Forum Moderators: buckworks
From the end of last year, I was forced to upgrade from PHP4 to PHP5, and from MySQL4 to MySQL5. Due to the contributions I added and the lack of support for oscommerce, it took me a lot of time to modify the code myself. It's getting painful to stick to oscommerce when there is few custom support and the development has been so slow.
Now I am considering to switch to a new shopping cart. The new shopping cart doesn't have to be free. In addition to standard shopping cart features, I need the following:
* PayPal, Google checkout, 2CO, worldpay compatibity
* own affiliate system, and compatibility to affiliate marketplace such as shareasale
* easy to add static pages
* article management
* able to upload/update products in bulk from desktop
* easy to add products attributes, such as T-shirt size, color
* link management system
* search engine friendly
Currently my store has over 2000 registered customers. It would be great if I can migrate my customer base to the new shopping cart system without having to ask each customer to set up a new account.
Any recommendations for a nice shopping cart?
What went wrong on yours, specifically, if you don't mind me asking?
jake, the reason why I was thinking of leaving oscommerce is the lack of support. I have around 10 contributions added. Some contributions are not compatible with others. Adding the contributions makes the original version such a mess that it's so difficult to upgrade the software, or to fix the bugs or to make the software to work with newer versions of php/mysql. I can make it work for php & mysql 5 now, but what about future php & mysql 6, 7, 8? It's such a pain doing everything myself. I think it's a better idea to save my time for promoting the website.
And oscommerce team is so slow in developing the software. To my knowledge, they are still in ver 2.2. If their v3 is out, I am afraid that there won't be an easy way to upgrade. Most likely I will be forced to give up everything I have now and install the v3 completely fresh. It's no difference from going for a different software now.
There are a lot of great alternatives out there - just depends on how much you want to spend monthly or annually.
Why?.... three words: SINGLE VENDOR SOLUTION
I got tired of the finger pointing and blame game... The store is down or something is not working and you get the hosting company saying it's the software, the cart software company saying it's the payment gateway or merchant services, and them telling you it's the host, the database server, a "network error" (or outage), or the phase of the moon.
Too many pieces, too many vendors, too many unknowns.
There is no such thing as "100%" perfect in the world of shopping cart software or ecommerce hostings. Volusion is no different. What is different, (from using a "free" or "third party" solution), is that if ANYTHING isn't working, you know where the problem is -- the "single vendor".
Like any other solution, there are some caveats to Volusion:
Cost - it cost more then "FREE" and in-fact costs more than a lot of other hosted solutions -- but that's the "short view"... in the long run it will save you money over the thousands (and sometimes tens-of-thousands) I have seen people waste with non-functional custom solutions.
Customization - you don't have access to a lot of the code. You can customize the software extensively using the (literally hundreds of) configuration options and tweak it by modifying the "website text" fields. You can make it look and feel however you like for most of the screens. You can modify and add some .ASP, .JS and other types of code to get it to jump through "some" hoops..
Support - support is very good, but the wait time on the tech support line can sometimes be longer than desirable. They do offer toll-free 1-800 support 24/7, and have a good support ticket system -- on the plus side: once your store is setup and running, you rarely need support.
On the plus side:
- You can literally setup a store in about an hour, (using the free templates and no customization)... fill in the blanks for company info, categories, products, etc.. and go.
- They offer a free trial so you can see if you like it for a couple weeks before deciding to spend dime one.
- Hosting, Email, Cart Software, SSL cert, Merchant Account and even customization service all from (1) company, (and they have been top rated for several years winning or being nominated for "CODIE" awards, etc..).
Anyway, that's my $0.02 on shopping cart software.
