I've got a contract to build an e-commerce site. It doesn't make much sense to build it from scratch (rebuild the wheel).
There's plenty of Open Source platforms such as osCommerce or Magnetocommerce. There's also some commercial platforms (I don't mind a small outlay if it's worth id)
Does anyone have any experience building upon an ecommerce platform like these ?
I've used osCommerce and its ok. But CreLoaded is much, much better. CreLoaded is based on osCommerce, but with all the best of the best add-ins pre-installed.
What can make osCommerce and CreLoaded really stand out as a top of the range products are two things:
Templates There are 256 templates for CreLoaded at template monster. Costing only $140 which is cheap, considering the quality and quantity of the graphics.
Optional add-ins. Add-ins are hard to implement as you have to patch the code manually. However, the saving grace is that there is CreLoaded. This is oscommerce with all the best Add-ins pre-installed.
Erol I also purchased Erol v4 for my blank media store. The site looks ok, but its just dreadful. Written in Microsoft Access. Total rubbish. BTW, i've since closed the shop so please don't purchase anything!
I looked at a LOT of commerce packages! And CreLoaded is the one to go for in my own opinion.
You might be interested by answers to What’s the best free and opensource PHP ecommerce solution? (and why?), at least it provide answers for one platform.