Best php/ruby/python e-commerce solution

Question

I'm looking for an easy to skin and customize e-commerce package.

I've been reading good reviews about Magento, but it seems to have problems with performance. I've tried osCommerce before and found it to be pretty painful to modify, but I hear zenCart is better... but the latest release of zenCart is nearly a year old, so not sure how up to date it is at this point.

I tried hosted e-commerce with Shopify, and while very easy to use and template, its customization options are a bit limited (the templating language doesn't even support basic logic operations, which makes it pretty inflexible).

I'm almost ready to try writing my own in rails using ActiveMerchant, but while that will give me ultimate in customization, it's going to take much longer when I have to reinvent the wheel.

I'd be happy with a php, ruby or python based system, I know enough of those languages to be able to customize the system if I need to as long as it's well-organized and documented code.

Anybody have experience with something they'd recommend, or conversely, recommend staying away from?

Answer 1

I am now launching a new eshop, and I had the same question. I've ended up using PrestaShop, which I found easy to customize (which I can't say about Magento, their templating system just didn't feel right and I failed to apply custom skin to it), and which also has some nifty features like AJAX cart. It's built in PHP.

I'm not really sure about performance, but so far with 3000 products loaded into it it's really fast.

Answer 2

We use Magento hosted on SimpleHelix and performance is great, as long as you don't use the default theme which is horrible and slow.

Answer 3

I've been looking at Satchmo which is built on Django. Not actively using it yet, but so far, it's looking pretty good.

Answer 4

I helped a friend setup ZenCart. It's open source (PHP & MySQL), it has all the basics of ecommerce included by default, and it has a fairly active community creating add-ons for it. I found it was very easy to modify for my friend's needs, and the code wasn't a total nightmare.

As for your concerns about how active it is, the developers have been communicating about the roadmap for version 1.4, so I don't think you have to worry about it being a dead project.

Answer 5

I have setup shops with osCommerce, ZenCart, Magento, and Yahoo Merchant.

osCommerce is a nice package, but when I used it about 4 years ago, I had to do a lot of work to re-theme it.

ZenCart is essentially osCommerce but easier to theme with their template system. The codebase seems pretty antiquated (include files are in the web directory by default).

Magento is reasonably easy to theme, is under active development, but is dogged slow. I have a new version of a clients site developed with Magento, but I am waiting to launch it until they release a version that is considerably faster. I have only used DreamHost with Magento and my own dev server. Both are slow. I may look into SimpleHelix.

Yahoo Merchant is horrible. I tried to use it for about two weeks and gave up.

Answer 6

osCommerce is absolute garbage and should not be used under any circumstances. Its weak modularity and lack of code/markup separation means most modifications - or even just changes to the bland default appearance - involve manually editing code files. That makes it way too easy to introduce a pesky error or nice big security hole into your store when all you really want to do is change the shopping cart icon or something. I can't help but cringe whenever my boss wants me to work with it at work. Hell, I personally refuse to shop at any online store using osCommerce because there's just no way I would trust such a garbage system with handling my credit card info.

I haven't used ZenCart personally, but since it's based on osCommerce, I can't imagine it's much better - you can only polish a turd so much.

I played with Magento a bit, but unlike Brett, I found the backflips they were asking us to do to modify the templates to be bizarre. I don't know; maybe things have gotten easier since then. I've heard good things about it, and it seems to be under very active development, so it might be a good choice.

But, being a Drupal developer, I personally prefer that coupled with the Übercart modules. You get a decent web store coupled with all the smarts of Drupal. The Drupal 6 version of Übercart isn't up to snuff yet, so you'll have to use Drupal 5 (or wait a few months), but if you're serious about building both a great site and a great store, Übercart and Drupal are your best choice, in my opinion.

Answer 7

I've looked at the Ruby on Rails-based Substruct in some detail, this is my choice for new ecommerce applications. Best part is the Rails framework forces a good architecture, and Substruct is nice and clean internally.

I've previously worked with osCommerce and ZenCart, which can be pretty nasty to customise and I have heard terrible things about Magento.

Answer 8

I'm using Magento on NEXCESS, and performance is good.

Answer 9

If you like Ruby on Rails, Shopify and Acitve Merchant then you're probably going to love Spree. It uses ActiveMerchant and a bunch of best practices all rolled into a single framework. Its also highly customizable through the use of extensions. Finally, there's a very active community with contributions coming in daily.

Answer 10

I am also using Magento.

Answer 11

Satchmo - www.satchmoproject.com is another alternative based on Django.

Answer 12

I've used GetPaid, an open source module for Plone. Advantage is that it is very flexible to be adopted to custom business processes and also that it integrates with Plone (plone.org), which has great features in content management and interactive sites. It isn't as feature rich as some other systems, but has been able to do everything we have needed (other than digital file sales, which is coming soon). You can see sites done with it at Sites Using GetPaid.

Answer 13

Spree is an up and coming Ruby on Rails e-commerce solution.

Answer 14

Go for Perfect Sale. It's a Python E-commerce + GED + Wiki + Blog website maker.

Great open source Python job made under Ikaaro.

The website is : http://www.perfect-sale.com/