If you’re as OCD as me, you find it hard to find really good software with really good code and an equally good interface. Also, if you’re on a budget like me (and who isn’t these days?) you hate paying for software, so you tend to stick with whatever’s free.
I don’t do many eCommerce sites, but when I do they are ALWAYS a pain. I would normally download the newest copy of ZenCart and then proceed to rip out my hair and charge clients double to skin it. I also tried Shopp for WordPress, thinking something that would integrate with WP had to be easy to use. I was wrong.
Six months ago, I had a client who wanted a nice shopping cart that was easy to use. I decided not to go with ZenCart or Shopp this time and to try out a company I’d heard about from a close friend, who make a shopping cart called CoreCommerce. While CoreCommerce isn’t free, it blew my mind so much with it’s awesomeness that I decided to make them my official shopping cart providers from then on. Let’s take a look at what makes ZenCart, Shopp and CoreCommerce so different, and the ups and downs to each.
ZenCart was started in 2003 and is based on osCommerce. Developers tend to have a love/hate relationship with this software. They love this software because:
Free? We love free right? Wrong. I’m sure every developer who’s worked with ZenCart can tell you how much it makes them want to dump programming for pottery, or something less threatening to the remaining hair left on their head. For the one real good thing about ZenCart, there’s a slew of bad things:
I ran into Shopp for WordPress when a client came to me with it already installed on his website. I couldn’t find any information about the developers or the program itself on their website. So we’ll dive right into the pros:
Other than that, the software bombed for me. Why?
I’m not sure if ZenCart or Shopp was worse in my experience. I think ZenCart had an excuse since it was free. Shopp however, did not, since I paid a hefty price for it.
CoreCommerce is made by SumEffect, who in 2001 came out with their first cart, digiShop. They’re located south of Nashville, in Franklin, which makes them local to me (not that that really matters – it’s just cool.) I find their prices not too hard to deal with after all their benefits:
Of course, nothing is perfect and neither are they. There are a few minor things that bug me such as:
If you’re wanting to do heavy modification to a cart, and/or don’t want to pay a monthly fee or have it hosted for you, SumEffect still offers their first cart called digiShop, starting at $350.
I haven’t tried Volusion or osCommerce, but I’ve heard some nasty things about them. I’ve yet to hear anyone really complain about CoreCommerce and I’ve done several sites with them already. I tell the agencies I work with to check them out, as the price is definitely worth avoiding the headache.
Have you have any experiences with shopping carts? Who were they and how was it?
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Have you worked at all with the Instinct WP eCommerce plugin (http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce)? I’m giving it a whirl for a small business site I’m creating right now, and it seems pretty user-friendly. I haven’t had any trouble so far, but I’m not sure how it would hold up for bigger projects.
I’ve used X-Cart and ShoppingQ as well as a bunch of smaller eCommerce systems. X-Cart is definitely a beast but it’s built in PHP so it’s easy to hack the code when needed. ShoppingQ is super quick (compiled C++ will do that trick) and it’s really easy to skin it out. I’d definitely look into that one, it is a tiny bit on the expensive site (for us cheapos) but it’s way faster than any other carts out there with an easy to use interface and highest levels of security!
Magento. I love it for ease of use, it’s free, but the downsides: Super slow, the templates contain a TON of files(every little thing is in it’s own template file).
ZenCart and OScommerce are too bloated and have complicated admin panels for clients to use.
I haven’t tried any of the WP plugins. Usually when I do an ecommerce site, it is a large site with 100′s of products etc. I don’t think WP and a plugin could cut it. I have yet to find one that I am happy with. I am going to look into CoreCommerce. Thanks for the info on it!
CoreCommerce is really nice. Very powerful, yet easy to use. By far the top saas ecommerce offering in the industry.
I have had the pleasure of using all 3 as well, but I agree with Amber CoreCommerce is much easier to use. No its not the cheapest one out there, but its worth it. It has all the features I needed, and the tech support guy I worked with was very nice and took all the time I needed to understand how things worked. I am satisfied I chose them.
Interesting comparison – I made the same verdict about osCommerce and ZenCart recently having used osCommerce many times before, its just too clunky now for a serious build.
