I think their philosophy is if you build addons, you then have to also support them along with the core cart. They would prefer that any addons that everyone would use to just be built into the cart itself.
They don’t wanna follow X-Cart’s footsteps. If they do this then next thing users will complain about being Nickel & Dimed. aka I have to pay for RMA module, etc, etc.
Whats good about CS is at least they are attempting to provide an API/Hooks solution. Ideally, a good developer will make you a Hook that is easier to integrate and upgrade your store. ( Ideally)
I really hope the API gets better and better. Similar to way wordpress works.
Triplets is on to something here, I’ve always thought this would be a good idea and don’t know why it’s not happening. Case in point, we paid ShippingKit $180 to do a mod for us. This was a simple mod that displays a shipping message (i.e. “Ships in 3 days”) in the product details page. The message is customizable via the Admin backend and can be applied to all products in a category or a single product.
Now as the customer who paid for the mod, if I agree to allow it (meaning I don’t think it gives my site an edge over my competition), why shouldn’t this mod be added to the CSC Marketplace for sale for 20 or 30 bucks? It sucks that we had to pay $180 for it, but in the future, we might be able to purchase a mod we need for $20 and not $180. It’s a different business model, but in the end, one that I think would not only profit the developer who built the mod, but the entire CSC community as well.
The simple fact of the matter is this. CSC is a great cart. It’s missing some functionality, but the CSC team is doing a great job listening to their customers for future releases. However, CSC, lags far, far behind in 3rd party support when compared to OSCommerce, ZenCart, PrestaShop, or Magento. These carts have readily available templates, mods, and addons from thousands of developers and companies. It’s easy to find someone to mod OSCommerce. CSC? Not so much. It’s one of the the main reasons a lot of businesses choose these carts over CSC for their web businesses.
If CSC wants to get their cart up with the major players, they’ve gotta figure out a way to get people or businesses to support and develop for CSC. Getting these custom mods out for sale might be one way to do that.
All those carts you mentioned are FREE carts, aren’t they? To be a developer you have to spend 285 bucks to start. That’s why its a big difference plus the user base of free software is usually greater than paid software.
As you can see from this: X-Cart is moving away from selling their own mods too.
[url]http://help.qtmsoft.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:What’s_New_in_X-Cart_4.4[/url]
“All the add-on modules available for X-Cart 4.3 have been included into X-Cart 4.4 out of the box. Now you do not need to buy and install any of them separately.”
I would love to see an official cs-cart add-ons marketplace. I really would not object at all if the mods I paid for get added to the marketplace for others in the future at a significantly discounted price, because I know there will be some that I can use as well. It would be great if this model can reduce the initial cost as well as future costs.
[quote name=‘ETInteractive’]All those carts you mentioned are FREE carts, aren’t they? To be a developer you have to spend 285 bucks to start. That’s why its a big difference plus the user base of free software is usually greater than paid software.
As you can see from this: X-Cart is moving away from selling their own mods too.[/QUOTE]
Well just because these carts are free doesn’t mean they aren’t competition for CSC. In fact, I’d say they are bigger competitors than paid PHP carts like Pinnacle, X-Cart, or CubeCart. That being said, I still think the CSC Marketplace is a good idea.
Well guys, Now, I have now a good example of what we’re talking here about.
My client needs 2 new e-shops. He asked me to chose the script I like and go for it. Because I’ve done for them 2 other websites, they have trust in me. However, the price matters. There’s only one catch - both carts must be integrated with Planetauthorize.com processor, which is much better than PP or GoogleCheckout
So, having full confidence in CS and knowing how good they are, I went and checked the list of compatible carts here:
[url]http://www.planetauthorize.com/shoppingcarts.html[/url]
Here, we find good ones, ugly ones, hated ones and the biggest CS competitors. Hold on, where’s CS???
OK, s.h.i.t. happens. Let’s ask CS for the gateway integration. Next day answer from the Sales manager arrives:
[COLOR=“Blue”]" If you are interested in it, the PlanetAuthorize manual should be provided for our staff to perform the integration.
The integration of such complexity will cost from USD 360 depending on details which should be discussed with our quote manager and the complexity of the system"[/COLOR]
From 360$ ??? Are they doing me a favour or looking for a sponsor? Cutting long story short, instead of buying 2 CS-Carts and adding extra min. of 360$ [more that 1 cart itself] I bought 2 ready products from their competitors for much less.
I do understand it takes time and effort, but they slowly move the X-C direction. I can see a CS train going off the track soon!
Look at Open Cart. There is a section with free mods and extension and also a few good websites, which provide paid solutions. I’m not saying OC is as good as CS, but I was able to set up 2 shops with OC and they work great. Also, my profit was much better that on CS. The only cost was to donate a few bucks to Daniel.
I would say, free ones are also great if you have time to solve the problems and you’re patient. In my case, no modifications were necessary.
