Cs-Cart Multivendor Vs Open-Cart. Who Is The Best?

Hello, could anyone tell me the advantages of cs-cart mve compared to opencart, which is totally free?

Besides free, there are many more users (and developers) of opencart, more extensions (and virtually all free!), themes, etc ... so why should I pay more than 1000 usd by cs-cart license? What are the good points?
Detail: I already bought the CS-CART mve license, I am thinking of asking for the money back (not 30 days) if I do not find any significant advantage ..
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Hello Pwpw,

Thank you for your question.

My name is Anna Basyrova, I am a CS-Cart sales manager and will be happy to answer your question.

Besides free, there are many more users (and developers) of opencart, more extensions (and virtually all free!), themes, etc ... so why should I pay more than 1000 usd by cs-cart license? What are the good points?

Let's have a closer look at the 2 software.

First of all, they are different types of e-commerce solutions: open source shopping cart and a licensed solution. Here are the main points of each of them.

Open source shopping carts (OpenCart)

Advantages:

• Customizable. You can modify and adapt open source software according to your specific business requirements.

• Mostly free.

• Lots of add-ons (free & paid).

Disadvantages:

• More technical skills required compared with hosted solutions and commercial software.

• Complex source code.

• Upgrade issues.

• As a rule, no free support (community forums instead).

• In most cases lower security.

Conclusion:

Open source shopping cart software is suitable for custom projects. The probability of upgrade and security issues is higher compared with other types of software.

Multi-Vendor as a licensed shopping cart software

Advantages:

• Customizable. Open access to the source code.

• High-security level.

• As a rule, the code is clearer than in free open source solutions and web store plugins.

Disadvantages:

• Launching expenses are higher than for hosted solutions.

Conclusion:

Licensed solutions are less expensive in the long run compared with hosted shopping carts. Licensed solutions are known for the clear code, security, wide functionality, and flexibility. All this make this type of software suitable for serious projects.

Surely, one of the main advantages of OpenCart is that it is free. However, it lacks a lot of vital features which are offered as add-ons only. Most of the add-ons are paid and developed by third-party companies. It means that there may be incompatibility issues, problems with upgrades, and glitches.

Gradually the free software turns out to be even more expensive than the licensed solution like Multi-Vendor with native technical support and professional upgrades.

To ax the words with the proof, please see a short list of the paid add-ons for OpenCart. All these features are already built in CS-Cart/Multi-Vendor by default:

- Form Builder ($59,99)
- Bulk Product Editing Pro ($59,99)
- Filter by Attribute Module ($33,99)
- Most Viewed ($10)
- YouTube Video Display ($19,99)
- Call us ($10)
- 1Click Checkout ($15)
- Downloadable products ($12)
- Add video to product ($19,99)

Surely, OpenCart functionality suits a small start-up but if you are planning to develop the project you will soon feel the urge to move the store to another platform which means more expenses. Comparatively high initial costs for Multi-Vendor makes it a reliable and budget-saving solution in the end.

Multi-Vendor also has a Marketplace where a lot of add-ons are free of charge:

Besides free, there are many more users (and developers) of opencart, more extensions (and virtually all free!), themes, etc

http://marketplace.cs-cart.com/

You are right that OpenCart has a variety of extension but do you need them all? Multi-Vendor has much more features available by default for the start and development of the project. Besides, you might find the add-ons offered by Multi-Vendor Marketplace handy as well.

I hope this is helpful.

Hello, could anyone tell me the advantages of cs-cart mve compared to opencart, which is totally free?

Besides free, there are many more users (and developers) of opencart, more extensions (and virtually all free!), themes, etc ... so why should I pay more than 1000 usd by cs-cart license? What are the good points?
Detail: I already bought the CS-CART mve license, I am thinking of asking for the money back (not 30 days) if I do not find any significant advantage ..
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Hello

As our experience of 3 yrs working with cs-cart . We found that cs-cart software is flexible , easy to understand and can be extended to any level.

if you want to grow and provide your customers functionalities provided by big players...go ahead with cs-cart.

We have developed more than 70 modules that are used by big players on cs-cart.

I can gaurantee , you will not get this flexibility on any other platform.

You can connect with me on skype - kartpay.support , to discuss further.

