MIVA v. osCommerce

Okay . . . Let's hear the advantages/disadvantages to each of these Shopping Cart management packages (besides the fact that osCommerice is free).

Options available?

Manageability?

Customization?

Upgrading?




:)

I use Miva for my store, I do not have the latest Miva 5 installed, I use version 4. I would like to upgrade to 5 but it is completely different software so I basically will have to recreate my store.

The support is really lacking. Miva just opened a new forum for Miva related questions but no one in the forum can handle tough questions (but it is a great source for beginners). For heavy duty support you must pay for it.

Web hosting usually costs more to host a Miva store since your also renting the license.

You can make your Miva store do almost anything using third party modules but a lot of these third party modules are poorly written and usually not very compatible with each other.

For managing orders I use Shipworks which really helps. It is not the best solution because all it does is download orders, it does not communicate back and forth. So after I download and fill order I must manually log into my Miva Admin panel to update my customer order status so that they can login and see if their order has been shipped yet.

Wanted to add one more thing...

Something I cannot do with Miva and it drives me nuts. When a customer creates an account with my store they must create a unique username. Most big stores like Amazon, Comcast, and others did away with usernames and allow customers to login with their email address and password.

I guess I'm wondering whether or not the open-source/non-support ... yet FREE ... nature of osCommerce would be more customizable - especially given all of the modules people in the "open source" community write for it. Of course, I then wonder about the kind of administration and accounting that can be achieved using osCommerce.


Can you post a link to your store, TipPro ???
:)

yup, my store written with Miva is www swisco dot com