PHP ecommerce system: which one is easiest to modify

Question

I will have to set up ecommerce application. It will be ecommerce with high traffic (thousands views per day, few thousands orders per day, 30000+ products). I’m looking for ecommerce software written in PHP. I have checked:

• Oscommerce
• zencart
• Magento (http://www.magentocommerce.com/)
• PrestaShop (http://www.prestashop.com/) +
• OpenCart (http://opencart.com) +
• Cubecart (http://www.cubecart.com)
• agoracart (http://www.agoracart.com/)
• storesprite (http://www.storesprite.com/)
• optioncart (www.optioncart.com)
• interspire (http://www.interspire.com/) ~$300 + 12months support +
• x-cart (http://www.xcart.com/)

and my favorites are:

• PrestaShop
• OpenCart
• interspire
• something own.

After few hours spend with each I dont know if it fill my needs. Maybe you have some experience. The project im working on have many very "special" requirements so I need something that will be very extensible (eg. add new payments types, new promotions, add functionality to have custom view for every category and by "custom view" i don’t mind different category name color only). But for me "easy extensible" means not only well written code but also well documented with good support. As you see this doesn't have to be free/opensource but licence have to allow to modify source code. It also cannot be very expensive (less than $5000). Also it has to be fast. It must support few thousand orders/per day. I don’t care if output is based on divs, tables or HTML5 section/srticle. We gonna rewrite it anyway, but build in seo support (meta tags, urls) for category/product is must. It also should allow to have unlimited category depth. It will be nice to have built in CMS but I am not interested in cart extension to jomla/drupal. It have to be standalone ecommerce application.

I'm not interested in java/python because there is lack of developers so only PHP solutions are taken into consideration.

Why not Magento: it looks good ad have awesome admin panel, but i heard that it is very slow. Also "super admin panel" means that there is a lot of javascript/functions/classes and it probably will be harder to extend. Also heard bad opinions about support.

Why not oscommerce/zencart: worked with oscommerce and it was hell. Zencart is based on oscommerce and i suppose that not many things changed.

Others from my list looks the same. I can’t see bi difference in functionality. My choice of presta, opencart, interspire is based on user opinions found on the Internet.

Which one you can you can recommend me? Maybe something totally different?

Answer 1

If you're worried about extensibility, write your own. It'll cost less than modifying a pre-packaged off the shelf solution. Writing it yourself isn't cheap, but it's cheaper than making heavy modifications to someone else's code. I'd suggest using Symfony as a framework, unless you have considerable experience with a different PHP framework. You're not going to get a custom solution for under $5000, period. That's a one month development window. You might be able to come close with NO bells an whistles, but it'd be very close with an extremely veteran developer.

But if you're not going to modify it, I'd recommend Magento.

If you're left there thinking, neither of these solutions solves my problem, there's a very real possibility that perhaps you should consider: the requirements are unrealistic. It's common. It's so common and taboo that I'd bet it leads to more project failures than any other consideration.

If you want a shopping cart to grow with the business, build one using a framework with no bells and whistles.

If they can make due with a cheap solution like Cube Cart (also good) with no modifications, then try that first.

Honestly, it sounds like you have an unrealistic client (based on the description) or a requirement to build a custom, simple solution. Don't try to bend a spoon with your mind to impress the client, you'll just get a headache.

Best of luck