Hello, could anyone tell me the advantages of cs-cart mve compared to opencart, which is totally free?

Besides free, there are many more users (and developers) of opencart, more extensions (and virtually all free!), themes, etc ... so why should I pay more than 1000 usd by cs-cart license? What are the good points?
Detail: I already bought the CS-CART mve license, I am thinking of asking for the money back (not 30 days) if I do not find any significant advantage ..
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Hello ,

Hope you are doing well.

This is Kumar from ABSSoft, India. We are one of the leading and Growing CS-Cart eCommerce development Company in Chennai, India.

CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is very GOOD PLATFORM for you Marketplace store (CS-Cart Multi-Vendor) and most of our customers are preferring "CS-Cart Multi-Vendor" for their Marketplace website development needs.

We have developed more than 100+ CS-Cart eCommerce websites and 25+ CS-Cart Multi-Vendor (Marketplace) websites for our customers around the world.

Please feel free to check our website www.abssoft.co.in or reach Us at sales@abssoft.co.in.

Just thought I would add my opinion here, even tho this thread is a little old, i dont see any posts from end users (admins).

My conclusion from investigations some months ago is that, regardless of which "base software" you go with.. you are going to need to pay for it. If its free, then youll most likely find that you need to spend a lot of money on Addons and mods. But I also found similar for paid software such as CSCart.

If you need only one store, then the cost of the standard cscart is so cheap for what you get, that its not an issue.

Im not sure about the addon licensing schemes for OpenCart, but for cscart there is currently (Im hanging on in hope that this will improve one day) a considerable cost disadvantage:

Each time there is an update to cscart version, the addon devs need to release an update also. And there's been a lot of updates recently.

Its great that there is the Ultimate Licence to run multiple stores, if you are serious about running multistore, then IMHO the cost isnt a problem.

The downside is what I lovingly refer to as the "Prolonged Licence Gravy Train":

Most addon developers require you to purchase licenses for each Domain (storefront).

Some are offering Unlimited licenses, not many tho'

The gripe I have with this is not so much the cost, but the time and effort required to periodically be:

- Purchasing "Prologed cscart license$"

- Prolonging Addon licence$ , to get updates that will work with the latest cscart version.

- Time spent installing, and re-installing addons to update purchase

- Purchasing new addon licence$ when a new store is added.

Now I understand that addon devs are currently having a hard time keeping up with the time they spend to keep their addons compatible with successive updates.. there a number of complaints about this... this cost needs to be transferred to the licence purchaser, as devs cant keep working for free.

Currently I have decided not to go forward with adding or updating any addons until CSCart is at a more major version, with the current Beta functions ratified and most of the issues fixed.

After investigating a few other ecom' software, we decided to stay with cscart, due to being familiar with the quite user friendly and intuitive interface.
My advice to those contemplating purchase of cscart
1. If contemplating multistore, get the ultimate version straight up.

2. But dont purchase ANY addon at first unless the function is an absolute must.

3. Get busy arranging Categories, Pages, SEO and product listings. Depending on the number and complexity, this could take a lot of time. In our case years due to time required running our primary v2 store.

4. Meanwhile keep installing the version updates that come along.

5. Once you are ready to launch, this is the time to consider improving functionality by purchasing addons.

Hopefully cscart will be at a more "stable", major version. Dont go crazy with "nice-to-have" addons, just get the function most needed. This way, you'll only need to prolong your addon and cscart licence$ every few years...hopefully minimising the cost and time imposition.

Hope that helps.

I will say what I do not like about cs-cart.

Time. I am feeling that progress behind cs-cart is not as it used to be, everything develops just super slow. Cart gets constant code change while the site admin or front user barely feels any change.

cs-cart put much of effort in to other products that again take my time and stops the progress, these products may not succeed like facebook, ebay, twigmo.. Ebay has issues and it is not fixed or updated in years. So buy buying cs-cart license you cannot know if any look and feel of the cart will be improved at all, maybe next 5 years you will pay just to fix bugs that are found now..

What I want to say that I would like to stay with software that is live and will be best in next five years, I really do not feel this now, hope I am wrong.

