I enjoyed reading your response to my post and found you to be polite and thoughtful.
With that said:
[quote name=‘Unregistered’]
“… In regards to small business. Perhaps you live outside the USA. Here in the USA $1000 for a cart package is a write-off, my clients write-off 100% of the expense of cart, my development, maintaining, even hosting. …”
Actually, section 179 rules as I remember are quite liberal so you probably can do what you say for deductions for off the shelf software with no modifications although software rules can actually be complex.
For example if your client had you do extensive modifications and the debugging of those mods quite probably the IRS would require a roughly 5 year depreciation period. This is assuming that we are talking about America.
You may want to have your clients consult an expert tax accountant not a general CPA who may not know the rules clearly.
“… People define success in different ways. Business defines it differently…”
Not always - but I understand your point and it is a good one.
“Really depends on one’s goals when it comes to how much one wishes to make and the work of course.”
Sounds good to me.
“…Not quite sure why its said that “CS-Cart has nearly everything we need”. Its not really close. Take a gander at a decent banner/advertising app or plugin and tell me CS-Carts is useful? The bulk mailer is extremely basic, yet, both of these mechanisms are key to increasing commerce.”
If you talk about your business needs you are of course 100% correct. But not everyone has the same needs. As an example we have almost all the addons disabled. Our needs are simple but very important to us: Pain-free upgrades, bug-free software and so on.Your coding comments are quite interesting it would be very interesting to hear teh developers response after you email them
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I wonder about email software - yes, it would be wonderful to have a good email/newsletter feature like other stand alone programs but perhaps this should be an add on module for sale?
Why don’t you do this on your own if you are a top notch programmer as you suggest. Keep in mind I am politely suggesting that you act on your words and show us skills.
Many will order your software if the quality is high and the price reasonable.
I tried to use Magento for almost 6 months and the application kept breaking. I would log into the admin interface at times and the menus would stop working. Also, the community edition hasn’t seen an update in almost 6 months. If you want to go with the enterprise edition, it is around $11,000USD! Quite a bit more expensive than the $260 for CS-Cart.
[quote name=‘Page’]Registering takes seconds and helps those of us who want to follow your excellent comments.
So go on do it for me.
You can always use a chuck away email address.[/QUOTE]
Would appreciate if Unregistered took this advice. I’m a noob here and found your posts more helpful (than majority of the other random flames) in deciding whether CS Cart is right for me. you registering will help people like me find your posts and be educated rather than lost.
just my 2 cents…and yes i’m going with CS Cart after reading what you wrote.
Web 3.0?? even Web 4.0?? please. You started strong then rambled your way into sounding silly.
Here’s a tip for all the newbies starting up. It’s impossible to know what you’ll need in advance. If you try to compare carts side by side without the benefit of experience you’ll just drive yourself crazy. A lot of features sound great on paper, but you’ll be disappointed once you try them - on the other hand, some features won’t appeal to you until you try them out, then you’ll find you can’t live without them. It all depends on what you’re selling, the kind of customers, your goals etc.
I’ve intentionally avoided listing which features I consider over/under rated. Flame wars ensue for no useful purpose. What is a killer feature for one person is useless clutter for another. Unless you’re a developer with lots of time, stay away from any serious edits/mods. Find a pre-installed theme that suits your store, then make surface changes to the CSS/banners etc. It’ll be unique enough to look great, without all the hassles. Running the store will keep you busy.
Start with something… anything… as long as it’s easy to get your data in and out. With the benefit of experience you’ll be able to judge the various offerings much better (though never perfectly). Keep in mind that we’re talking about technology here - a lot can change very quickly. Don’t treat it like a once-in-a-lifetime decision that you must get right.
can u tell me what your view is on prestashop & opencart.
I admit I kind of like opencart as it has the multistore.
I have read this psot with interest and you seem to have covered a lot of ground here.
CS-Cart is lacking in some areas and developers are addressing in 2.1 or 2.0.15 i think.
by the way, i agree Norm and few others on this forum know nothing & get very defensive indeed from what i’ve read of his replies on other posts too.[/QUOTE]
It is really this simple:
Find the shopping cart platforms that appear to have the features “you” need for your particular business, narrow it down to your top 2-3 choices.
Spend an adequate amount of time on each of the individual cart’s forums reading posts. You can quickly see which carts are moving ahead & which are laying stagnant. Sunshops forum for example is like a ghost town with very little activity. Also, be sure to distinquish between newby posts & seasoned users of the platforms.