I decided to try out Magento. Here are my thoughts…
Features
Magento has some awesome features and the interface is well polished. I love the simplicity of the standard one page checkout. Standard product page is good with jquery image viewer. System is modular so you can customise to your hearts content.
Resources
Okay, so Magento is still fairly new and this is always a big negative. It does seem to be growing though.
Setup
Fiddly! The server has to have all the latest versions of php and mySQL and there are a load of other checkpoints you have to pass. I saw quite a few error pages before running smoothly.
Skinning & Customisation
If you know your XHTML, CSS and XML and bits and pieces of PHP you should be fine. As Magento is modular, blocks are controlled via XML so it’s fairly easy to switch certain functionality on and off as required. It does require a certain amount of fiddling around so I wouldn’t recommend for someone who doesn’t want to get their hands dirty.
Populating Content
This is where I have to say Magento falls down but this is really only because it’s the objective of most opensource CMS platforms to cater for virtually every option anyone is going to want. If you have complex product options it can be done but its complicated, especially for a client.
Moving Magento
As the original installation was problematic enough, moving the damn thing was ten times worse, having to make sure everything was right with the new server etc.
Using Magento
Front and back end can be slow if you don’t have a good server setup but there are quite a few things you can do to speed up. …But again, a bit more tinkering.
Would I recommend Magento?
It’s a great, feature rich piece of kit and you get so much for your money (Its free!). But if you want a lot of custom functionality you’ll need to be a half decent developer. For the features I’d recommend but be prepared for a steep learning curve. Watch this space, its new so I guess it can only improve!
@Aviva No, I haven’t tried Instinct, I’ll have to check them out for my WP projects, thanks!
@Mark Do those carts cost anything?
@Bill & @Andrew I’ve heard from plenty that Magento is pretty slow, that’s a pretty big downside.
@Marshall & @Greg Glad you guys had similar experiences!
Amber, While Magento is probably the coolest cart in my opinion, it’s slowness and difficulty to move are way more than enough to stay away from it. Complex products would be next to impossible for the average small business client. I have had all of the same problems that Andrew mentions. Up to a 30 second page load is unacceptable. Let me know if you want to experience it. I have a Magento test site up.
If you are ever in a position where you need to use zen cart, have a look at ZenMagick (http://www.zenmagick.org/). It’s an OO replacement for the zencart storefront, incl. a simpler template system, plugins that do not require to modify files, a simple, rule based validation system, and more.
I was with Core Commerce a little less than a year ago and had to leave. Our business was new to the Internet and I was guaranteed that it would be easy, but it was really clunky to get around. Also, their tech support wasn’t open at night when I was free so I was never able to get in touch with someone to help me. And even when I could, they weren’t very helpful. Definitely not worth the cost.
It wasn’t a completely terrible solution but it just didn’t meet our needs as far as features and convenience are concerned. We needed something easy with people there to help us and a template that looked professional. After about six months my wife and I decided to go elsewhere and haven’t looked back.
@MarkyMark That’s strange, I’ve never heard anyone complain that they were too hard to use.
You said tech support wasn’t open at night….is any programming business open at night? <—Just a thought.
Sorry you had a bad experience though. As far as templating goes, I know they have some stock templates, but no shopping cart I’ve used looks good out of the box…they pretty much all need a designer to skin them to customize the look. Who did you end up going with after CoreCommerce?
If you are using DW, try webassist Ecart but only if you are true developer it uses php, asp snippets it creates with ease and checkout wizard creates the checkout for you styled (it is in table, but amber you can change to divs with ease)great for paypal pro. Fully Customizable so its a development tool you need to build and can take time to set up at first as you may want to apply coupon fields, apis for shipping quotes, and other sessions what its called passing information. You also have to develop the database the way you want so its free range all the way.
We were with CoreCommerce and it was an awful experience. Cart pages were exceptionally slow to load-something they would never acknowledge. Their Quick Books “interface” destroyed our QB account. It is DEFINITELY NOT compatible, no matter how much they tell you it is. Their tech support is ok, but if they can’t reproduce the problem it doesn’t exist. Their software is buggy beyond belief. They make changes to the site without properly testing and brought our website down several times. It is virtually impossible to get a live human and there was no way to contact them for website/server down if it was at night. We spent most of a weekend being completely off-line because of a server crash and no way to get a hold of them. For a designer, I can see how it would be nice, but if you have an ecommerce site and are doing as much business as we were it was NOT a good solution. We moved and wouldn’t go back. We are with 3d Cart and so far so good.
