Shopping Cart reviews

[chadly]

Im in the process of identifying a new complete cart/gateway solution, and was wondering if anyone knew of any other good objective reviews that would be helpful during this process.

Here are a few I found
http://shopping-cart-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://rcarnell.com/ecommerce/shoppingcartsreview2.htm
http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/...ing_carts.html

Personally I like what I see from digishop.com so far.

I'd be interested to hear thoughts about digishop or your opinions on the reviews above - accurate, off base?

Thanks.

[bj]

I like Cube Cart. Robust, nicely working cart that leaves the design decisions in the hands of the designer, so it doesn't look like every other SC out there.

[mystic]

I like x-cart you should try them. But if your just starting out i'd suggest go with the yahoo merchant solutions because they have much more then a shopping cart and a gateway to offer for only about 30 bucks a month. If your experienced i say go with x-cart.

[chadly]

I appreciate the opinions.

I was discouraged from using Yahoo b/c of their high fees when compared to other carts which seem to offer very comparable features. i.e. it would cost $100/mo for yahoo + 1% of all trans, not including the gateway fees of 2.7% & $23/mo. Is there really that much of a benefit compared to a cart that I could buy outright for $120 with no monthlys?

I have a good amt of experience w/web design & managing my orders via paypal, but am very green when it comes to making mods to php & other code. Does x-cart require much of that, or are there other reasons you say this?

Also, Ive read that xcart is nothing more than a repackaged version of OScommerce, which of course is open source. Personally if this is true I really wouldnt want much to do with a co that is involved in biz practices like that.

Ive heard squirrelcart is also real simple for beginners & very robust. Thoughts?

Thanks again.

[bj]

I dunno. I just googled squirrel cart and half the entries on the first two pages of returns were about injection attack vulnerabilities. These are bad enough in a blog script, but do you really wanna use a shopping cart that has had this problem?

Secondly, all the code in the sample squirrel carts I looked at is oldstyle bloated code, laden with tables and slow loading. The urls were the SE unfriendly sort.

You seem to be willing to spend some dough, why not use a good open source product such as cubecart and pay someone to customize it for you?

[chadly]

Thanks for the nsight. So what are your feelings about the poor ratings cubecart got on this review site?
http://shopping-cart-review.toptenre...rt-review.html

I suppose having one custom built would be an option, but if I went that route wouldnt it make sense to just go with the best, i.e. OScommerce? Do you think I could have an OS cart customized with similar features to that of digishop & squirrelcart for under $300? If so, where do you recommend I request the bids?

Thanks again.

[bj]

The CubeCart review is inaccurate about one specific thing for sure- the cube cart community. They're very helpful and fast to answer. I've gotta wonder when that review was done. As to the other things, I don't use carts much, I just set 'em up. Though it is possible there's some truth in the other comments made in the review, I think I'd have a whole lot more client complaints if they were true.

I debate OSCommerce being "the best" since it hasn't been updated in a dog's age and produces tag soup instead of real code. If you insist on using a subset of OSCommerce, go with ZenCart, which at least is updated regularly and has an active community.

Re someone to skin a cart (and there's more than one way to skin a cart . . .) I'm sure all of us on this site who have a tagline of "Small Business Website Design" would be willing to quote you.

[BazaarBuilder]

A hosted solution :

www.bazaarbuilder.com

Its well established in UK.

[tberthel]

http://www.allbinary.com

[Peter Cornstalk]

CubeCart is a great choice if it meets your needs. Zen Cart has more features but not as tidy as CubeCart yet... this will change soon with v1.3.

Sun Shop looks to be nice. The developers don't take customization quote requests very seriously.

[etechsupport]

I too think CubeCart is nice one, their code is separate from their templates, and hence you can be able to edit the appearance easily. If you need OOP techniques you can go with digishop.

[chadly]

Originally Posted by etechsupport

I too think CubeCart is nice one, their code is separate from their templates, and hence you can be able to edit the appearance easily. If you need OOP techniques you can go with digishop.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

etechsupport, by "OOP techniques" I assume you mean Object-Oriented Programming -- is this a positive or negative in your opinion?

BTW, Im now starting to learn towards x-cart, mainly b/c digishop has a very poor demo on their site and its hard to tell if their features are really as good as advertised. And also x-cart has received some really good reviews on hotscripts over the past couple yrs.

Anyone have opinions on x-cart, good or bad?

Thanks again.

[bj]

http://secunia.com/product/2956/
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=bugt...8583101076&w=2

[chadly]

Thanks bj. So if Im reading those reports correctly it appears both x-cart & cubecart have patched their holes.

After reviewing cubecart a little more, I must admit they seem pretty respectable. Maybe the company that released those low ratings had an agenda perhaps...

[bj]

Search the term "cubecart" on this forum. It might give you a better picture.

[roban]

I have 2 sites online with CubeCart and have been a member of their support team since version 2. It's now in version 3.05 and very stable. While all bugs are not completely ironed out, I find most problems seem to come from the users and not the cart itself. The biggest plus is the community and its willingness to help the noob. Try this with oscommerce and you'll hit a brick wall.

[etechsupport]

[quote="chadly"]Yes that's object-oriented technique, sometime you often find yourself using the same kinds of solutions over and over again. I think OOP is very useful in all sorts of applications.You can see it’s used in the most popular Invision power board forums, and also with shopping cart mechanism.In fact the versatility of the classes relies that it can be extended, allowing a class to be modified for different needs.</quote]

I think that OOP has limitations of usability that are often overlooked. I've looked at several and conducted a few of my own performance tests comparing OOP, vs function, vs. strait code programming.

As far as speed goes, OOP looses by a lot. On server intensive applications, speeds can be several times slower than with straight or function based coding. While cross programmer integration is much easier with OOP, don't overlook speed. A bit less that 50% of users in the US are still using dial-up internet. The code has to process before any html is ever looked at, so the time it takes to process a script, can be flat added onto the size of the page for loading time.

[craftworks]

I use x-cart for my website. I have a host that installed the cart and made it match my logo and design. I have uploaded over 200 items and sold several through my x-cart. It takes a bit to figure out but I love it. There is a mod that you can use that changes all the php pages to html pages as well.

[bodgekaloopie]

We installed X-Cart for a client once, but found it difficult to customize because we are not well-versed in Smarty.

Several of our clients use OS Commerce, and so far we like it best because of being able to customize it fairly easily. Using the contribution STS Template allows you to use the HTML design that you have designed and put OSC right into it. OSC also features a very intuitive admin area for the client.

Zen Cart has some more easily customizable features than OSC, but it doesn't work with an HTML template like OSC does.