What carts are like Magento?

[bstar421]

I want a new generation shopping cart, one that looks and feels like magento, where the layout it logical and easy for both my shipping department and customers to understand.

My concern with Magento is I've heard it's a resource hog, which I'm assuming means, the pages load slowly.

So... what shopping cart loads quickly and is a new-gen cart?

[tyroneshum]

Hi bstar421,

Fair point you have there. I believe Magento has improved that aspect more recently in the newer version 1.31. Though when I did read about this my major concern was that Magento could be slow and would use a lot of resources. Though I beg to differ as I have been running a few tests on shared servers with this software with sample data and it runs relatively well. In comparison to Zencart, it is definitely a lot richer in look and feel and personally I do feel it could be on par with Zencart in regards to performance.

Perhaps give it a test run and install it on your server just to see if it meets up to your expectation. At least that way you've had a try and if it doesn't meet your expectations, then try paid e-commerce solutions like Interspire.

Otherwise on the upside if it runs fast on your server then I would highly recommend going with Magento. I personally have switched over and haven't looked back!

I hope that helps and let me know how you go!

[bstar421]

Thanks Tyrone.

I agree Magento has a very rich feature set. And the look and feel just seems new-gen shopping cart to me.

I did just as you suggested and installed the sample data pack and have been testing out the speeds. With a few tweaks, which I found here - http://www.crucialwebhost.com/blog/i...l-query-cache/
and here - http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/24595/
, I was able to achieve pretty descent load speeds. I'm on MediaTemple's GS shared service w/ 128 MB dedicated RAM for MySQL.


So far, so good Thanks for the advice!

[tyroneshum]

Hi Bstar,

You are welcome. Any chance you could share your website for me to check it out? I am curious how fast it loads when I access it from Australia.

Also thanks for the tip on the tweaks. I will sure apply it to my sites now as well.

Thanks.

[bstar421]

Tyrone-
Sure thing - it's http://www.unitedstatesofvitamins.com/

Good luck with the tweaks!

[shennon]

My concern with Magento is I've heard it's a resource hog, which I'm assuming means, the pages load slowly.

Hey,

Have you tried version 1.3. It is out now and after updating it I have found my magento cart runs a lot faster now.

[bstar421]

Yes, I'm running 1.3, which does seem to load with pretty fast. Thankx!

[7FigureProject]

3D Cart - same features but MUCH cheaper.

[eCommerceDude]

Prestashop is the main contender with Magento

its way easier to use and dose not crash like magento dose

I have used both and love prestashop. Its way way easier and has less bloat and more quality.

I would use prestashop for a small b2c online store

magento is for a bigger site for b2c and b2b, but get a professional to set up and install.

i know some people that are moving from magento to prestashop and its a good move

I teach my clients how to use prestashop for their online stores and their loving it and so em i.

Good Luck

[Notorious1]

Magento has a very good fetaures. You should give 1.3 version a try.

[Notorious1]

Very useful tips.

[joelchrist]

I would like to suggest AJ shopping Cart Software for you. You can make a single try, It would definitely let you know all the special and unique features of AJ shopping Cart software. Good luck.

[zoshell]

Depending on your requirements, fiveself might be a good choice, its super inexpensive, especially for whats included. It also looks pretty hip, you can customize the look and feel pretty easy too. I've had no issues with them to replace my etsy site.

www.fiveself.com

[roban]

Having to pay monthly for a cart never did make much economic sense to me especially if you have to pay by the number of products. Why not pay once and get it over with. If you have over 100 products and pay $20 a month, for what you will pay yearly you can get a very good system for less than a year's 'rent' for one of those other carts and you own the license.

CS-cart is my software of choice and costs less for a lifetime license for 1 domain than you'd pay for a year of some of those others.

[searchbox]

bstar421,

Your site seems to run very fast using MT servers and the tweaks you've made. Good choice. Just one observation - from my location - Florida - it seems you have some lag in the DNS lookup. Not sure if this is something you can fix or not but I did notice a substantial lag in loading your site the first time.

I highly recommend Magento, I've been using it since version 0.8 and they have made significant performance updates since then. The only other cart platform I would recommend at this time is Joomla with VirtueMart.