Any existing e-commerce frameworks that can do this?

Question

I'm trying to do a site that can host multiple storefronts off of one database for "branding" purposes, but everything I've come across either A) forces you to use their entire solution as-is unless you want to do a rewrite of most of their logic, or B) thinks that "multiple stores" always means "different items in each store" when I want subsets of a master products database so I don't have to keep multiple databases for each "store".

What I mean is.. say I sell printer toner. Some of that toner may be refurbished, and I want to sell those on Site A along with the other toner I sell, as well as Site B which is ONLY refurbished toner. I have yet to find any solution that will let me list ALL toner on Site A, and customize Site B to filter my toner (let's assume I have a "Refurbished" flag column in the database) so that it only displays that type of toner, without keeping two separate sites with duplicate data between them (since apart from their look/styles, the pages will be identical except for the logic determining what type of products to filter for).

I'm on a really tight deadline, and don't have the time to roll my own solution, but I'm coming up empty as far as anything out there. I need a framework or something that I can modify to suit MY database, since we already have one existing, instead of installing and setting up THEIR database and forcing everything to fit.

Does anything like this exist, preferably for .NET since that's what I'm most familiar with and we're already using Classic ASP so have everything for .NET in place? And, if so, at a reasonably inexpensive price? I work for a small outfit and can't requisition a thousand bucks for a solution; they'll tell me that's far too much money to spend.

Answer 1

Magento is the best system I've seen. In PHP, which may be a dealbreaker for you, but it's the closest I'm aware of that fits your needs.

Answer 2

I think you need to rethink your requirements because they seem out of wack to me.

1. A thousand bucks for an existing solution is chump change considering the amount of work required to roll your own. so if you happen to find the perfect solution and it costs a bit of money consider selling that to your client.
2. Assuming an e-commerce solution exists that can support any database is simply unrealistic imho
3. A good e-commerce solution will provide a means of easily importing all of your data. I would suggest modifying your requirements taking that into consideration.

Why the adherence to YOUR database? Do you have other applications already running off the data? Or do you simply want to avoid the data migration issues?

Answer 3

Commerce Server 2007 can do this easily. However it seems that it is out of your consideration due to your budget restraints.

Answer 4

Spree is a great Ruby on Rails solution, in fact there was a discussion about this on the spree-user mailing list recently. You're definitely going to want some type of open source solution if you're on a budget. I do, however, agree with Todd that if you are not a developer yourself, $1000 isn't going to get you very far in terms of hiring a professional developer.