I'm deciding on a shopping cart for my store and have it down to OpenCart and PrestaShop. If you've had experience with PrestaShop, what are the advantages/disadvantages of using OpenCart? Thanks in advance.
I haven't tried Prestashop 1.1 Final. I got up to 1.1beta
Disadvantages of OC vs PS
* OC is not straight out of a box yet. This is changing
* Smaller community
* No/less template designers
Advantages of OC over PC
* Faster
* Easier
* Non-programmers like me can easily understand the code and make our own changes
* Can come into this forum and get developer help
* PS has pretty templates
* More standard modules. But OC is getting there too
Disadvantages of PS
* Bigger community but only if you understand French
* Not as hard to modify as Magento but I found it much harder than Open Cart
Why use Open Cart instead of Prestashop ?
Open Cart is faster (performance), easier to use, easier to modify and it's supported in English with English speaking developers offering coding help.
If you understand French, it may be a different story but I couldn't get any help because I can't speak French.
I originally chose Prestashop but left Prestashop when I found Open Cart
Disadvantages of OC vs PS
* OC is not straight out of a box yet. This is changing
* Smaller community
* No/less template designers
Advantages of OC over PC
* Faster
* Easier
* Non-programmers like me can easily understand the code and make our own changes
* Can come into this forum and get developer help
* PS has pretty templates
* More standard modules. But OC is getting there too
Disadvantages of PS
* Bigger community but only if you understand French
* Not as hard to modify as Magento but I found it much harder than Open Cart
Why use Open Cart instead of Prestashop ?
Open Cart is faster (performance), easier to use, easier to modify and it's supported in English with English speaking developers offering coding help.
If you understand French, it may be a different story but I couldn't get any help because I can't speak French.
I originally chose Prestashop but left Prestashop when I found Open Cart
PS is friendly software, but bloated (in my humble opinion), just too many options and modules that aren't needed. I started with PrestaShop, built the store and tore it down, in favor of OC. Plus, PS is only XHTML traditional, where as OC is XHTML strict. I prefer scripts written in XHTML strict. Although, I must say, I like the looks of the storefront of PS better, along this the cool way the "add to cart" moves up. ONLY if there were no OC, then yes, I would choose PS over the others out there.
It depends on what the user/shop owner needs.
Opencart cons:
- searches rely on javascript, that's obstrusive
- development is not yet finished (so a comparision doesn't make much sense yet)
Opencart pros:
- it feels rock solid to work with and to build your shop
Prestashop cons:
- the backend could be much better, that's where you spend most of your time
Prestashop pros:
- feature rich
- the fly-to-basket feature
On XHTML, if your don't serve your pages as application/xhtml+xml, then XHTML is useless. HTML 4.01 strict is the way to go.
Opencart cons:
- searches rely on javascript, that's obstrusive
- development is not yet finished (so a comparision doesn't make much sense yet)
Opencart pros:
- it feels rock solid to work with and to build your shop
Prestashop cons:
- the backend could be much better, that's where you spend most of your time
Prestashop pros:
- feature rich
- the fly-to-basket feature
On XHTML, if your don't serve your pages as application/xhtml+xml, then XHTML is useless. HTML 4.01 strict is the way to go.
Yeah, that fly-to-basket is cool and good for the customer to see just where their order went.
On XHTML, if your don't serve your pages as application/xhtml+xml, then XHTML is useless. HTML 4.01 strict is the way to go.
Didn't know that, interesting.
On XHTML, if your don't serve your pages as application/xhtml+xml, then XHTML is useless. HTML 4.01 strict is the way to go.
Didn't know that, interesting.
I was needed to design a cart and saw all the options around. After all, I've decided to use OpenCart.
Let's go ahead on the cons first, so we can pass they quickly:
1) It still have some less features than other carts (but as far as I can see, nothing that can't be done).
2) The community is still growing, and there aren't too much mods, skins and integrations. This is just only a matter of time.
Now, the pros:
1) Well coded and secure -> After reviewing (fast) the code, it seems very well designed.
2) Faster and light -> The front and the back are faster than average shopping cart pages, in addition the server load is very low.