I didn’t say it wasn’t a good idea. I’m pointing out the fact you really can’t compare Free cart marketplaces vs CS. There is a 285.00 barrier for developers to pay up front and it’s usually a smaller market to sell too. Putting those 2 together means less 3rd party developers.
[quote name=‘oleg’]Hello
Please let me explain the normal order in which our developers process quote requests. After a detailed review of the provided information and clarification of all unintelligible details, our engineers provide an approximate cost and possible time-frames, which depend significantly on the way the required functionality will be implemented. We always provide an approximate quote in order not to waste our clients’ time on discussing details. The cost of the project and the time-frames are the two main components of every quote. With an approximate quote, our clients can quickly decide whether they are ready to go on with the project without a necessity to answer additional questions regarding the functionality of the requested modification.
If a client is satisfied with the approximate cost and the time-frames, our developers proceed to preparing a detailed specification for the project. The specification is prepared according to the information provided by the client (examples, screenshots, etc.). Once prepared, the detailed specification must necessarily be approved by the client who is expected to review it throughout and, if necessary, supplement it with additional details. This is really important, because the provided quote covers only the details included in the specification.
It seems to me that sometimes clients approve specification without reading them carefully. And when the modification has been developed according the specification, it turns out that the client has some additional requirement. If the additional functionality is rather small, we always try to meet the client half way and do these changes free of charge. And when the additional requirements demand significant time and efforts to be implemented, this certainly costs extra.
Please send me your suggestions and complaints regarding our custom development service, and I will review each situation and try to find out a trade-off solution that is acceptable to both you and us.
Thank you for understanding
—
Sincerely yours,
Oleg Gorshkov
Head of the custom development department
https://www.cs-cart.com[/QUOTE]
Oleg,
You know very clear that I even sent you examples of another sites using the same modification that I had requested. Not once, not twice, but several times. Each time your developers fail to follow the examples.
Now, I find myself with a modification that is only good for 1 version of your software. That means that I will not be able to upgrade to newer versions of CS-CART because I want to use the features that I paid for. How ridiculous is that. I guess I fail to request that the modification needed to be compatible not only with your current version but also with future versions. Now you want me to pay again…
I don’t think you guys are fair. I’ve given you over 1000 US dollars, I own a bunch of licenses, I have been with you since 2005 and it is clear that charging these exorbitant amounts of money has become a common practice for your department.
You feel you should get free upgrades for the life of your license on custom development?
CS would be out of business in no time if they did that. No way could any small software company support that business model.
TonyK,
It would be nice to have free upgrades for life, but I agree with you that it is not practical.
I do feel that there should be at least a 6 month to 1 year period of upgrades.
I purchased a mod, I think for 1.35 SP3, and then SP4 came out a month later and the mod was not compatible. I never did use it and would have to pay for an upgrade.
CS-CART can come out with a minor upgrade and mess up mods people recently paid for. I think most cart owners need some period of time of stability, but then have to upgrade to get bug fixes and then many mods don’t work again.
Considering that there are numerous requests for new features and bug fixes, almost constantly, many cart owners are in a constant quandary of deciding to upgrade to get significant bug fixes, and then have to pay for mods that may become incompatible, or live with broken functionality.
I have been watching the boards for several years and this problem all the time.
To me, the best solution is for cs-cart to find a way in which upgrades would not impact mods that they create and hopefully third party mods and minor template customization. I thought this would be the case when hooks were introduced.
I feel they should at least provide free ( or possibly a small fee) upgrades for a period of time (6 months to a year) at least for minor upgrades up until a major upgrade, and a major upgrade if the upgrade occurs within a period of time since the mod was purchased, ie 6 months.
These are just some ideas. I know that some third party mod developers have a limited time when free upgrades will be provided. This at least gives people some stability and is a selling point for the mod.
Bob
I fully agree with Bob on this
Porting add-ons to newer versions is a much easier job than the original design of them so it’s not like they will be losing a great deal of time offering this limited upgrading support.
[quote name=‘pbannette’]I purchased a mod, I think for 1.35 SP3, and then SP4 came out a month later and the mod was not compatible. I never did use it and would have to pay for an upgrade.[/quote]
We are dealing and arguing other this very subject right now with CS, not over just 1 addon but dozens which in some cases add up several $100’s in upgrade expenses per addon.
CS always has and most likely will continue operating this way, in my opinion it is nothing more then a model of greed that will perpetually exist until they realize one day that everyone left.
When 2.0 was first conceptualized I thought it would be a model of plug n’ play addons that worked flawlessly like wordpress addons but it turned into a model of plug n’ pay addons for every version.
Their is no reason addons should be broken for every single version but they continue to break them, in my opinion knowingly and willingly so they can bilk more money from paying customers.
