I am looking for a good and reliable shopping cart system for a site with over 6000 products.

I have seen few carts, am have narrowed it down to:

1) Magento (Community Edition + Few paid extensions)
2) Interspire Shopping Cart (Ultimate Edition)

I am very much interested in Interspire shopping cart, however they don't seem to have even a vague time-line on when version 6.0 with Amazon module will be released.

Also, the Magento's Customer reward extension is also seems very good.

Now I was wondering if anyone here has any real experience with Magento and/or Interspire and based on your experience, which one would you pick?

P.S. I understand that Magento needs more resource, however we plan to have a dedicated server (Quad Core - 8GB DDR3) just for the cart system, so I am hopeful it should be fine.

We have used Interspire Shopping Cart (Ultimate Edition) for a few of our clients and are very impressed with this and have it running on shared and VPS with no performance issues however I wish the licence cost was lower that is our only gripe with this

I would go for Magento. I do believe a open platform is the way to go, as it will give you the possibility to adapt the software for your future needs.

Also there is now way to compete with a dynamic community with thousands of contributors, that brings new functionalities and faster support.

Based from experienced. I personally vote for Interspire with the ease of use and performance. I love magento and I'm still using it for my clients but due to resource, it makes the site so slow even in dedicated servers. Interspire is still the best shopping cart for me out there. Anyway, I'm still using the 2 shopping cart to my clients but if they ask me which I will recommend, certainly it is Interspire.

While I prefer using X-Cart between the two you mentioned I would use Magento if performance and resources is not an issue.

Magento is a great software but unfortunately needs too much resources.

Using magento on busy store with 6000 product will need at least a high end VPS or possible a dedicated box finely tune to run magento. Personally, you will get better results from x-cart or cscart which is developed by former x-cart programmers.

I would recommend VevoCart free shopping cart to anyone who wants to start an ecommerce.

I don't know Magento but I have had personal experience with Interspire. Their support line has been good unless you need something on a Sunday in the U.S.

Recently I think that they upgraded software. My Google product uploads stopped working but they repaired it within 24 hours. Now my 2Checkout is no longer completing. Will have to wait and see how long it takes to fix this issue.

Do all shopping carts have issues like this?

Recently I think that they upgraded software. My Google product uploads stopped working but they repaired it within 24 hours. Now my 2Checkout is no longer completing. Will have to wait and see how long it takes to fix this issue.

Do all shopping carts have issues like this?

Interspire upgrades your shopping cart without your permission?

Sorry, wrong choice of words. The issue seems to be a timing one between the shopping cart which I have as a 3rd party provider, 2Checkout, and who knows what else.

It is being worked on. I am not a website developer as some of you are so I do not know the details. I can look at the system logs and see the failure but don't know why it was invalid.

I will go with Magento because of the larger of the community and personalization possibilities

Personally I would go for Interspire, there products are excellent and won't let you down.

I am still waiting for Interspire to fix the issue with orders not showing completed after the credit card is charged when using 2Checkout. System log shows Invalid Product ID. This was discovered on 4 days ago. 2 days ago, Interspire asked for the Log file. I have seen no activity on my website that demo sales are being tried or that anything is happening.
What is considered a good turnaround time for support?

I would recommend Magento as well. It's systematic, but any customization you will ever need is easily possible. There is more than a way to do it :) For a shopping cart, I haven't seen any other cart which give this much flexibility in designing themes and customizations.

I would go for Magento. I do believe a open platform is the way to go, as it will give you the possibility to adapt the software for your future needs.

Also there is now way to compete with a dynamic community with thousands of contributors, that brings new functionalities and faster support.

Not necessarily true and a lot of times just the opposite (look at linux for pc's...)

First have you tried volusion? in my opinion it beats them both out.
Magento code was written poorly from the start. Although some extensions may be available that are vital.

Interspire is 100% open so you can adapt it anyway you like. (open doesn't mean free)

But if you are serious about your business, i strongly would suggest volusion, it cost a little yes, but is well worth it.

My shopping cart is fixed. Don't know the problem but I reloaded 2Checkout and now it works fine. Maybe it was user error?

However, regarding help. I had a help ticket with Interspire but they only asked for logs and never had any feedback or suggestions. I worked with 2Checkout and they walked me through the reload. Their support was great.

I have tried both software before. Interspire shopping cart is much better than Magento in terms of performance and user interface.

I have experiences of a user running multiple instances of Magento on a hosting account and it crashes the server without any reason

I have tried both platforms.

magento needs more resources (staff) to setup and manage long term over interspire. But you are getting a more enteprise level system if you have the resources and capability to go that way.

Really depends on your business and in - house skills , budget etc.

Both are very good, can't go wrong.

Regards jon

I've been working with a new shopping cart (open source + free) that looks quite good albeit lacking some of the more enterprise features magento has but may be worth a look.

http://spreecommerce.com/

I've been an X-Cart user for 10 years, an Interspire user for over a year and a Magento user for a couple of years. In terms of the User Interface I can take an Interspire cart, hand it to a customer and they can intuitively get around the product with almost no training. X-Cart is great for the price if you don't mind getting your hands dirty with code to make it do what you want. Magento, as many users stated, a bit bloated but good for what a free cart is. I've not used their Professional or Enterprise version of Magento so I'm not sure if resources change on those levels.

Out of the 3, only X-cart is PCI Compliant. Does anyone take that into consideration with regards to Interspire?