3) Nice Original Design -> A main problem of the open source script is the design. They may be robust, but the design usually it's something you have to do on your own. The "default" theme of OC it's very pretty, and the back is nice and simple to use (something my clients ask)
4 - and for my most important) It's very well organized for the devs. to use it! Translate OC it's very easy (I'll submit my spanish translation soon). The template system it's perfect, the .tpls are perfectly used and you have full control over the design. In this matter, it's 100% better than PrestaShop or Magento. Take a free css template and try to integrate them to OC, PS and Magento. The estimated time for the same result with OC it's too less... I've saved a lot of time.
OpenCart for me it's the best free alternative, after trying Magento, Prestashop, OsCommerce, Zen Cart, etc.. some may have more features, but some of that features, it's likely you're never going to use them. For a well designed, secure, fast and simple (but powerfull) cart, I'll reccomend OpenCart all my life jeje.
Regards,
Nahuel
Let's go ahead on the cons first, so we can pass they quickly:
1) It still have some less features than other carts (but as far as I can see, nothing that can't be done).
2) The community is still growing, and there aren't too much mods, skins and integrations. This is just only a matter of time.
Now, the pros:
1) Well coded and secure -> After reviewing (fast) the code, it seems very well designed.
2) Faster and light -> The front and the back are faster than average shopping cart pages, in addition the server load is very low.
3) Nice Original Design -> A main problem of the open source script is the design. They may be robust, but the design usually it's something you have to do on your own. The "default" theme of OC it's very pretty, and the back is nice and simple to use (something my clients ask)
4 - and for my most important) It's very well organized for the devs. to use it! Translate OC it's very easy (I'll submit my spanish translation soon). The template system it's perfect, the .tpls are perfectly used and you have full control over the design. In this matter, it's 100% better than PrestaShop or Magento. Take a free css template and try to integrate them to OC, PS and Magento. The estimated time for the same result with OC it's too less... I've saved a lot of time.
OpenCart for me it's the best free alternative, after trying Magento, Prestashop, OsCommerce, Zen Cart, etc.. some may have more features, but some of that features, it's likely you're never going to use them. For a well designed, secure, fast and simple (but powerfull) cart, I'll reccomend OpenCart all my life jeje.
Regards,
Nahuel
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but after reviewing almost all of the open-source eCommerce options out there, I've gone with OpenCart over PrestaShop for the reasons above, but with one addition: the admin interface!
If I'm going to be offering OpenCart as a solution to clients, who will be managing their inventory and processing orders through the back end, the interface OpenCart has is light-years better than PrestaShop, or almost any of the other options out there. I'm sure they can all be customized, but why spend the development time when OpenCart has it ready to go?
For what it's worth, Magento is, in my opinion, the second best option, if you have the server with the resources to handle it (which most people don't on standard hosting accounts). It's a crazy resource hog and needs some serious juice to get running anywhere near as quickly as OpenCart operates.
If I'm going to be offering OpenCart as a solution to clients, who will be managing their inventory and processing orders through the back end, the interface OpenCart has is light-years better than PrestaShop, or almost any of the other options out there. I'm sure they can all be customized, but why spend the development time when OpenCart has it ready to go?
For what it's worth, Magento is, in my opinion, the second best option, if you have the server with the resources to handle it (which most people don't on standard hosting accounts). It's a crazy resource hog and needs some serious juice to get running anywhere near as quickly as OpenCart operates.
opencart is way better the prestashop in many ways except for the template availability
I rather have that then a shop with the template engine that PrestaShop has.jefrey1983 wrote:opencart is way better the prestashop in many ways except for the template availability
Norman in 't Veldt
Moderator OpenCart Forums
_________________ READ and Search BEFORE POSTING _________________
Our FREE search: Find your answer FAST!.
[How to] BTW + Verzend + betaal setup.