Actually Install The Damn Demos yourself & throughly test! You can read all the forum posts as well as cart feature lists, ask people for anwsers to the question of “What shopping cart system would you recommend?” until you turn blue. However, it is a guaranteed fact that you cannot determine all of the individual strengthes & weaknesses (as can only be fully determined by yourself) until you actually install & start configuring the program with your own individual business’s products & data!
[QUOTE]by the way, i agree Norm and few others on this forum know nothing & get very defensive indeed from what i’ve read of his replies on other posts too[/QUOTE]
Not exactly true, it is simply that many of us here on the CS-Cart forums have actually been down this same path so many times in the past that we don’t have enough fingers & toes to count the times. Noman is actually a very knowledgeable as well as helpful (albeit teetering on the edge of insanity) kinda fella.
I can tell you from much, much experience as a small business owner with a limited budget (less than 10,000) don’t even bother with Magento unless you have a lot of experience working with php and css, and probably a lot of other codes that I don’t even know.
I tried twice to set up Magento carts. Both times with “help”. By help I mean developers that promise a lot more than they are willing to deliver on a smaller budget. I spent over 6k working to get a site online and still no joy. Basically if you are going to work with a developer, plan to have a minimum budget and a very clear idea of what you need/want in your site. Then be prepared to be disappointed and have to hire someone else to finish the work that the other ones started. I’m not saying this in a whiny way, but just as a statement of fact as I know it. I got left hanging more than once when the developer decided they had done enough for the money. And that was after shopping around extensively to try to find one that would even work for less than 10k.
In my opinion the Magento format is meant for mid to large business and the developers are geared for that market.
That’s not to say the CS-Cart partners are saints - got ripped off by one of them too, but if you decide to work on the site yourself it’s a lot easier to do. Support from CS-Cart staff is pretty slim after purchase, but this forum is by far the best one I’ve found yet. And believe me I’m pretty sure I’ve tried more than 80% of the carts out there.
That’s not to say the CS-Cart partners are saints - got ripped off by one of them too.[/QUOTE]
It would be beneficial for me to know the name of this individual - can you PM me please? We have considered Magento however the overall cost is extremely bloated to star fresh
[quote name=‘wls’]I can tell you from much, much experience as a small business owner with a limited budget (less than 10,000) don’t even bother with Magento unless you have a lot of experience working with php and css, and probably a lot of other codes that I don’t even know.
I tried twice to set up Magento carts. Both times with “help”. By help I mean developers that promise a lot more than they are willing to deliver on a smaller budget. I spent over 6k working to get a site online and still no joy. Basically if you are going to work with a developer, plan to have a minimum budget and a very clear idea of what you need/want in your site. Then be prepared to be disappointed and have to hire someone else to finish the work that the other ones started. I’m not saying this in a whiny way, but just as a statement of fact as I know it. I got left hanging more than once when the developer decided they had done enough for the money. And that was after shopping around extensively to try to find one that would even work for less than 10k.
In my opinion the Magento format is meant for mid to large business and the developers are geared for that market.
That’s not to say the CS-Cart partners are saints - got ripped off by one of them too, but if you decide to work on the site yourself it’s a lot easier to do. Support from CS-Cart staff is pretty slim after purchase, but this forum is by far the best one I’ve found yet. And believe me I’m pretty sure I’ve tried more than 80% of the carts out there.
For what it’s worth…[/QUOTE]
I agree with the above and I’ve had ten years experience in installing shopping carts and auction site. And I will add;
Even if you get past the installation and start selling with Magneto, unless you hosted it on a dedicated server within your catchment area you’ll find it very sluggish. The are many site showing how to maintain the database at a level that may keep visitors coming.
ok thanks for admin ! But i want to a comparision a Cs-cart 3 vs a lastest version of magento.
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You may then create a separate thread with the very specific name like Comparing CS-Cart 3 with Magento 1.7. This will make the discussion more targeted and more helpful in the end.
I still believe Magento is the best if you have proper server and proper configuration and the amount of addons they have at magentocommerce free and paid its just mind blowing you search for your solution and its there where as CS-Cart if you ask developer to make it for you it will cost some serious money , I still believe magento is strong and have a lot of potential, its just my point of view but Cs-Cart is also good but in my opinion Magento is the way to go as its free and have a huge community.
I thought the same until I tried to actually use it. It's a nightmare to install and the coding standards are appalling. If you get someone else to install and run it for you so you never have to touch it then Magento is probably a good solution but if you're the sort of person who is hands-on and likes to see things done properly then perhaps not.
