Choosing the right ecommerce software for my needs?

Hi folks!

I hope this isn’t too off topic, but I’m planning to build this site with MODxCMS. I’ve posted this to another forum, and I’m copying it here. Please let me know if it’s not appropriate.

I’m building my first ecommerce web site for a client, and I’m having a lot of trouble finding the right solution. Here’s my client’s needs:

[list]

• Small shop with less than 200 items initially, but may grow to be as many as 1000 in the future.
• Needs complete control over layout and design, so wysiwyg variations on a fixed template is not an option.
• Self-hosted solution with complete control. Client has own site and domain and doesn’t want to pay for a hosted service.
• Ideally I want to avoid a subscription cost, and would rather a once off purchase, or even free if possible, software solution.
• Easy to use (with training) web interface for adding stock including pictures (may be more than one image per item).
• Easy way to manage stock across the site, so that sold items can be simply removed, for example.
• The client’s site will probably be built using MODxCMS, so compatibility with that would be good – altrernatively if the capability is there the site could possibly be built with the ecommerce software.
• I’m no programmer, but I can modify templates etc. Something that doesn’t require php coding or deep database hacking is required.
• PayPal is the preferred payment gateway. Being based in Australia, the options available are limited.
• If paid software is the solution, I’d like to restrict the budget to under $200.

I’ve done a lot of research and tried a couple of options, but I’m just getting more confused and frustrated the more I look. This has been my experience so far:

• Zencart – Holy crap that system is impossible to customise!! The content and structure are so heavily meshed together it’s impossible to find what file I need to edit to make a change to the appearance of the site.
• OSCommerce – not much better. The STS template system is a big help, but it critically doesn’t cover several pages in the site, so I’m back to where I was with Zencart. There’s a new version in development which will “seperate content from structure”, which of course means that it currently doesn’t, but that doesn’t even have a projected release date yet.
• I’ve tried to research paid solutions, but getting reliable information is very difficult. Naturally every solution’s homepage claims to be the best choice. Searching for reviews of ecommerce software just returns a whole bunch of “ecommerce review sites”, all of which sell ecommerce software and none of which agree with even their ’top 10’ solutions. Obviously I’ll get no unbiased reviews there. Reviews on big sites like cnet and zdnet are at least 5 years old, and useless to me.

I think my best solution is to tap the wisdom of the internet and ask users like yourselves directly what you’ve had experience with and recommend for my needs.

Any suggestions!?

Thanks so much in advance.[/list]

You might look at KiweeCommerce. http://www.kiweecommerce.org/
If it looks like a good fit at first glance, I’d try to discuss it with someone who’s been using it to make sure there are no show stoppers for you. It’s pretty new.

FoxyCart (www.foxycart.com) is what I use for all my site’s e-commerce now. I build all my sites now on MODx and use only FoxyCart for my e-commerce. One of the designers of FoxyCart designed it to fit like a glove with MODx. It fulfills most of your requirements above.

You have to think a bit differently using it...it’s not a separate shopping cart...it’s all set up in MODx...everything is controlled in MODx (which you set up yourself) for your client. It passes the values over to FoxyCart to handle the transaction. I like FoxyCart so much b/c you only have to use the template you designed in MODx and paste it in FoxyCart...in other words, you don’t have to redesign a template for FoxyCart. It’s like this: I set up a Document which has T.V.’s in it so your client can enter product price, code, weight, etc. When the visitor visits the site, they’ll see that information and when they click on the buy button, FoxyCart passes that information over to the server where FoxyCart is hosted and it will handle the transaction...that’s the simplified version.

I consider myself someone of a newbie in the grand scheme of things and FoxyCart wasn’t that difficult to learn...there’s really not too much to do...you don’t have to recreate everything to make it work.

You do pay a monthly fee of $15/month, but if you do the math, you’ll be paying roughly the same amount for a secure certificate, etc. Plus your client will be able to easily maintain the shopping cart themselves thus saving them money.

My first shopping cart website I designed using FoxyCart can be seen here:

www.cherubscottage.com

Not a pretty site (customer loves it!), but buy a product and see how FoxyCart works.

I’ve got about 5 sites I’m designing right now using it. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail ([email protected]).

And check out the homepage’s featured site on FoxyCart...recognize that guy?

I’ve used xt:commerce a couple of times (not in conjunction with ModX though) which is the successor to OScommerce I think. It uses smarty but after a couple of hours of pottering around you can change just about everything.

I’m trying to convince a client to accept the monthly fee associated with FoxyCart too though. As already mentioned it’s got to be a wise investment as opposed to all the headaches of setting up and maintaining a secure site.

Good luck,
Taff

Quote from: Taff at Aug 28, 2007, 07:27 AM

I’m trying to convince a client to accept the monthly fee associated with FoxyCart too though. As already mentioned it’s got to be a wise investment as opposed to all the headaches of setting up and maintaining a secure site.

So far I have only done a couple one page shopping cart  site with paypal payment option, and the sites are of slow traffic, hosted on shared-servers, so building ecommerce site really is a new thing for me; was talking to a potential client, she wanted a most cost effective ecommerce site. FoxyCart monthly fee put her off a bit and she thinks having a SSL yearly isn’t cost too much. I think I read it somewhere, that for a decent traffic ecommerce site, a delicated server is the way to go, if this is true, then using hosted server cart like Foxy seems a cheaper solution in the long run.

