I have used Ecommercetemplates (low cost) and I can tell you that their communication and support is great.

I also have a colleague who builds OSCommerce websites for me and I understand that you can do this with a minimum knowledge of PHP. I must say that I am very impressed with the sites that he produces using this, as are the clients.

where I can find the "top 10" or so carts

Reviews and top-10 lists are all over the web. There aren't many that can be trusted.

I spent months looking for solutions to step up myself and found this to be the case:

1. All open source PHP ecommerce code is mostly crap.

2. PHP should be used only for presentation and not business logic.

3. Most developers that claim they are professional web developers that use open source PHP ecommerce code are not very professional. As a matter of fact, I put out the word on guru.com and everyone that has ever downloaded oscommerce and added a contribution to it was bidding on my project. LOL :)

4. Enterprise class businesses need enterprise class code.

5. PHP can be used for Enterprise class stores, but the only companies/developers I found that could develop one or had existing code were megalomaniacs, wanted a king's ransom and acted uninterested in doing work.

6. I was better off looking at Java or ASP.Net solutions.

7. The #1 company I found on Google that has Java code is very expensive ($50K - $80K) and they are very pretentious and arrogant. The #2 company is more reasonable ($18K - $50K) and much nicer but the chapter in their manual just to add a product to the database was 16 pages long.

8. Most ASP.Net developers I contacted would not get back to me and/or acted uninterested. No sales sense I guess? The only one I found I would have gone with was websitepipline.com, but they use old ASP classic and that was out of the question.

I went with softslate commerce ($500) and I am paying the developer to integrate my customizations into it. Even at his premium rates, he is cheaper than the other JAVA companies and the basic core of their code is no better than softslate is. (MVC, hibernate, struts) Not to mention his professionalism and enthusiasm puts all the others (except for websitepipeline.com) to shame.

Anyway that is my story of my quest for good code and custom development work.

I hope you find a good match.

[edited by: Peter_Cornstalk at 8:42 am (utc) on Dec. 16, 2006]

>> PHP should be used only for presentation and not business logic

Um... no. PHP is a script language. It's very functional and fast when used in the right conditions. Is it the best solution? That depends upon what functionality you want. And just like Java, Python, Perl, etc., it isn't ideal for everything.

>> Reviews.

You have a working cart and system that has been developed over what sounds like a few years of trial and error - but if it's a good system, why change? There's no law that says you have to upgrade. What you need is a good programmer that can read the latest security releases and realize what the release fixes and why. Then they should be able to get under the hood and do the job. Tell them to ignore the upgrade tool.

Considerations:

1) As soon as you commit to this path, you will no longer be able to upgrade using the Lite Commerce engine. It sounds like you're half way there already because of the customizations.

2) Finding a good programmer will also mean they can strip down and customize the cart further to make it leaner and faster.

3) Rolling your own cart off of an existing product is not uncommon (WebmasterWorld was built this way). There comes a point when you realize you have built a completely unique product that suits your needs. The advantages of this are many and yes, there are some headaches like no support other than skilled people that you can trust.

Most likely if you find the LiteCommerce/X-cart family of carts to be limiting, you'll find the same is true with all of the available options in that price range.

If you want to see what larger sites are using, subscribe to something like Internet Retailer. Whenever there is an article about a company, there is often a bit about the technology they are using on the backend.

The December issue was the "Best of the Web Top 50" with the best sites (in their opinion) categorized by a number of industries. Some of the listed companies and their platforms:

American Eagle Outfitters - ATG
GAP - in house developed
Talbots - Microsoft (presumable Commerce Server?)
Best Buy - ATG
Green Mountain Coffee - Microsoft Commerce Server

After years of trying different off the shelf programs we decided to just build our own as needed. I've come to the realization that most carts are "too feature laden" and many get themselves in trouble using all those features.

No matter which way you go, you're going to need a programmer on standby to assist with all of those daily issues that arise when customers realize that they need this, or they need that. After hearing that for years, it was time to just give the client exactly what they wanted, nothing more, nothing less. Of course we include all the bells and whistles we've developed over the years but for the most part, it is a heck of a lot easier and usually more cost effective to build to suit.

>> Um... no. PHP is a script language.

Your right, that is why it should not be used for business logic. :)

[edited by: Peter_Cornstalk at 5:37 pm (utc) on Dec. 16, 2006]

I'm searching too...
Volusion looks good...on paper...anyone have any exp. with it...

I'm searching too...
Volusion looks good...on paper...anyone have any exp. with it...

They have a 14 free trial that I am looking at now. It looks rather complicated with stuff I would never use, but it looks very sophisticated.

