Best ASP.NET E-Commerce Framework

Question

Please suggest and/or vote for your favorite ASP.NET E-Commerce Solution.

I'm looking for a full-featured asp.net E-Commerce solution. The solution needs to be easily extensible as I need to extend it to integrate with a custom Flash based personalization engine. It should also have a great administrative back-end that handles inventory tracking, report, labels, shipping, ... so that the client can really use it as the basis for their business.

I've used quite a few different E-Commerce systems including OSCommerce, Zen Cart, Catalook, and eTailer. While I was impressed with Zen Cart and eTailer, this project is big enough that I want to try a more serious, commercial offering.

I'm particularly interested in thoughts on aspdotnetstorefront, BVCommerce, AbleCommerce, and MediaChase.

Answer 1

I can't speak to any of the options you mentioned except AspDotNetStorefront. I did a project about a year ago where we extended AspDotNetStorefront and it was a painful process. It is a great product with many, many features if you can use it out of the box, but extending its' functionality is challenging to say the least.

I would look for a package with a well defined API if you are looking to extend functionality. My company did a small project using AbleCommerce and while I was not involved directly, I heard good things from the developers working on the project about their API and feature set.

Finding a package to extend is a difficult process, and I have yet to use one in quite a few tries that I felt good about.

Answer 2

BVCommerce - The price point ($500) is very reasonable, the product seems fairly well regarded, and I've heard good things about customizing/extending it. It just doesn't seem like it's going to meet my needs as an Top Tier ECommerce solution. After viewing the tutorial videos, the Admin interface just seems too basic and outdated.

A friend of mine gave me the following feedback on BV Commerce "good api, uses plug-ins, can create your own plug ins. uses master pages... I prefer to write my own pages/controls and then use the api to pull the data. makes service packs/hotfixes easier to apply"

Answer 3

We're currently evaluating all the above carts, plus another .NET cart called ZNode. Not very feature-rich at this point (still very new), but appears to be a solid foundation and very customizable with some middleware features for connecting to a backend. Customizability is huge for us, so it may outweigh a long feature list.

Answer 4

Some things to look at:

Reporting is usually going to be handled by a separate product like CrystalReports or MS Reports that connects up to the DB and does it's thing.

Carts will support shipping, packing slips and shipping lables via various levels of integration with 3rd party products (UPS WorldShip, FedEx Ship Manager, ZFirm ShipRush, etc.) The integration with these products will vary greatly.

I've used AspDotNetStorefront on a project before. The learning curve is a bit steep when it comes to customization that's not provided out of the box. I would use it again now that I'm familiar with it. Without having used the other products its hard to do a proper comparision. I can try to answer any specific questions you might have about ADNSF.

Answer 5

We are evaluating AbleCommerce and the biggest drawback that we have found so far is the lack of a Content Mangement System (CMS) for page management. You can customize just about anything but if you just want to add a page to the menu with some content it seems to be very painful.

DotShoppingCart.com has a seemingly nice solution for CMS but we are not far enough into our eveluation to determine if they rest of the site is customizable.

Answer 6

We have been using Aivea Commerce Server for couple of months now. The best enterprise level .NET eCommerce system I have seen, comparable to EP, ATG, IBM and MS Commerce Server. It's ASP.NET 3.5, C#, WCF, WF, LINQ To SQL, multi-store, multi-language a true 3-Tier system with WCF Web Services for every function of the system.

The price tag is high but worth it if you are working for a client who is serious about thier online business. Check out http://www.aiveacommerceserver.com

Answer 7

Based on the research I've done, it seems like in the asp.net world you have two divisions for E-Commerce software:

1. Storefront Systems
2. E-Commerce Frameworks

Storefront systems - at least how I've categorized them - are intended to be used for typical shopping cart scenarios (i.e. you have a single site with items you're selling and people can put those items carts and purchase them). You can definitely extend them to do other things, but they do have limitations.

Storefront systems have lots of out of the box features. These systems are also more complete and ready to run immediately than frameworks.

