[deniser]

I would NEVER reccomend shopify.com or bigcommerce or any other website builder type of service.
In 1 year of shopify you will pay around £1400 for the same features of magento which will cost me £50 a year, and thats paying for my web hosting everything else is free.

And spotify take a commission of your sales, i would never go with them. Get a webhosting service. <removed>
Whats your favourite ?

But these sites are specifically designed for the stupid - like me - not those who know what they are doing. I couldn't even get started with Magento yet managed to set up a Shopify shop within a few days which is so well optimised for Google that I got excellent sales from it straight away.

And I pay about £500 per year and they waived the commission fees altogether so not costly at all.

 

[keeron]

But these sites are specifically designed for the stupid - like me - not those who know what they are doing. I couldn't even get started with Magento yet managed to set up a Shopify shop within a few days which is so well optimised for Google that I got excellent sales from it straight away.

And I pay about £500 per year and they waived the commission fees altogether so not costly at all.

Wow, £500 is alot.

I could save you £450, just by giving you advice and a step by step guide on how to set up a open source e-commerce.

But if you still cant work it out, on how to do it, I am writing an ebook on how to do this, i will be selling it on amazon kindle, but i can give it you for free, when i do my promotion.


But i can also help before i release that book.

I would reccomend Prestashop for you, you dont need to understand how to create websites or anything, you just need to know how to manage your products.

I think i might make a business of registering domains, getting people a web host, setting up their website and doing everything to get their site on google search engine and save them £450 a year in the process. LOL


I might create a website tonight, and advertise as a all in one website creation service, where i set everything up for people like you who are getting ripped off.

In all honesty your been ripped off by £500 a year and they take commisions off all of your products.

What do you think , do you think people would come to me for my business? IM been serious too LOL..


If your thinking about saving £450 a year then give me a shout.

 

[kulture]

It would help if you would read what others say before ranting. Deniser clearly states that they are not being charged commission.

Shopify has its place in the market. It provides comfort and a trouble free package so the retailer just has to look after the products and not waste time on Internet stuff.

Personally I would never use them and think that their peace of mind is too expensive.

Your thread is beginning to look like a rant against the likes of Shopify, and not a more general balanced discussion of the options. It is also beginning to look like you promoting your book and services. I hope this is not the case.

 

[deniser]

To be honest £500 is peanuts compared to the sums the site turns over. My time is money too and if I learned web site building from scratch it would cost me a lot more.

I think it's superb value for money as I don't have to worry about anything. Absolutely everything is taken care of. And the £500 includes hosting.

 

[keeron]

It would help if you would read what others say before ranting. Deniser clearly states that they are not being charged commission.

Shopify has its place in the market. It provides comfort and a trouble free package so the retailer just has to look after the products and not waste time on Internet stuff.

Personally I would never use them and think that their peace of mind is too expensive.

Your thread is beginning to look like a rant against the likes of Shopify, and not a more general balanced discussion of the options. It is also beginning to look like you promoting your book and services. I hope this is not the case.

I dont have any services to promote lol.

I import health supplements, and im now starting to import phones.

I dont create websites as a business or job , i was been humorous.

 

[keeron]

To be honest £500 is peanuts compared to the sums the site turns over. My time is money too and if I learned web site building from scratch it would cost me a lot more.

I think it's superb value for money as I don't have to worry about anything. Absolutely everything is taken care of. And the £500 includes hosting.

Well im not going to argue, its your choice.

If you think £500 is peanuts.

What about £50 a year? For web hosting because thats all you have to pay for.
Shopify are charging you £450 more a year for 5 x less features, with less control, less themes, less modules , less social integration, less SEO optimization, i could go on & on lol.

Will 24 hours of your time will cost you £500 ?
It only takes 24 hours to launch a site, these days.
And you dont need to know how to build a website from scratch, thats a myth LOL...
You just need know how to manage your products, it will be like managing Shopify but with more options.

I also tell people not to use, MagnetoGo, Bigcommerce, Madefreshly.
Im using Shopify as an example because that is the most expensive.