@Amber yes you’re right, it is slow but I’ve been reading of ways to speed it up. It is feature packed so I wouldn’t discount it all together as long as it can be speeded.
@Bill Chambers theres a lot of hosting companies offering specialist Magento hosting, have you ever used any of them? Just wondered if it dealt with the speed / installation / moving problems?
@Becky why did you guys wait the whole weekend? They have an 24/7 emergency support line, did you put in a ticket?
@Amber The admin just wasn’t very intuitive as far as navigation was concerned and my expectations weren’t met in regards to ease of use. I also didn’t find their support materials to be helpful at all.
I ended up going to Volusion, and they have tech support available by phone 24 hours. When I transferred my store a rep spent over an hour with me on the phone at 1am to get things done. So my thought is that it’s nice to have that available. I ended up getting one of their free templates and it looks great.
We tried to put in a ticket but the admin was down and the 24/7 phone support? Have you tried it on a weekend or at night?? Just voice mail, we left several messages, there was no live person. We absolutely did not wait, but there was no way to get a hold of anyone and with the admin down, no luck getting a ticket in. We sent them via their main site but no responses. It was the last straw. It is VERY buggy! They are just too green. Maybe in another year or so with some experience under their belts, but there was just too much wrong, and too little resolution for us. Maybe if you are a small shop and don’t do a lot of sales you’d be just fine, but at the volume we are at, they about killed us.
@MarkyMark I thought about trying Volusion once, but they had so MANY terrible reviews, I decided to skip them over. No company can ever have 100% happy customers, but this guys just had way too many bad reviews and way to little good praise. I’m glad you’re happy with them though. Every product isn’t the best fit for every customer.
@Becky They don’t have 24/7 phone support, it’s an emergency ticket system that you can do on their site or through the admin section. Did you see that?
I’ll go with Magento! I’ve worked over a year with Magento and it’s the most complete enterprise level open-source project I’ve ever seen, and it got one of the most logical architectures out there. As Andrew Fox stated in a previous comment, there are ways to speed it up and there are hosting companies that have packages designed for Magento to run fast enough.
But it can be painful at times to craft a theme in Magento, but as you get going you just fall in love with that e-commerce platform.
Does any one know of a total soluction?
I’m now have three on line stores. E-bay, ProStores and just turned on Core Commerce. Prostores made all these promises and did not come through with very much. I think of myself an expert at what they do as I worked directly with the CEO of sales for months and have 100′s of hours trying to make it all good for my customers. They could not get it done for me. Now I’m onto Core Commerce. For my type of business there are only a few areas they fall short.
It’s very hard for me to believe that there shipping program for me and I’m sure many others is not up to speed. Many of my customers are international and most of my customers by many items at one time. I have not come across a caned shipping system I like so I program in my own shipping.(at this time what I program in is not showing up accurately when customers check out) When customers buy many items on E-bay they just send in a combine shipping invoice. I fill in the correct shipping, send it to them. They pay me and life is good. THIS OPTION OR CONCEPT DOES NOT EXIST IN CORE COMMERCE.
The other feature is to be able to program in if a customer buys two of the same item the additional shipping fee. This exists in E-bay and ProStores. THIS OPTION OR CONCEPT DOES NOT EXIST IN CORE COMMERCE. My goal is to have 5000+ items listed. I’m trying to start a movement because I’m sure that many of the stores would like these features. When I explain concepts to my wife, she even gets it. Thank you, John Caddy Daddy
I signed up with Core Commerce about a month ago and up until 30 minutes ago have been pleased with their site. Yes, there have been a few annoying bugs and things I have had to work around but for the most part if I had a question I got someone to help me right a way.
But now my site is completely down, as is Core Commerce and its main company Sum Effect.
I received no notice that they would be doing ANY work on their site and you simply get an “Oops this link appears to be broken” if you type in any of the sites!
