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Ask HN: Best eCommerce Platform

5 points by Davertron ↗ HN
I've been working on a pretty hacked-up osCommerce site for about 2 years now. We've basically outgrown the current site and are looking to move to an alternative. I'd love to hear people's opinions on specific eCommerce systems. We're currently heavily considering Magento, but after having worked on a PHP site previously, I'd really love to get away from it and move to Python or Ruby. However, it does seem like Magento has a ton of useful whizz-bang features, and I haven't really found any other mature alternatives in other languages.

So, if you have experience working on Magento, I'd love to hear your thoughts, but really I'm looking to hear about other eCommerce platforms that we should be considering. I'd really hate to end up in the same position we're in now.

Some features that we'd love to see in our eCommerce platform (most of these we've created ourselves for osCommerce): * Hierarchical Products - not sure if that's the best way of saying it, but we need the ability to have individual products as well as products that consist of other products. Basically, we sell computer parts as well as pre-configured systems. * Procurement System - A way for us to track stock as well as manage Purchase Orders that are out to suppliers, receiving, etc. * RMA System - Need a good way to handle customer Rmas that fits in well with normal order processing

Those are the MAJOR things I can think of, but we'd also like the frontend site for customers have to good search capabilities, the ability for the customer to configure their own system with compatible parts, cross/upselling, filtering using product attributes, etc. etc.

5 comments

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davidw
Apache OFBiz might be worth a look. If nothing else than for the data models, which are top notch. It's done with lots of Java and XML.
Davertron
Does anyone use Apache OFBiz? From reading the description, it does seem much closer to what we'd be looking for, which is not just an online eCommerce site but a total solution for managing all of our inventory, stock, products, etc.
weaksauce
Satchmo is coming along well in the Django/Python world. They are currently forking the payment module out of the main program. One of the big benefits of their system is the highly customizable nature of the design and the nature of django's frameworks. Check it out here: www.satchmoproject.com I cannot attest to the ruby world but I hear great things about active merchant coupled with rails.

I have used magento and did not like my experience in it at all. The php seemed clunky and one or two steps away from a vulnerability. Also the templates are all over the place and to make a change to one part of a page required changes in multiple files in a lot of cases. That and the magento is about slow as molasses.

Davertron
One of our other developers looked at Satchmo before he moved on. That was probably a year ago; it seemed like it wasn't mature enough for what we were looking for.

The problem is, I'd love to use python/django or ruby/rails, but it's a hard pitch to the boss if the platform we're looking at doesn't start off with many features. He really wants to avoid reinventing the wheel as much as possible.

I've heard what you're saying about Magento around the web quite a bit; that the way it's laid out makes it very hard to work on, and that it can be very slow. I think if a django/rails project started off pretty close to what we were looking for, we could implement the missing features ourselves in less time than it would take to work in PHP, simply because of developer productivity increases in those languages/frameworks.

Anyway, I'll take another look at Satchmo and see where it's at. I'd really love to avoid getting into another huge PHP mess again.

weaksauce
They just had a new release for .9 so they are on the way. The nice thing about Django is the reusable aspect of the apps. (login, etc...)