Best PHP/Ruby/Python e-commerce solution?

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 Ãœbercart modules. You get a decent web store coupled with all the smarts of Drupal. The Drupal 6 version of Ãœbercart 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, Ãœbercart and Drupal are your best choice, in my opinion.

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 Ãœbercart modules. You get a decent web store coupled with all the smarts of Drupal. The Drupal 6 version of Ãœbercart 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, Ãœbercart and Drupal are your best choice, in my opinion.

Hmm, you're the second person to mention Drupal, though the other one was using a different ecommerce module. I will look into it though; thanks. – Aeon Sep 17 '08 at 0:50 1 I did one shop with osCommerce since I asked this question, and I have to concur - it's got a horrible coding structure and absolutely no modularity.

Thousands of add-ons, each one requiring manual editing of core files is a horrible way to work. – Aeon May 14 '09 at 17:55.

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

I will second Django as a great commerce solution. I've deployed several Satchmo ecommerce sites, and the learning curve is steep. I am currently developing a Mezzanine/Cartridge Django site, and must say that the code quality is excellent.

– ken Jun 24 at 16:05 I should update that "steep" might be a bit unfair. The documentation is generally superior, and Django's code quality is top-notch. That said, I've deployed three Cartridge sites since I wrote my comment above and the documentation and performance are excellent.

– ken Aug 18 at 16:02.

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.

Please update the link to Spree. – Cristian Ciupitu Jan 6 at 1:22 Correct link is spreecommerce. Com – Barnabas Kendall Jan 12 at 18:11.

You must try LemonStand. It's PHP based with all the features and easy theming. lemonstandapp.com.

Old question, but I'd like to add my vote for LemonStand. I've been playing around with it off and on, adn really like it. It's easier to theme than Magento, which was my original setup.

– Keefer Nov 11 at 20:11.

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.

I will take a look, thanks! – Aeon Sep 17 '08 at 16:36 Substruct looks good – jpartogi Aug 23 '09 at 14:22.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Bad link to simple helix, use: simplehelix. Com – SeanDowney Jul 31 '09 at 23:42.

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 : perfect-sale.com.

The whole site is in French. – Cristian Ciupitu Jan 6 at 0:27.

Take a look at ror-e.com/ its gaining some traction. Https://github. Com/drhenner/ror_ecommerce Its by far the cleanest solution and well tested.

You want to check out PayPro Global if you wish to sell software online or other digital goods. Not only that you will have full control on the design, you will actually have a web designer assisting your with anything. The features from the marketing point of view are endless and with the right tools it won't be long before you will feel how powerful the tools are (some patent pending).

I second the recommendation of Ubercart -- excellent and flexible system; I was even able to build an online course registration system using it. But every system has its strengths and weaknesses, and it's looking like I'm going to use VirtueMart (which runs on Joomla) for my next project, since it has a nice "product builder" extension to allow users to create their own product bundles (or choose from pre-configured ones). Tienda, also for Joomla, is quite promising as well...has a nice feature set already, and is under active development.

I would definitely use Ubercart again too, depending on the project.

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