The only thing I see is they are limited in how one can display product options because you can't associate a thumbnail/popup with them as well as other display options that I have added as customizations to softslate.

The way they display categories, products and options in the admin is great.

I was able to add a new category, product, and create 3 new options and add to it without reading a manual or watching a tutorial. That is a huge plus.

The SEO looks good.

Their hosting packages are on RackSpace... can't beat them. I know the head network admin at RackSpace, he is a real nice fella.

It looks pretty good to me.

I might even use them for an up and coming project I am planning where I do not need complicated product option layouts.

I would use their hosted version, I don't think I would spend the 10K on the licensed version since their web hosting prices are reasonable for the quality of the hosting. $10/month web hosting just doesn't cut it, especially if it is windows/sql server hosting. You have to spend $40-$60/month to get decent shared hosting really.

The only real drawback is if you want to customize the licensed version it looks like it is old ASP classic in Visual Basic... ewwww. If it was ASP.Net I would be ok but I would rather have C# code.

[edited by: Peter_Cornstalk at 7:18 am (utc) on Dec. 17, 2006]

Thanks for all the great input. I really like some of the features built into Monster Commerce, in fact, I'm shocked so much of what we struggle with on a daily basis is already automated in many carts! The "wouldn't this be easier if we customized the cart to do A, B, and C" ideas are already standard features elsewhere - guess I've had my head down working for far too long!
I am cringing at the idea of having a programmer on standby to customize the cart to death. I suppose if we hit "Nordstrom" status, I'll demand an IT staff and a custom solution, but at the moment the business needs to evolve out of one owner and one worker model to what you'd call a "small business" reaching into the $100K/mo in gross sales. (That's gross, not profit by any means!)

I've been customizing and customizing LC with the help of the LC tech staff but really, this cart is taking on a life of it's own and I get the feeling like we've used too many "band-aids" instead of just using a more robust cart to meet our, and our customer's needs.

I'm going to check out ShopSite and Volusion, thanks for the tips!

I can see a big problem with monstercommerce in that there is no way to search for product variant templates (options). If you have a lot of them, it will be hard to manage.

Also, the variant display is only a dropdown, no place to make check boxes or radio buttons.

Also, it looks like if you want to add "related products" to a product, they present all products in one long unsearchable list. This is bad.

Volusion appears not to have related products. SoftSlate does.

Volusion is more set up like SoftSlate as far as how the categories, products, and options are listed in the Admin... which is idea IMO.

I don't see anyway to add multiple Admin logins with permissions in Volusion or monster. In SoftSlate, for instance, people that view orders and process them only have the ability to view the orders and edit them. I can allow people to view only certain parts of the catalog and decide if they can edit in those areas or not.

I would ask monstercommerce about encryption of customer data and cc info. I don't see that anywhere, but Volusion does encrypt some way because they ask for a password. SoftSlate has encryption for customer data and cc info (if you choose to store the info and run cards manually.)

You might check out aspdotnetstorefront.com too... although don't expect much enthusiasm from them or Mercury Commerce (listed on their site) for custom development.

[edited by: Peter_Cornstalk at 7:33 am (utc) on Dec. 18, 2006]

The available " add-ons" really set pkgs apart....A large developer community usually means many useful inexpensive add-ons...

Thanks for the heads-up re: Monster Commerce. I'm actually leaning towards Volusion or GoeCart now that I see some limitations with Monster.

GoeCart has a comparision chart on their site of all the large companies but that's not exactly an impartial comparison, I already found one incorrect statement about Volusion. Still, many of you may find the chart interesting, it's on their site under Products/Compare GoeCart.

Wow, there are soooo many features to checkout! I agree a big developer community with lots of add-ons is good to fill in the gaps. I want to be careful that updates and upgrades are smooth.

I like the advice to see if I can figure out what large companies use for their cart system. Someone may also find the list at the Codie Awards useful. The two carts I'm considering are on that list.

Right now, I'm looking at:

GoeCart - really big on SEO features
Volusion - very comprehensive with one page checkout
Nexternal - the chart suggests they use frames - ugh, that won't be good for SEO! But, they have an impressive client list ;-)

Peter, you are right about variants, those have to be VERY flexible for our needs. Volusion seems to have that covered. Related products is also important, I'll have to demo these carts to see how products are added. Volusion does have multiple admin levels and the ability to edit proudcts in bulk.

I looked at SoftSlate but it seems a bit "small time" from their site. I like the idea of a larger company with 24x7 tech support - I'm not on my computer 24x7 but my clients expect to talk to someone asap if the site has problems ;-)

Again, great discussion, thanks so much!