osCommerce VS Magento VS OpenCart VS Zen Cart

[crunchor 0]

Is there anyone over here can share what are the reasons to choose among these most popular options? Thanks a lot!

[♥GLWalker 144]

Search the forums, this has come up several times -

 

Basic rundown :

ZenCart - A dated fork

Magento - Server intensive - cost more to run in the long run

OpenCart - never heard of it

[♥bruyndoncx 260]

free templates (w00t)

 

very easy, all the others didn't exist when I started :thumbsup:

 

Magento - very heavy, needs big hosting package and doesn't work as easy multi-lingual

Opencart - no experience

ZenCart - osCommerce is like lego blocks, zencart is like one cathedral built with those lego blocks, while I only needed a church with a little extension as a figure of speech

[crunchor 0]

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Computers/Programming/Languages/PHP/Scripts/E-Commerce

Oscommerce web traffic is actually the worst out of these 4 as you can see above.

[♥bruyndoncx 260]

this one requires work, the other ones are for lazy people :-

[♥Gyakutsuki 115]

the Alexa link is no pertinent, I create a discussion in other forum with others statistics

 

Also it's very difficult to compare for one thing : Magento, prestashop are commercial company, the budget, the time, the team is completly different. And I don't speak wordpress, joomla, drupal with their add on;

 

But we can remember a thing : OSC is always in the party :) with no investment. That's good thing, I said

 

The bad thing, it's more difficult today to propose OSC without specific development or a big customization (All the members can't do that without break the heart. and OSC philosophy coding), the product is too basic for the needs of a company.

 

If you want to be in the market, you need to propose a OSC with a lot of modification.

 

That's I see since a moment.

[♥toyicebear 206]

For someone who wants alot of functionality but have no coding skills, then "new" carts like Opencart and Prestashop as well as "older" Oscommerce based ones like Zencart and oscMax will give you a feature rich shop straight out of the box.

 

Magento will do so too, its a bit more complex to use/operate and the moment you starts to get more than a few visitors to your site it will need a VPS or a dedicated server.

 

Due to higher "complexity" of code these carts are usually more expensive when hiring someone to fix/customize anything too.

 

Oscommerce is way more basic than those, but easier to operate and to DIY code modify yourself.

 

But as it stands today Oscommerce is for those without coding skills needing a very simple shop or for those who have some code skills or are willing to learn some and want a cart customized to their own needs.

 

Also all add-ons for Oscommerce is free, while for carts like Opencart, Prestashop and Magneto most of their add-ons are commercial.

 

As for someone without coding skills BUT with a small budget then using Oscommerce and hiring a developer to customize it is a good way to go. They will then get a shop customized to their needs which can run on even budget hosting.

 

For those who have "advanced" coding skills which cart does not mater that much, since they can change it as they please anyway, but many still like to use Oscommerce simply because its is a solid as well as lean base to build on.

[crunchor 0]

I think if someone/company is very good at coding or need to code to make a really professional cart, then they would choose Magento because it has a lot of very complicate stuff inside already then no need to repeat the wheel with OScommerce.

 

If a signle person like me wants to just want to build a standard cart fast with a lot of themes to choose and edit it to what I need, then OpenCart or ZenCart.

 

Then OScommerce is like a very original source of a simple cart, someone needs to work on both code and template from very basic level. Then it is more between Magento and (OpenCart/ZenCart). This would be more like for someone just likes to play with an original thing but not rush to open a store or not for big company to build a serious big cart.

[nubbin 1]

I have OSC stores since 2006. Its time to upgrade them to have modern responsive layouts, better SEO and simpler checkout. All are essential for any ecommerce store today.

 

I have enjoyed OSC and these great forums. The main challenge is once you have a few of the major contributions installed it becomes much more complicated to install more. Also, I've never had much luck getting it highly ranked in Google compared to my other hand built site.

 

So I have been considering other shopping carts. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I've found:

 

Magento:

+lots of capabilities; good for SEO; great responsive templates; huge user base;

-needs more expensive hosting; complex with a big learning curve; -owned by Ebay and I bet they screw it up eventually; slow. (try some of the stores in their showcase)

 

Open Cart.

+Looks good out of the box; easy to set up; SEO and responsive themes look good; core code is separate from presentation so should be easier to work on than OSC

- maintained by 1 main guy and 3 coders. What happens when he loses interest? Have read some coders say the than the core code is a mess. Customer service gets bad comments on many review sites.

 

Prestacart:

Similar to opencart.

- Addons more expensive; seems to need many addons; French team has built it so much of the documentation is in French

 

Shopify:

+looks great

-very expensive if you have a lot of products.

 

Zencart:

+similar to OSC but easier to change appearance as CSS based. +Big user base and helpful forums.

- Needs a lot of customisation as its old fashioned looking when installed. A modern responsive look is coming in the next release.

 

A problem I foresee with all (apart from Zencart) is most of the good add ons are not open source. This means they are maintained by the author and cost $. When the platform is significantly upgraded or major bugs are found, you are reliant on the author upgrading the addon. Whereas with OSC and Zencart the whole community can improve addons.

 

In summary, I would love to see an update of OSC with built in great SEO, responsive design and easier way of adding addons.

If that is not available, I am tempted to prototype a store in Magento and the next release of Zencart then decide which is best for me.

 

Interested in hearing people's thoughts on this.

