oscommerce vs x-cart

[superbovine]

I've been debating over which shopping cart I want to install. There is a nice thread on site point about the finer points of the two. Anybody have any thoughts on this. The issue I am dealing with is that oscommerce is open source and there is a wide community of people that write modules and support it. However, the forums support and the documentation for oscommerce is sub-par. However, the modules are sometimes great for example auctionblox and paypal ipn. The coding is pretty clean as well, but the documentation much less comments are awful.

x-cart on the other has a decent forums, but they also offer support. However you do drop $200 - $500 depending on the x-cart verison. x-cart code is thrown together and isn't as clean as oscommerce. however, all their modules work for the most part, and you don't have risk install for example a paypal wpp (which is still beta on oscommerce) module and hope that there isn't that many bugs otherwise your coding it. although there isn't such nice module already written like ebay integration, but there features like multi-vendor inventory and RMA are implemented and not available in oscommerce.

Besides all that has anybody had expierence on the cost of maintence over the long term for each of the two? I am sure I could make either work for me, and give features between the two.

 

[ChicoWeb]

The problem with these out of the box solutions is that they are everything for everyone and not necessarily everything you need for your solution. They work great for your basic products, standard stuff, but OSC is a nightmare when it comes to data entry. We actually made a mod for data entry that is just brilliant using DTHML to narrow down only option values related to the option name but that’s another story. Believe me, when you have 1,000 products w/ 10 attributes attached to them, finding them in OSC is literally not possible. It leaves your values in no order, and we’d have to scroll through 10,000 values to attach to just one.

My most recent client is based on this solution, but by the time we finished it, we mine as well have built our own framework. I guess what I'm saying is as an avid user of OSC, its great if you have a generic store. If there are a lot of options and attributes that are attached to manufactures, and products, good luck.... or hire us Should go live in the next day or so.

 

[steveedge]

I agree

The Paypal module works fine with OS Commerce. I did two stores this month using it.
The OS Commerce forum is really helpful too. There are answers for almost any problem you will run into just by doing a search, and the few times I have needed to post questions, I generally get an answer that day.
If you are going to use it though, figure out exactly how many add on modules you are going to use, install and configure them before you do anything else, some of the mods will write over other ones, so make sure it works before you invest a lot of time into filling it up with content. test after every change and you should be ok.

Or pay the big bucks for something else

 

[superbovine]

Or pay the big bucks for something else

I don't think $200 for a store front as good as x-cart is very expensive.

 

[ChicoWeb]

I don't think $200 for a store front as good as x-cart is very expensive.

Sometimes the software is the cheapest part. The integration, customization, and QA are the cost.

 

[superbovine]

Sometimes the software is the cheapest part. The integration, customization, and QA are the cost.

i'll do the integration... that is free...