Since my entire business is on Core Commerce I am completely down and there seems to be NO WAY to find or get in touch with anyone. Did they go under?
Anybody know?
@Paula
It’s not SumEffect’s fault that the site is down. Rackspace, which is one of the best servers on the web, is completely down, So anyone, whether they have a CoreCommerce site or a regular hosting account, is down. Last I heard, CC has been on the phone with Rackspace yelling at them. No matter what hosting you go with, there’s no such thing as 100% up time yet :/
Hope that help
They are back up now definitely not sum effects/core commerce’s fault – ALL RACK SPACE again!
Unfortunately I went straight to my site then to corecommerce and sum effect before I found any tweets that Rack Space was down.
In any case Core Commerce has been great, responsive when I have had questions. I can’t comment on 24/7 emergency support because I have not had to use it.
They make some great additionseach week and seem very responsive to suggestions when I have live chatted with support.
I have no experience with Zen cart or OS commerce so I cant compare for anyone.
I recently moved from hosting my own instance of Magento to CoreCommerce. Just wanted to chime in here and mention that CoreCommerce is the only hosted solution I’ve found to have real multi-language support. In the admin panel, just add your language and then go to modify your terms, sentence, etc., and they’re all listed in the admin panel. This is refreshing. Two thumbs up!
I am doing my first eCommerce site for a client and decided to go with X Cart figuring if I did need some help the support would be nice. The client was willing to pay the $250 for the software, which I can’t see that amount being that much of a hindrance to a client. Anyhow I have really loved it and after customizing it, I can see how this is what I will prefer because the possibilities seem endless! Did you consider X Cart for any clients? Wondering if you have cons for that software, that I haven’t come across, since I am new to it… Thanks!
No I haven’t tried X Cart…I’ve been so happy with CC and their support, I no longer look at other solutions
I will check them out though. thanks!
I’m curious, are you in any way compensated for your reviews?
No I’m not. I just review products I use that I think will help readers out when looking for something similar. Same thing with all the web books and programs I review.
I know this is kind-of old posting, but an interesting read nevertheless, specially since I use corecommerce for two ecommerce websites. Thank you Amber for writing this post!
My two cents worth on corecommerce:
The good:
corecommerce have a better product than the other ones I have tried so far (i.e. hosted shopping carts) and I have tried quite a few.
The bad:
there is serious bugs in their software that you will not discover till you are super invested in their system. Like a few others commenting previously on this post – their bugs have wasted serious amount of work-time for me and my team and these bugs can be fixed if corecommerce properly tests their updates before rolling them out (IMO).
The nasty:
their support staff pretty much can solve a problem – if you missed figuring out the most obvious solution yourself. their support staff has not been able to solve/fix ANY of the bugs we have identified (and they acknowledge these bugs) because they cannot touch the codes, they are simply power-users of the system and can solve most obvious issues.
AND
the support staff can’t give a timeline to fix any identified issues. the best the support can do is “refer it to the engineering dept” and will “update you as soon as we can”. One major bug that rolled-in with one of their updates was from Sept 2009 and was never fixed (they went ahead and closed out the ticket after a few months!) and the 2nd issue was last month after their latest update, and they refuse to give me a time line (again) on when the bug will be looked-into.
Basically, everytime they say they are upgrading their software I am crapping in my pants.
I am not a geek and at the same time I have operated successful ecommerce websites since 2000. I am stuck with them because I don’t have a better solution and migration is always like divorce – terrible to deal with…specially if there is nothing better out there.
Wanted to share my two cents worth because I am so pissed at corecommerce and yet I can’t really do anything else than vent my anger!!
Volusion has better on deck metric capabilities out of the gate. Based solely on the fact that Magento is free, I would go with that though. It is fundamentally as poweful as volusion just not quite a polished yet. That said, Magento will be shortly. You have to watch out for a few duplicate content issues currently with Magento, in terms of seo, but short of that it is very cool stuf. It is cheaper to get your own server and ssl than it is to use Volusion if I remember correctly.
Magento is structured such that you can do just about anything with it. I am personally a fan of complete separation of design from the logic bits. I seem to be harping on that alot around here lately.
Wow, that’s an impressive article. Seriously, do write about xcart the next time round, for I’m a big fan.