Cheers

[♥14steve14 628]

When oscommerce was first released it was god, and most other stores used its code as a base. This is what zencart did. The trouble now being that oscommerce developement had stopped, and has only recently started again. This has meant that it has fallen behind its competitiors. It does not include things that should be included. Now it looks as if it is trying to catch up, and some people in these forums are trying really hard to make oscommerce the best again.

 

If I had no idea on coding and wanted a working shop I would go for opencart, cscart or some other. I would avoid magneto because it is resorce heavy.

 

If I wanted to learn a bit of coding and would like to make my store to my own design I would use oscommerce, mainly down to the ease of coding, the free addons and the well supported forum.

[i2Paq 2]

I used to run osCommerce for a about 3 years or so.

 

I moved to OpenCart 3 years ago because it offers more, is far more stable (1.5.4.1 and 1.5.5.1) + most additional code can be easy added using vQmod.

Just write the additional code following a scheme and save as an .xml file and the code will replace or add functionality to OpenCart.

Saying the code is a mess is just a cheap shot.

 

osCommerce add-ons, some if not all cases, are far more difficult to get working.

 

About OpenCart having 1 main coder, the same goes for osCommerce....

 

PrestaShop is bloated with not-needed modules and functions.

It is in constant "beta" and in some release old bugs return.

 

Magento, is Mangento, and uses a lot of server resources + you need to have good coding skills or a lot of money.

[BenD 1]

Search the forums, this has come up several times -

 

Basic rundown :

ZenCart - A dated fork

Magento - Server intensive - cost more to run in the long run

OpenCart - never heard of it

 

 

Check this slideshow slideshare.net/magneticone/shopping-cart-types-pros-and-cons

It clearly show pros and cons of different shopping carts

[john88 0]

Magneto though expensive is highly SEO friendly

Open cart is easy to use,especially for beginners

Zen cart is pretty much like OSC.....though i personally find OSC much more easy to use and better looking for the eye

[aurora_cues 2]

You can always buy an oscommerce based template if you do not want to spend too much time on modifying. For me the modification part is the real fun anyway. LOL

[david.moore 0]

Magnet is the good choice but for quick resoponce it will neot be the good one. Because while migrating you requires time and developers effort. In the future you will face many bugs and issues.

[willows 0]

Depends totally on the customer requirements.

If the store is a 3 product shop with very little customisation then a lite ecommerce will do

 

If heavy customisation then osc

 

If you want alot of pain and expense. Magento

 

If you like something quick cheap and sexy looking opencart.

 

If you like something quick cheap and sexy looking but with more functionality out of the box prestashop.

 

You need to make a list of the functionality you need now and future functionality required and then choose carefully. A dummy build and a trail run is a good idea , give each product 2 weeks and score them all.

[♥joli1811 171]

I have run several shops on Magento and results are good. There is an outstanding collection of addins to do almost anything you want with it.

Just my 2 cents.

 

http://www.aitoc.com/en/magento.html?limit=all

[ralfeus 0]

I'm fighting with OpenCart for 3 years. It provides good architecture. But at the same time it has mixed business logic objects and database layers. Additionally all business objects (like Customer, Product, Order etc) are represented by arrays. Giving all that it's very difficult to get familiar with business objects schema. 

Therefore I've decided to change eShop engine and looking primarily at osCommerce. 

 

In my case I need to customize business objects schema (adding new business objects, adding new properties to existing ones). Additionally I need to modify business logic for orders handling. 

Does osCommerce allows that? Or may be some other engines?

[MrPhil 648]

Well... certainly osC will "allow" you to do just about anything, as all the source and schemas are right there in the open, and it's free. Whether it's worth the effort to make major changes, only you can answer (as well as are the resulting features already available in other implementations/engines). Note that osC is not really OO, so if you're oriented towards that (pun intended), you may find it difficult to realize your concept. It is possible to do what you want, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty with direct database access and (still mostly) procedural programming.

 

Go ahead and install osC 2.3.4 (it's free) and play with it a bit, to see how much you'll need to change. Take a look at the code, and browse through the library of add-ons to see if someone has already done what you want.

[ralfeus 0]

Thank you. I've read something like that in other sources as well. So I guess I'd give up on osC so far and have a look at the nopCommerce

[MikhailJB 0]

Hi,

I thought I would chime in on this thread.

After looking for alternatives we have found a good path for migration of osCommerce customers thanks to a fork of osC 3 Alpha 5 by the team at Loaded Commerce link here to check them out, we find it scales well and incorporates a lot of what people need right now in the market place,  the main dev guys there were / are involved in the CRE bundle of osC.

We have developed a few modules already including porting osC modules to Loaded Commerce and have found it easy to work with and bring stores online with customisations in short time.

 

 

MIKHAIL

HostingWorx http://hostingworx.com.au

Web Services: Hosting, Design, SEO,Ecommerce Stores, VPS & Dedicated Servers, Remote Computer Support

[jcim 2]

Prestashop is slow, specially with some templates since version 1.5, and it can't be fixed easily. I have seen templates that take 7 seconds to load every page, using a fast hosting.


I have made a research about Prestashop for a customer and have found that Prestashop is unusable to heavy traffic ecommerce sites, because pages have between 600KB and 4MB of size and a lot of javascript/Ajax that slow down the page rendering.


OSCommerce is the best option if you have PHP skills, is fast, secure and easy to customize. Furthermore, with some tuning, it is possible to have modern Ajax pages and SEO optimized sites using OSCommerce.