I understand it’s hard to swallow for some customers but basically just stop paying for custom development and it’s possible they may change their practices, but as long as people pay they will continue the cycle of greed until it runs it’s course.
Porting addons over in most cases is not simple and their are very few if anyone on the forums that would know how to do so. It amazes me how many web developers claim to know Ajax when all they really know how to do it put an include line in to jquery, it’s a whole new ballpark when you have to code the code itself and understanding cs is a sticky bowl of noodles at best.
We like CS and we think it’s a great cart and has potential if they would listen to the customers who have been here from the beginning and not the ones that come along brand new that request stupid features that should’nt be in the cart by default bloating the software with childish features that they should pay custom development for. So as a result we pretty much moved several stores off CS to OC already and we only continue to waste money on CS as we formalize a game plan to move our flagship store to OC and as we wait for several development projects in OC to be complete - Sno
[quote name=‘TonyK’]You feel you should get free upgrades for the life of your license on custom development?
CS would be out of business in no time if they did that. No way could any small software company support that business model.[/QUOTE]
They are offering now to make it that it will not be affected by updates or modular… of course at an additional cost… Why was not done like that from the begining? The point is that I paid a lot of money for this modification… Took months of going back and forth… Still is not in production. when I went from 2.14 to 2.15 the mod stop working… I can not release to production because the website is 2.15. The mod is useless unless I downgrade to the earlier version. They should at least offer 3 or 6 months of upgrades. They took so long that it was develop on 2.14 and the site is now 2.15. The bottome line is that their fees for development are way out of line.
[quote name=‘Jacarent’]They are offering now to make it that it will not be affected by updates or modular… of course at an additional cost… Why was not done like that from the begining?[/quote]
This will never happen as it’s been promised over and over yet every upgrade breaks some sort of functionality which honestly isn’t that big of a deal but the problem is they wants 100x’s to fix a problem they caused then make you wait 45+ days to get it coded which runs into the next rant…
[quote name=‘Jacarent’]
The point is that I paid a lot of money for this modification… Took months of going back and forth… Still is not in production. when I went from 2.14 to 2.15 the mod stop working… I can not release to production because the website is 2.15. The mod is useless unless I downgrade to the earlier version. They should at least offer 3 or 6 months of upgrades. They took so long that it was develop on 2.14 and the site is now 2.15.[/quote]
Exactly you pay to fix your addons they break for version 2.14 but by the time there done 2.15 is out and your addon is broke again before you can even use it, then they want to bilk you for more money to fix it again, and again, and again…the perpetual cycle of greed continues…
[quote name=‘Jacarent’]The bottome line is that their fees for development are way out of line.[/quote] BINGO !!! CS’s dev fees are way out of line. It’s a money making monster for them and as long as people continue to feed the greed it will continue…
CS I’ve told you before, I like your cart, I think your doing a good job, but you’ve been digging yourself into a grave for a long time and before long you’ll be so deep in the grave you’ll never get out. You’ve already chased away a huge crowd of active developers 1.5 yrs ago, more people have left for this reason and others have left as a result of the economy. None of these customers are ever likely to come back. I guess you can ride the train untill it wrecks or change your business practices effective immediately, I won’t be on the train when it wrecks but I’ll be watching from the sidelines laughing - Sno
I guess the issue comes down to this for me, users dont need to upgrade unless they want too.
I think maybe the best solution is to offer a Patch like bug fixes to fill in the gaps from upgrading and breaking the store?
So going to 2.0.15 from .14 isn’t required and if you have a bug affecting your store, you just apply the code fix manually and most mods will still work?
Just throwing out ideas here…
[quote name=‘TonyK’]Just throwing out ideas here…[/quote]
In theory you just baited a group of sharks with tuna fish…
[quote name=‘snorocket’]Recently my experience with cs-cart custom development is extreme disappointment. Dev prices are way out of line, I was recently quoted $650 for a fairly simple request that I believe they could do in ~1hr. And Yes every time you turn around they want more money for this and that, and it’s not like $50, it’s always an unreasonable $500+
The best way to deal with the absurd prices is to just flat out stop paying them for their price gouging services and go elsewhere like shippingkit.
Our business depends on the availability of CS’s custom development services but their prices have grown so out of proportion that we are now to the point of leaving the cart and finding a more affordable and stable solution, which we are very close to doing unless CS changes their tactics very quickly - Sno[/QUOTE]
Are there any reputable competitors to CS’s custom development service?
I think CS dev team works with rate $50-$100/hour. Are there any info on rates for custom development for CS-Cart?
i will leaving cs-cart as well,
same reason with sno, might considering opencart.
i will not waste the money for multivendor.
people need multistore not multivendor
I just purchased a payment integration on Elance for $75 USD. The CS-Dev team wanted $400+ for it.
Excellent communication, and 3 month bug-free guaranty