Yes but a look is a +1 factor to a customer
i love the new look of opencart.com than the old opencart.com for example
cons for me
prestashop lacks guest checkout , or you have to pay for it
opencart shopping cart does not include the shipping cost
would be nice if the information module would be display in default similar to this http://www.genglob.com/
i love the new look of opencart.com than the old opencart.com for example
cons for me
prestashop lacks guest checkout , or you have to pay for it
opencart shopping cart does not include the shipping cost
would be nice if the information module would be display in default similar to this http://www.genglob.com/
I think from a design perspective OpenCart is definitely better than PrestaShop, but PrestaShop does have better modules, support and so on, mainly because it's backed by a company, in a similar way to Magento, while OpenCart is pretty much on the back of Daniel's efforts (who should very much be commended for the excellent architecture). If you're looking for something feature rich out of the box and don't need to do lots of extensions and integration with anything else, I would suggest you look at CSCart. It's not free, but it is Open Source and the license is a reasonable $285, while if you're a reseller it's only $150 I believe. Its very very feature rich. I don't know how buggy it is as I havn't used it, but I was thoroughly impressed with the features. It's got pretty much all the things I wish OpenCart had and I actually hope OpenCart can implement some of those features in time. So if you don't mind paying it's definately one worth checking out.
I'm not sure: maybe it depends on your perspective. For my purposes, Prestashop didn't really have better modules. I'd have to pay to get (say) Sagepay, whereas Opencart just requires a couple of mouse clicks. Also, Opencart has a 'killer app' : the guest checkout- plus, of course, that classy admin interface cited by bikkuri.Sheldmandu wrote:... PrestaShop does have better modules, support and so on, mainly because it's backed by a company....
There were not many themes for Prestashop, and if you fancied styling it yourself, get ready for 47 pages of CSS (vs OC's 10!) Argh. At one point I styled about 40 emails, for wording , and because the default email colour was Barbie pink. I didn't spot the controls in the admin panel till later...no documentation.
It was also difficult to find a developer who could work with Prestashop. Here on Opencart, there are quite a few people willing to offer commercial support.
I'm not meaning to knock Presta, because it is good; but you must be patient, skilled, and happy to negotiate the slightly scary admin interface. Opencart is a breath of fresh air after that.
And v 1.4.8..wow...!
I found one little feature that PS lacked and then stopped looking at it - Related Products
I sell products and I also want to sell accessories and consumables for them which are specific to each one. I also want to encourage my customer to consider buying higher in the chosen range at the point of placing the order.
Can't do those things in PS because Related Products isn't in there (not as far as I could see anyway after doing an install and looking at the front and back ends).
I sell products and I also want to sell accessories and consumables for them which are specific to each one. I also want to encourage my customer to consider buying higher in the chosen range at the point of placing the order.
Can't do those things in PS because Related Products isn't in there (not as far as I could see anyway after doing an install and looking at the front and back ends).
After using several different open-source carts I think that main advantage of OC is that it's pretty easy to extend and add in new features. I've been a PHP developer for over 6 years but I think for people with less experience they'd find it fairly easy to work with the code, which is a massive benefit of it.
The base code is well written and it provides about 90%+ of what most people want from an ecommerce system - you could just install it and use it "as is" but writing new features is fairly straightfoward, and that's a huge advantage of it over others, particularly Magento and Oscommerce.
The base code is well written and it provides about 90%+ of what most people want from an ecommerce system - you could just install it and use it "as is" but writing new features is fairly straightfoward, and that's a huge advantage of it over others, particularly Magento and Oscommerce.
I globally like OC but I hope that in future releases it could turn more 'user friendly'. I think that if OC goes towards less experienced programming users it will grow its community even more. The idea is to set the shop almost just in the backend, without to have to edit PHP files or so...
Keep the good work!
Keep the good work!
v. 1.4.9.6 & v. 2.0.2.0
There is no reason for non-technical people to have to edit anything already. Only in the case where you want something unique will there be changes that require editing php filesJoxe wrote:I globally like OC but I hope that in future releases it could turn more 'user friendly'. I think that if OC goes towards less experienced programming users it will grow its community even more. The idea is to set the shop almost just in the backend, without to have to edit PHP files or so...
Keep the good work!
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: dkeller@wings.ch, gdftye6hf55, jameswilly991, mah.di and 145 guests