Good luck, if you need any help just give us a shout.

 

[14Steve14]

I forgot to talk about Opencart lol, which is great and is on the same level as Prestashop or joomla.

What about all the other free open source shopping carts that you have not mentioned like oscommerce, open cart, spree commerce, VirtueMart, Ubercart, Zeuscart, Afcommerce, SimpleCart, TomatoCart, CubeCart, RokQuickCart and StoreSprite to name but a few. All are free to use and all have different packages for different users. Some of them come with cpanel from hosts and can be installed with one click for simple testing or use. Just install them and play to your hearts content and uninstall the ones that you do not like.

 

[keeron]

. Just install them and play to your hearts content and uninstall the ones that you do not like.

I mentioned all the other 15 + CMS and E-commerce platforms in another thread.

If you really wanted me to talk about anoth 15 open source platforms, then the thread would of 2 pages long LOL...

You just hit the nail on the head, you can just Install & Uninstall every single e-commerce platorm, and you can do this with just one-click.


I didnt mean to come across as arrogant or whatever, i just trying to say that when you Buy web hosting and have access to Cpanel, you can easily install any open source e-commerce platform you wish without having to pay monthly fees which end up being £500 a year.

I pay £50 a year and i have 20x more features, more control 25 more e-commerce and CMS platforms, access to over 2,000 different themes, modules , plug ins etc etc..

I may make another thread but be less harsh and more informative..

My bad guys, i apologize!

 

[j600com]

I'd be interested to see the quality of these sites you build in 24 hours, have you got any examples?

 

[keeron]

I'd be interested to see the quality of these sites you build in 24 hours, have you got any examples?

I dont build websites although i know how. i Have my own, and i use CMS. Or Wordpress.
I dont know why you are even skeptical?. LOL.

All you do is download a quickstart package which is 50 - 100 MB, which will take around 2-3mins to download.
Then you upload the quickstart package to Extplorer in your Cpanel, which will take around 5 mins.

Then you install the quickstart package which takes 5 mins.
And once you have installed it, your website is built, your theme, your shopping cart, your headings, slideshow, categories have all been built and created.

So overall, it takes 20 minutes, for you to get your website created.
Now all you have to do is add your products.

Even without a quickstart package, for example, by using wordpress.
All you do is download your theme, then upload it to wordpress, install it and install the sample data, and there you have it, your website is built.

All you have to do is add your products, add your logos, images and all your business information, which will take around 3 hours on wordpress, depending on what your are doing.
If you use a CMS, it will take around 1 - 2 hours to add your products.

 

[kulture]

Lol, all you have described is building the fabric. The bare skeleton. There is so much more to it than that.

 

[j600com]

Lol, all you have described is building the fabric. The bare skeleton. There is so much more to it than that.

My thoughts exactly

 

[j600com]

I dont build websites although i know how. i Have my own, and i use CMS. Or Wordpress.
I dont know why you are even skeptical?. LOL.

All you do is download a quickstart package which is 50 - 100 MB, which will take around 2-3mins to download.
Then you upload the quickstart package to Extplorer in your Cpanel, which will take around 5 mins.

Then you install the quickstart package which takes 5 mins.
And once you have installed it, your website is built, your theme, your shopping cart, your headings, slideshow, categories have all been built and created.

So overall, it takes 20 minutes, for you to get your website created.
Now all you have to do is add your products.

Even without a quickstart package, for example, by using wordpress.
All you do is download your theme, then upload it to wordpress, install it and install the sample data, and there you have it, your website is built.

All you have to do is add your products, add your logos, images and all your business information, which will take around 3 hours on wordpress, depending on what your are doing.
If you use a CMS, it will take around 1 - 2 hours to add your products.

Again, have you got any examples - I'd love to see the end product

I dont build websites although i know how. i Have my own, and i use CMS. Or Wordpress.
I dont know why you are even skeptical?. LOL.

I'm skeptical because you've said yourself "I don't build websites" then professed how to do it. It's like me saying "I'm not a dentist, but I know how to pull teeth out with pliers - please read my guide on how to be a dentist"