Hello folks,
I was wondering, what makes OC a better platform for ecommerce than other big players like MAGENTO/PRESTASHOP/WOOCOMMERCE?
What are the benefits of it ? ,,,,
Woocommerce - more vulnerable since it's a plugin for wordpress that is often hacked. It also works best if you are only selling a few products - I've seen some ugly and dead slow stores where they try to cram thousands of products in to it. It was never really designed for that.
Magento - big overhead in terms of hosting as it just plain won't run on some cheaper hosting plans and runs slowly unless you have a monster server you are paying for to host it. Much steeper learning curve and a pain in the a** to modify. The addons are far more expensive if you want to customize it and they tend not to play well with each other so expect to have to hire a magento coding expert if you want a lot of additional features. Their free community edition has zero support included so if you go with it, expect to have to pay for any help. The Enterprise edition is the only one the makers will actually give you support for and it is expensive - don't remember how much and they don't publish their pricing on their site, so you never know. And they only support the unmodified code - I've heard that once you use 3rd party addons, they won't help you with anything.
I haven't played at all with prestashop, but every store that I've ever seen that used it was always pretty dang slow. I do understand now they have multistore capability which puts it a bit more level with opencart and magento, but I don't know enough about it to really comment on this one. Hopefully someone else here can.
Opencart has it's issues (especially version 2 which I would steer clear of until more of the bugs are fixed), but I think most of us would agree it is far easier to set up and modify than most other platforms we have tried. There is a very active and supportive user base so you don't have to pay for experts unless you need to, and a lot of free or very low cost addons and themes that you can use to tweak your store exactly the way you want it. There can be conflicts between addons, but usually one of the addon authors will help you sort it out and make them work together (of if you understand a bit about php, you can usually figure it out yourself with a little comparison of the code).
Magento - big overhead in terms of hosting as it just plain won't run on some cheaper hosting plans and runs slowly unless you have a monster server you are paying for to host it. Much steeper learning curve and a pain in the a** to modify. The addons are far more expensive if you want to customize it and they tend not to play well with each other so expect to have to hire a magento coding expert if you want a lot of additional features. Their free community edition has zero support included so if you go with it, expect to have to pay for any help. The Enterprise edition is the only one the makers will actually give you support for and it is expensive - don't remember how much and they don't publish their pricing on their site, so you never know. And they only support the unmodified code - I've heard that once you use 3rd party addons, they won't help you with anything.
I haven't played at all with prestashop, but every store that I've ever seen that used it was always pretty dang slow. I do understand now they have multistore capability which puts it a bit more level with opencart and magento, but I don't know enough about it to really comment on this one. Hopefully someone else here can.
Opencart has it's issues (especially version 2 which I would steer clear of until more of the bugs are fixed), but I think most of us would agree it is far easier to set up and modify than most other platforms we have tried. There is a very active and supportive user base so you don't have to pay for experts unless you need to, and a lot of free or very low cost addons and themes that you can use to tweak your store exactly the way you want it. There can be conflicts between addons, but usually one of the addon authors will help you sort it out and make them work together (of if you understand a bit about php, you can usually figure it out yourself with a little comparison of the code).
Running Opencart v3.0.3.9 with multi-stores and the default template from https://www.labeshops.com which has links to all my stores.
In complete agreement with labeshops.
PrestaShop is good too but extensions are expensive, and it also contains bugs. It has more features but it is much less flexible than Opencart.
The beauty of Opencart (v1.5.6.4, or my own v1.6.2.0 that you can test here : http://villagedefrance.net/demonstration) is that you can turn it into any kind of website while having a strong shopping cart code at the core. Like labeshops, I wouldn't recommend v2.0.1.0 just yet, but the future is bright.
Here's a site I designed for a friend, based on v1.5.6.4. He is a builder and doesn't have any products to sell, only is services, so he didn't need the shopping cart. The shopping cart is still behind, just in case.
http://www.vl-building-services.co.uk
Just an example but that's what makes Opencart the best all-rounder!
PrestaShop is good too but extensions are expensive, and it also contains bugs. It has more features but it is much less flexible than Opencart.
The beauty of Opencart (v1.5.6.4, or my own v1.6.2.0 that you can test here : http://villagedefrance.net/demonstration) is that you can turn it into any kind of website while having a strong shopping cart code at the core. Like labeshops, I wouldn't recommend v2.0.1.0 just yet, but the future is bright.
Here's a site I designed for a friend, based on v1.5.6.4. He is a builder and doesn't have any products to sell, only is services, so he didn't need the shopping cart. The shopping cart is still behind, just in case.
http://www.vl-building-services.co.uk
Just an example but that's what makes Opencart the best all-rounder!
OpenCart custom solutions @ https://villagedefrance.net
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