X-cart vs Litecommerce...

flo b · #1 (**permalink**) 04-28-2004, 08:40 PM

I'm ready to move up to a more advanced shoppingacrt system on my website, and have narrowed it down to x-cart or litecommerce (both made by the same people)

Has anyone had experience with either of these? what do you think about them?

I like the fact that you can edit litecommerce in dreamweaver (that doesn't seem to be the case for X-cart)
I need something that can be integrated into my site seamlessly...

I appreciate any comments you may have!

Flo.
www.sublimebikinis.com

davebarnes · #2 (**permalink**) 05-05-2004, 12:55 AM

flo b,

I looked at both X-cart and LiteCommerce and purchased LiteCommerce for one of my clients two weeks ago. The client is the Alliance Française de Denver (www.afdenver.org) and they sell: language classes, books, tickets to events through the new store.

I am happy with LiteCommerce. It is not perfect, but it:
1. is inexpensive at $95 USD
2. has very responsive technical support
3. a good, active user forum

LiteCommerce is:
very easy to install
very install to administer
easy to modify

What is bad about LiteCommerce?
1. The Gift Certificate add-on is a useless piece of crap. The Russian developers are clueless about how gift certificates work in the US.
2. Only one address line. Not good if your customers are in the UK or Japan.

Would I buy it again?
Yes. For a simple store. (I found X-cart to be way too compicated for me.)
I do plan to buy it for another of my clients next week.
Yes. It comes with support. That is very important to me.

,dave

flo b · #3 (**permalink**) 05-06-2004, 05:04 PM

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply.

I've pretty much decided to go with Lite Commerce, as it seems to have all the features i'm looking for at a very reasonable price.

You weren't impressed with the gift vertificate add-on? That's one i'm planning to purchase... What didn't you like about it? Does it work at all or is it simply not worth buying?

Thanks for your input!
Flo.

davebarnes · #4 (**permalink**) 05-06-2004, 05:30 PM

flo b,

About the Gift Certificate add-on.

It is worse than useless.

When you purchase LiteCommerce, you will be able to log into its forum.
There, under "Rants & Raves", you will find this topic: "gift certificate handling - not good".
It is 8 pages long!
I foolishly did not read this topic before buying the GC add-on. What a mistake.

Here is the biggest flaw with it, in my opinion. You can't buy something using a gift certificate AND a credit card for the balance. You must use a gift certificate to buy something with a price less than or equal to the value of the certificate.

,dave

sockhop · #5 (**permalink**) 05-07-2004, 03:55 PM

Hello,
If I were you, I would check into osCommerce. I have used, developed and intergrated custom ecommerce solutions using both lite-commerce as well as x-cart. However, osCommerce offers many of the same features but because of the huge community, there are custom modules for everything ranging from custom payment gateways to polls, faqs and anything else.

osCommerce is free and it can really be customized much more than x-cart or lite-commerce. I have screenshots of ocommerce demo shops that I designed awhile back before working as a subcontractor for another company.

Anyway, be sure to check out osCommerce because even though it is free, I think it's one of the best, hands down.

osCommerce Official Site:
http://www.oscommerce.com/

Chris

derekwong28 · #6 (**permalink**) 05-11-2004, 02:14 PM

I use litecommerce because it is really the only solution that can integrate seamlessly into existing web sites e.g. those which runs on Mals, 1shoppingcart, 2CO cart. You simply replace the hyperlinks on the addtocart button and point it to your cart. This way, I run 4 domains off a single litecommerce cart.

Morover, I am very happy with the html catalog generator. The PR of my homepage is 6. Most of the category pages remains at 6, and the product pages at 5. I have seem no other carts that can loses so little in PR down to the product pages.

I decided against OSCommerce early on because if a problem occurs, nobody is committed to providing you with support.

Derek

flo b · #7 (**permalink**) 05-11-2004, 05:03 PM

Thanks,

I looked into Oscommerce, but like Derek points out - if something isn't right with a module, there's no one to go back to about it.

I've decided to go with Litecommerce, it seems to be a pretty complete package, although i won't be purchasing the gift cert module - thanks Dave ;)

After a nightmare of a week (website down for a number of reasons) i'm looking forward to getting it all together.

Thanks for your help!