Recommended e-commerce/online store framework?

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Ragnor

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#90962 4-Oct-2011 14:08

I foolishly

agreed to help out a family friend and set up an online shop so he can sell his products online directly.

Background:
- He has a domain name registered + some linux hosting at openhost so php, mysql would be the basis.
- He has around 10 products but would like a relatively easy to use admin to add more, his tech savvy is not amazing but he can work a basic website as long as it's not to overly complex.
- He currently sells on ebay, trademe and uses paypal for payments for ebay, so his online store would only need to use paypal for payments at this stage and maybe direct deposit bank transfer for locals.
- He might be interested in taking credit card payments later on, but understands it's expensive (merchant accounts, fees etc).
- He's fine with listing his prices in USD as he mostly sells internationally, if multi currency was included in the platform he'd probably list in NZD too.
- I have pretty solid html/css/js/general IT skills so no problem installing/configuring/skinning.
- It looks like the openhost control panel can do an automatic install os-commerce and magneto amongst others.
- Budget is minimal so free open source is probably the way to go for this one.

It seems like there are a ton of options in this space, so I'm crowd sourcing your opinion a short list I should go try.

Basically looking for opinions on which ones to avoid and any glowing recommendations, given the above background.

itxtme

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#529071 4-Oct-2011 14:43

Oscommerce is good, has been for years. It is a little slow in regards to upgrades. Also he can accept Paypal credit cards and it costs nothing monthly, just a higher cost per transaction/slighlty higher rate.

richms

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#529074 4-Oct-2011 14:46

zencart would be my suggestion over OScommerce, but whichever you choose you need to be activly ontop of security patches etc and make sure you work them into whatever modifications you do as they are all about as bad as wordpress at getting hacked over and databases dumped etc.

Richard rich.ms

nate

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#529608 5-Oct-2011 15:12

I'm in a similar situation (but for my dad, oh joy) and I'm having a play with Magento at the moment, seems to work well...

xpd

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#529610 5-Oct-2011 15:16

OpenCart is good as well - OSCommerce (IMHO) is good, but takes a lot of configuring etc to get it looking good.

XPD / Gavin

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hairy1

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#529619 5-Oct-2011 15:25

I use Joomla and virtuemart. While Joomla is very good, particularly 1.6 onwards with ACL the same cannot be said for Virtuemart. It does the job but needs a fair bit of work to get up and running correctly. Virtuemart 2 is due out any day so hopefully that may sort things but we may be back to square one with a 'beta' product.

Cheers, Matt Matt.

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mattwnz

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#529647 5-Oct-2011 15:56

Magento can be very slow on some hosts, especially if they have lots of accountscon the server.

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Ragnor

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#529657 5-Oct-2011 16:05

richms: but whichever you choose you need to be activly ontop of security patches etc and make sure you work them into whatever modifications you do as they are all about as bad as wordpress at getting hacked over and databases dumped etc.

Yeah that's a pain.

If he was higher volume I would be saying just setup on Shopfiy but the fees are too high for his scale at this stage.

I'm going to take a dig into the suggestions later in the week and let you know how I go.

Ragnor

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#529688 5-Oct-2011 16:37

Actually I had some spare time so I tried out some of the demo sites for Magento, Open Cart, OS Commerce and Zen Cart and I'm leaning towards OpenCart or Magneto. I don't know how to put it but just playing around with the demo store and demo admin's they seem to have exceeded the others in terms of "modern-ness" and general polish.

So OpenCart, anyone used it?
http://www.opencart.com/

xpd

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#529696 5-Oct-2011 16:54

Ive used it a bit and my boss is using it for his personal company selling stuff online quite happily. havent head him complain about it.

XPD / Gavin

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mattwnz

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#529698 5-Oct-2011 17:01

Ragnor:
richms: but whichever you choose you need to be activly ontop of security patches etc and make sure you work them into whatever modifications you do as they are all about as bad as wordpress at getting hacked over and databases dumped etc.

Yeah that's a pain.

If he was higher volume I would be saying just setup on Shopfiy but the fees are too high for his scale at this stage.

I'm going to take a dig into the suggestions later in the week and let you know how I go.?

I use a hosted solution for some of my clients, that is better than that one and doesn't charge a % fee of turnover and the fees are reasonable. The good thing about a hosted solution is they handle all the updates and technical problems, which saves money in time. The bad thing is that you are only renting the website, and if they ever go out of business the website could be lost.

hairy1

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#529701 5-Oct-2011 17:04

mattwnz:
Ragnor:
richms: but whichever you choose you need to be activly ontop of security patches etc and make sure you work them into whatever modifications you do as they are all about as bad as wordpress at getting hacked over and databases dumped etc.

Yeah that's a pain.

If he was higher volume I would be saying just setup on Shopfiy but the fees are too high for his scale at this stage.

I'm going to take a dig into the suggestions later in the week and let you know how I go.?

I use a hosted solution for some of my clients, that is better than that one and doesn't charge a % fee of turnover and the fees are reasonable. The good thing about a hosted solution is they handle all the updates and technical problems, which saves money in time. The bad thing is that you are only renting the website, and if they ever go out of business the website could be lost.

Who are using for hosting? Someone like Synaps.co.nz?

My views (except when I am looking out their windows) are not those of my employer.