Frameworks are built to be extended. You can usually run a basic site out of the box, but you will almost always modify it - adding features and customizing it to fit your needs. Frameworks are to be used when you require a multi-site/multi-catalog system or when your requirements are so different that the flexibility of a framework is desired. Frameworks also seem to be ideal for situations where you would normally build from scratch, but you prefer to have a good starting point that has been well-tested.

Frameworks are much more expensive to license than storefronts.

On the storefront side, it's been pretty easy to find people willing to talk about their experiences with different systems. So far - based on the reviews I've read - AbleCommerce and ZNode seem to be the best options. The reviews I weighted heavily came from developers who were paying particular attention to how easy the systems are to extend - and how active the particular developer community seems to be.

On the framework side, it's been difficult to find reviews that weren't published by the originating company (Matt Moore's post above is an exception). It sounds like MediaChase ECF G5 and Microsoft Commerce Server are the standard-bearers in this area - with Aivea Commerce Server a relative newcomer.

My take on this is strictly based on researching online opinions and reviews - as well as discussions with sales folks. I've also done demos of the various systems and installed a few on test servers.

I'm I off on this? I'd love to hear more from people who have actually implemented one of the framework systems.

Answer 8

My experience with AspDotNetStoreFront so far...

Customization was a huge concern for my current project and it seems to be relatively easy to skin the product. Out of the box it supports and ton of different setups as far as inventory/organization. For instance, tracking inventory by color/size was a big deal for me and it handled it no problem. The architecture does seem a bit hooky but I have not had to edit any of the code yet. It also has a CMS built in so that may be a plus for some users. The best thing I ever did was add jquery to my custom skin.

Answer 9

I have done one project with ASPDotNetStoreFront. There wasn't really any additional functionality involved. We did extensive customization using the skins and the administration section. We also did not purchase the source code version just the application. So far it has been running well. The customer support has been very good for ASPDotNetStoreFront.

Answer 10

I've used Media Chase (version 4) in the past and would not recommend it. I found the performance to be poor and it difficult to customize the UI.

Answer 11

I have used ASPDNSF in the past... I found customizing it's functionality was a nightmare. The code is pretty much a mess, in-line SQL, no DAL, etc. Really amateurish in that regard. At the same time, the software works and is rich in features. So I guess if you aren't concerned with customizing anything but the look of the site, it may be a good choice.

I have a new project I'm working on and I"m leaning towards AbleCommerce. It seems to have a more modern approach and better coding architecture. I'm not even planning on doing that much customization, but I just believe that a well coded app will run better and be easier to debug than something written like a classic ASP app!

No experience with the others. I did try out NOP Commerce, and open source solution, but it's lacking in so many features I can't really recommend it except for the most basic of sites. Maybe in a year or so when it has more features, but like Dash Commerce, these open source e-commerce projects seem to start with a bang then fade away... That said NOP is outstanding in it's architecture, incredibly well written and easy to understand.

Answer 12

ASPDNSF just officially killed their DNN line as of this morning (12/14/2009). I spoke with the ASPDNSF sales team and the decision was made because DNN Corp is allegedly not working towards PCI PABP certification. ASPDNSF is still offering the product on a case by case basis and they are still supporting the product for existing customers.

DNN again finds itself without a powerhouse Ecommerce provider. Quite frankly, I think I've decided to forgo DNN for sites with Ecommerce needs. It's just become too much of a hassle. The pains are now outweighing the benefits of using an CMS w/ eCommerce.

Regards, Tom

Answer 13

ASPDNSF, as of release 8.1, has a decent Add-In architecture. There are 14 points in the app that you can hook in to functionality with external code. It's a step up for them, but still a nicely incomplete solution. Their WSI framework and ERP Sync functionality has served us well without a lot of cost. Avoiding the technical merits of whether they used WSDL or anything else, it does what it claims it will do. According to them, they have a solid technical reason for building it that way.

They are actively reducing some of their previous missteps like inline SQL, but it's still a cobbled, poorly-conceived application.

As others have mentioned, the company's service standard is amazingly poor. As one developer to another, I'd like to punch that Dan dude in the face. Absolutely appalling stuff from them. The worst being impish forum deletion and bullish ignoring of any and all customer requests. Bad news. End of story.

