We're currently looking for alternate solutions to interchange/akopia for our hosting clients to be able to setup shop with.

Does anyone have any suggestions, especially with consideration to processing gateways, usability, stability and efficiency. I'm just looking for someone with experience point me in a friendly direction. :-)

Thank you,
sean

I have just begun to test Cart-It (http://www.cartit.com).

It functions as the cart and sale completion process only.

You have to build the product pages yourself, but it gives you a lot of flexibility in the layout.

Supports NT and Unix. Retails for $299, but you can partner with them for discounted licenses.

-- I do not work for them. --

Does anyone have a really good shopping cart that they like? Which of the above is the most stable, easy to use and feature rich? I guess I just want to know what the holy grail of shopping carts is.



I'm researching cart-it now, are there any known issues with it?





thank you,


sean

omenoracle,

Are you currently using Interchange / akopia now? If so, why the interest in changing?

I'm just curious because I was looking into Interchange as a possibility for my customers.

I haven't found interchange to be to my liking. It tends to be resource intensive. It is hard to find the documentation that I want. If the interchange server goes down, then all of my clients are SOL, not just one or two of them. It has caused a few headaches recently, and I am not sure if they are actually interchange problems or problems with interchange and some of the other things we have deployed. I do know that my provider when asked about interchange, informed me that they do not run it simply because it is unstable. I do not know if it is inherently unstable or just doesn't play nice with something else on my boxen.

I have had success with the interchange developers on IRC. They are very helpful. I may want to consider interchange again in the future. At the moment I need something that works and just works however.

If anyone here has input/experience on interchange and its issues please speak up, maybe I just have some config issues.

Aloha
I am looking at interchange to tie together about 40 sites that are going to be affiliates of eachother for activites so very interesting thread ;)

I am thinking custom solution maybe ???

I use linkpointcart.com that I like, it is user-friendly and has a TON of features.

I was forced to learn Interchange because of a project I was assigned. It took me a week, but I learned how to actually use the thing and set up a working site. I'd have to say that it's not real easy to set up, but if you have a week, it's pretty complete.

The problems I had was that within the week that I was working on setting up the shopping cart site, two new versions came out. They don't make upgrading real easy.

When I started working on it, it came with the "Construct" demo store, which they recommend just editing for your own needs. The demo store had at least one bug that I posted a patch to the mailing list for. But then in the next version, only a few days later, they completely dropped the "Contstruct" demo for the "Foundation" demo. Interchange really just provides the back end libraries and functions and a neat little scripting interface for creating a store. You really have to write your own, or modify the one that comes with it for your own needs.

After I finished the project the company that hired me to do it decided not to even implement it. They were too afraid of change. They kept the order form that required you to just type in the quantity of the item you wanted and have it email the order to sales. They kept their inventory and customer database in FileMaker.

Overall, I liked it better than other carts I'd used (zelerate.org's allcommerce). When the Interchange version settles down for awhile, I'd like to try it again from the beginning with the new demo store for a future project.

Miva anyone? I have used it and like it a lot!

Oh, Miva Merchant is great, and easy to set up.

Only problem is it's not as cheap as the opensource ones. :)

We have used Quikstore for a long time and just love it. The only drawback is that it doesn't use a MySQL database, but rather a txt file. But it will handle around 1000 items without any problem. Also, it can be used with either or a combination of database and html pages, super easy cusomization. Handles all languages and currencies.

Nordic

Have a peek at The Exchange Project. The price is pretty good too :)

www.theexchangeproject.org

Hmm...this exchange project sounds promising. I wish they have better documentation though. maybe they need help with that.

Has anyone here worked with Cart Manager?
I'm considering their service and I would like to hear about anyone else's experience's before I commit to working with them.

Thank you!

I've installed and played around with "The Exchange Project" a lot now, and I like it very much!

I haven't used it in a live environment yet, but it seems better than most of the other "comercial" products on the market. It was pretty easy to install, and the only bug I could find was already fixed in a CVS version.

It's fast, supports adding modules, has tons of features, has a web admin and is coded in PHP/MySQL. What more could you want?

I'm going to also try phpshop and interchange (both free) and then judge from there.

The exchange project definitely looks cool.

I'm going to have to play with it.

I would recommend TEP over phpShop. TEP is more "drop-in" friendly. You simply change the headers and footers and away you go.

phpShop requires lots of customization which makes it bad for use as a hosting product.

This is not to knock phpShop (we would never do that, since we actually wrote it). Just to point out that if you want a cart solution for a hosting environment where you offer it as an add-on package, I would choose TEP.

Even then, you should still take a peak at phpShop (http://www.phpShop.org). New versions are coming soon. No promises, but it may end up being more "drop-in" friendly in the future. :cool:

After first being a little confused, because I installed the "core" release that is NOT a prebuilt shopping cart, I was able to easily install and play with phpshop. It is also a great product, and I would have to agree that The Exchange Project (TEP) is more drop in friendly, but only more time and playing will tell which one is better in the long run as far as the ability to customize and add modules.

I'm very excited about both products, and will follow both of them. For now TEP will be the shopping cart tool that I sell with my e-commerce packages, unless I find Interchange to be better.

I haven't had a chance to test Interchange yet, that's next!

FYI, the biggest thing that I noticed was the speed of both phpshop and TEP. This is credit to the developers and also the fact that I think PHP/MySQL is kick ass! Pardon my french. Does amyone else think a lot of ASP sites are slowwww?