Comments on: 10 Promising Opensource PHP E-Commerce Application

By: Slapo

Slapo — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:19:43 +0000

I’ve deployed Zen Cart on only one web and in the process, I’ve learned that I should have avoided Zen Cart. It has some useful features, but the code isn’t exactly clean or elegant. What makes it a really bad choice is the sheer number of database queries the default ‘modules’ use. I had to modify ‘modules’ and ‘templates’ working with product pages and listings to bring down number of queries issued to a more sensible number. The modifications tend to save about 200+ queries per page.

I haven’t profiled Magento, but it’s quite slow even on localhost in its default installation.

I’ve also tried FreeWay and PrestaShop and the only one that seemed to work OK was OpenCart. FreeWay and PrestaShop were pretty buggy when I tried them about half a year ago.

By: Shandra

Shandra — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:34:19 +0000

Hi Jennifer,

Are you available for work? I have a site currently in development using Magneto. I hired some before I saw this post but wanted to know you expertise to possibly have you as a back up provider. My email is shandra123@gmail.com.

Thanks.

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:43:12 +0000

I’m searching for a open source e-commerce script. This article is really helpful. Thanks a lot.

By: Annie

Annie — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:55:48 +0000

I use ZenCart and I like it a lot – but it’s not perfect. I have played around with Magento and I’m horrified by the enormous file structure. Somebody said it’s a COW and a big cow at that… I agree! And I’ve heard about problems from all over the ‘net about Magento’s performance. There are a lot of servers that can’t run it, apparently.

I hope that ZenCart’s programmers will release 1.4 but they’ve been fairly quiet in 2009 about what they’re working on. If they were paid better maybe there would be more incentive to work on it. That’s an inherent problem with Open Source, and it’s not meant as criticism of any of the developers: just an observation. I do think ZenCart is the best of all the osCommerce forks.

This article is helpful. I’ll check out these other programs. Thanks.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:25:39 +0000

I’m revisiting this after a year. I stick to what I said above. Magento seems bloated; Prestashop has promise (although the GUI in the admin is a bit all over the place). Odd that no one has anything to say about OpenCart (No. 1 in the article). It’s fast, has a pretty full features list, clean interface, MVC architecture and (as a designer but noob programmer) easy to customise. And the fledgling community is very helpful. Check it out.

By: fau

fau — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:17:01 +0000

I am looking for ecommerce site for blinds and shades.. any one recommend me free open source.. cheked most of them for unique price.

I am looking for price with width and hight.

By: denbagus

denbagus — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:59:45 +0000

i usualy use magento for ecommerce…many have features

By: tj mapes » Blog Archive » What I’m Reading (weekly)

tj mapes » Blog Archive » What I’m Reading (weekly) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:30:49 +0000

[...] 10 Promising Opensource PHP E-Commerce Application | INSIC 2.0 Web Development & Design Blog [...]

By: jenniferaslan

jenniferaslan — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:24:01 +0000

We have only built one full ecommerce site so far (http://www.greencupboards.com/), and we used Magento because it had most of the features the client wanted, “right out of the box.” It worked well for several months until the client started adding thousands of products to the catalog and got another developer involved in additional customization. In more recent times it crashes the server quite often and appears to have a memory leak somewhere (although I can’t say if it’s a problem inherent in Magento or has something to do with the customization).

There was quite a learning curve in implementing and skinning the store, and the client required A LOT of customization, but we were happy with how much control we had over the look of things with CSS and that the menu is SEO friendly. The back-end Admin interface is also very easy to use.

Since it’s the only solution we’ve used, I can’t compare its speed to any other system, but it seems to work for the most part. The only thing that I would say, apart from anything about its underlying programming and structure, is that it really isn’t designed to handle extremely large catalogs and all the fulfillment takes place inside the back-end admin, one product at a time (it is not currently able to connect to any established fulfillment applications that we know of). In this way, it is not very scalable.

My conclusion is that it seems you’ll have frustrations with any solution you choose, but Magento has a lot of built-in functionality that makes it feel a bit like Amazon.com. If that’s what you’re looking for, and your catalog is not thousands of products large and your fulfillment guys are comfortable using its interface, Magento may still be your ticket, especially if you want easy control over every aspect of the CSS.

By: simonfan

simonfan — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:21:08 +0000

There is no one ecommerce is good as I think it should be.

Magento looks great at first, but I cannot bear its performance, even open the cache, it still very slow.

No prominent ecommerce solution so far.