ASPDNSF is inexpensive and has value for what it gives you out of the box. If you care about code quality or even the smallest customer service, avoid it.

Note: I've edited my review after more exposure to the software. It blows.

Answer 14

hmmm ... I don't know if those are aspdotnetstorefront reps posting some of these reviews or what but we've used their package and have done extensive customizations on it and the bugs and other issues have certainly created a level of frustration. The code itself is not the most solidly written and in-line sql is not a great approach.

I'm sorry ... I just have to be frank and honest. I don't want anyone to make the mistake that we did. I will say that for the most part the product works but if you need customizations be prepared for some challenges (I'm really biting my tongue here).

If you don't need to customize anything then your experience may be a little more rosey than was ours. We were using the ML/DNN version. We transitioned from Catalook to ASPDNSF. It took 4 to 5 months just to get the store implemented, all our data imported (our store has over 2K products), and functional, we ran into so many issues ... it was rather frustrating.

We looked into the product before purchasing but found out later that they censor their forums. I found this out myself when I posted something in there as a user and they deleted it! There were posts with helpful information in them that they removed! So a potential customer trying to find out about the product wouldn't see the real issues by visiting the forums.

Since they have recently deactivated the ML/DNN product we too are looking for an alternative. This thread has been rather helpful. We will check Able Commerce out.

Answer 15

Nothing about VevoCart ? http://www.vevocart.com

Thank you for yous grate posts. Very Very Helpfull!

Answer 16

Hi We have worked over the aspdotnetstorefront platform and it is real good. Having loads of features like Skinning Different XML packages for each product or category

Gaurav www.infoquestsolutions.com

Answer 17

I would caution against using ASPDN Storefront. It has many features, but large parts of the code base are old and poorly built. It is gradually improving in areas, but their crimes are almost too many to itemize. Lots of UI code deep in the bowels of their core logic, plenty of inline SQL. Unweildy associations... The phrase here is tightly-coupled: it's almost a case study in how not to build maintainable software.

As you will find if you look for reviews on the web, this company has an appalling customer service record. I can tell you from very recent experiences (last week) that it hasn't really changed. They will deal with you on their terms, no matter the money you've given them. They will miss deadlines by months and IGNORE your requests for any class of status update. They will dodge you on live chat, delete forum posts that simply inquire about when production-ready code will be released, and who knows what else. IOW, unmitigated insanity.

They do have a large installed base and their software runs several high-profile commerce sites like Kelty. All for not very much money at all. I suspect this is how they justify their garbage behavior. But you get what you pay for here. Poorly conceived code and world class jerks who think ignoring paying customers is a perfectly acceptable business practice. We're all basically in disbelief over here. If we did to our customers what they do to theirs, we'd be on the streets.

I am not a disgruntled past customer. And I'm not their so-called competition (this is a claim they make to explain all the bad press). More than anything, their behavior is just plain odd. I've never really seen anything like it from a commercial software company.

Answer 18

Don't buy Able Commerce. Support is terrible, feels like they just don't want to bother. Also, they charge "small" $69 fees to change your license to another domain. Borders on fraud. I bought software. I don't care for their licensing scheme, it's something they do to protect themselves against piracy. Not my problem, why do I have to pay "small" fees for this?

Answer 19

My two-cents on a relatively new one kartris. It lacks a few features (real time shipping, documented web service API) but on the plus side it has no inline SQL, uses sprocs with DAL and BLL, so no problems with SQL security. Most of the configuration is done through settings in the admin area (including most site text), and visual design is done with CSS and master pages. They don't have a full source code option but it's a small developer and I got the impression they would provide this at extra cost, though the price is not posted on their site. In terms of things like product options, quantity and custom discounts, customer groups and so on it's simple enough to set up so clients should be able to handle it. There is a basic general CMS for adding text pages, which allows nesting too, but still no system to add links to the menus for new pages. The db design is fairly extensible, and contains all the sprocs which are not encrypted.

Answer 20

NOPCommerce - An Open Source ASP.NET solution has a large number of features, gets regular updates, includes nice CMS capabilities, and SEO management is well done.