Can you confirm this or give me your thought about this?

thanks!


by the way, Taff, your olson site, the flyout menu doesn’t quite work.
tgp

Some businesses just want complete control over the whole checkout process. Every ecommerce site I’ve done has a different checkout, with different data being integrated, tracked and stored for different business reasons. A hosted cart solution just isn’t desirable sometimes.
In the right place, if the business case supports it, I agree, a hosted solution can make sense.

By the way neilcreek, here’s a good place for some basic Q & A for some of reasoning behind the development of FoxyCart that may help you with some insight into the designer’s thoughts when developing the shopping cart:

http://www.foxycart.com/pre-sales-questions-part-1.html

Thanks everyone for the replies. You’ve given me lots to read and to think about (which is a good thing! ).

At the moment, I’m thinking using PayPal as the payment gateway is the best solution, as I don’t need to worry about setting up a secure server myself, just about every ecommerce solution works with it, and shoppers and clients are already familiar with it.

Someone else recommended Avactis ( http://www.avactis.com/ ) tome, and it looks very good for integrating with MODx since it uses "tags" to display the various bits and pieces it needs in my existing templates. I suppose this is similar to foxycart. It also has an "owned" licence option, which means I’m not held captive to monthly fees. Does anyone have any opinions on Avactis?

I’ll come back with my thoughts on your suggestions once I’ve had a chance to investigate them more thoroughly.

Thanks again for the help!

A few quick notes (from a slightly biased source ):
Quote from: chinesedream at Aug 29, 2007, 02:55 AM

FoxyCart monthly fee put her off a bit and she thinks having a SSL yearly isn’t cost too much. I think I read it somewhere, that for a decent traffic ecommerce site, a delicated server is the way to go, if this is true, then using hosted server cart like Foxy seems a cheaper solution in the long run.

Having a dedicated server is definitely better if you’re doing a self-hosted ecommerce app for a few different reasons. One thing to keep in mind is security. Most self-hosted ecommerce apps store sensitive data unencrypted in their databases. If your shared host has a security problem (like Dreamhost had recently), that’s a pretty major issue, and it’s effectively beyond your control, which is never comfortable. Even with a dedicated server and a self-hosted option, you’re still responsible for security patches.

If you have an ongoing relationship with your client, and they’ll pay you to do the necessary patches, then that’s great. Otherwise a hosted solution probably makes more sense.

Quote from: neilcreek at Aug 29, 2007, 04:49 AM

Someone else recommended Avactis ( http://www.avactis.com/ ) tome, and it looks very good for integrating with MODx since it uses "tags" to display the various bits and pieces it needs in my existing templates. I suppose this is similar to foxycart.

The major difference between FoxyCart and almost any other ecommerce solution out there is that FoxyCart doesn’t have a CMS built in at all. None. While Avactis definitely looks solid, it’s still got it’s own entirely separate CMS with separate templates and such.

This means you’d have to maintain half your site (blogs, about, content, etc.) in MODx, and the other half (products, categories, etc.) in Avactis (or for that matter ZenCart, osCommerce, Magento, etc.). FoxyCart allows you to maintain your entire site (including all your products, categories, etc.) in MODx. FoxyCart template caching is pretty cool also, in that you point FoxyCart to your URL (which has ^^placeholders^^ for cart, checkout, etc.) and FoxyCart does the rest automatically (rewrites your CSS, JS, HTML, etc., so it’s all secure on our servers). It’s my favorite part

While I haven’t had the chance to play with it, Kiwee should avoid this problem as well. If you’re going to maintain an entirely separate ecommerce site... I just don’t see the need for two separate sites. Either use MODx because it’s brilliant, and use it for everything, or use Magento for everything. The overhead of two entirely separate and distinct sites (pretending to be one unified site) just doesn’t make sense (to me, at least, hence the FoxyCart approach). If your entire site is *just* going to be a store, then an ecommerce platform with a built in CMS makes *way* more sense. Otherwise I just don’t get it. But that’s just my opinion.

FoxyCart is also very much coded like CSS Zen Garden, where you can completely restyle the entire thing using only CSS.

Also a note about "owned" pricing: At $199 for 1 year of free updates... just keep in mind that a year from now you’ll likely have to pay $199 again (if only for security patches and such). So it’s only really "owned" for a year, at which point you’ll need to "own" the latest version (again, even if only for security patches). You’re always going to end up paying somewhere (even with open source options, which you still have to pay for SSL, reliable and *secure* hosting, PCI compliance and scanning, other compliance (Safe Harbor, etc.), time spent to update with security patches).

It really comes down to the client’s needs, and the budget you have to work with. Sorry I wrote so much, but ecommerce has been on my mind for the past two or three years so I’ve done a lot of thinking about it. Hopefully this gives you more info to make an informed decision with

Quote from: The at Aug 29, 2007, 05:33 AM

Most self-hosted ecommerce apps store sensitive data unencrypted in their databases.

Wow, I can’t even imagine doing that. Even storing data encrypted on a shared web host does not meet Visa or Mastercard’s security requirements if you follow them to the letter.
Unless by "sensitive" you just mean identity type stuff like name, address etc. But storing a person’s financial information, even with some encryption types, on a shared web host should be illegal, if it’s not already.