Recently I've made a purchase on very modern shop made on shopify platform, I was simply amazed how experience pleasant was, super easy to use and look social logins, steps, onepage checkout and so on. All fresh and new that none of the cs-cart or partners have even close..

I list products on ebay and etsy. Etsy product listing tool is fantastic, all cloning and admin work very fast and fresh. Configuration abilities, working and editing on hundreds of products using ebay product manager allso does great job. Cs-cart has improved add new order area probably just once in last 2 - 3 years..

I like cs-cart layout manager, but competitors are coming with even greater and more powerful front end editors, cs-cart in one of the threads asked if anyone uses front end editors maybe they can remove this feature...

Roadmap is empty, no vision?

I am an Opencart dev. CS-Cart has a feature set that crushes OC, its not even a fair fight. Here are a few of the things CS has that OC doesnt:

- Better multistore system

- Better addon system

- Block/layout/theme system (OC module system doesnt even compare)

- Menu editor

- 301 redirs (they may have added this)

- Commenting everywhere

- Global options

- Options combinations

- Product combinations (in latest)

- Customizable feeds

- Properly set up ecom tracking (including hooks from backend order changes)

- Import/Export system

- Update system with checksums

- Security checks, throttles, etc

- Better Reports

- Functional reward points

- Filters that arent cheesy

- Promotion system destroys OC system

- Abandoned carts built in

- Pages + forms built in that can be nested and things

- Blog pretty much built in

- Better payment and shipping addons

- Manual orders actually work (lol)

- Shipments system

- Better file manager

- Better audit log

- Microformats (http://docs.cs-cart.com/4.1.x/core/front-end/microformats.html)

- PHP file hooking, TPL hooking, JS hooking (OC has events which is like CS php code hooks)

- More config options

- More caching backends

- Better caching system (esp frontend)

- Much better DB methods, its far easier to write or add into queries using CS

- Better documentation by a huge degree

- CS-Cart lead imac + team are more professional, Dan from OC is a huge **** sometimes

....etc

Now im not bashing CS, but here are a few reasons OC is better:

- OC just loads modules... easily. CS is a bunch of BS trying to reinstall an addon, losing settings, uninstalling dependents, etc. Section to section to object to vendor override is confusing, but the deletion of settings or refusal to reload addon.xml/PO is crazy.

- The newest OC uses Twig. Twig is much better than smarty IMO, esp for writing mixed mode tpls.

- OC has OCMod/VQMod. This is only for emergency use, but when you need it you need it. I can think of many times i have had to edit CS core files because either there was no hook, or it didnt work right.

- CS has too much legacy codebase that doesnt work right in regards to runtime id. Ie, its very hard to "force" the store to "become" something it doesnt want to do without writing custom functions or overwriting registry.

- CS has too much overbuilt functions. For example the 301 redirect func is insane. Its so complex that trying to fix the disabled object "issue" turns into a 5x loop chase when you think "why isnt this just grabing an old to new relation?"

- CS location & subsiquent tax system is fundamentally flawed, and in many cases doesnt work in the real world as a customer would see it

- CS reliance on arbitrary letters for indicies is tedious, inconsistent, and confusing. Example, option type "XYZ" in addons is different in form builder is different in blocks. Why not just use names for indicies instead of all these letters?

- OC is almost all OOP in a basic sense, and extremely fast + efficient compared to CS. CS uses alot of procedural calls and loses sight of what controllers are sometimes. There is no logic vs data model per-say, all queries and data logic sits in fn_ or a controller, so its kinda messy finding things sometimes.

Each time there is an update to cscart version, the addon devs need to release an update also. And there's been a lot of updates recently.

Not really true. The vast majoirty of our addons do NOT require updates between versions. However, we don't provide a lot of addons with frontend interfaces primarily for that reason. I will note that the architecture of cs-cart and the general consistency of code makes this possible.

We license our products based on "number" of storefronts configured, not what those domains are. So if you've licensed for 4 storefronts and change the domain names of all of them 100 times, it doesn't matter. The license itself is issued against the admin domain name which usually doesn't change.

Currently I have decided not to go forward with adding or updating any addons until CSCart is at a more major version, with the current Beta functions ratified and most of the issues fixed.

This would be a normal strategy for any serious business user. A real business has no business being on the leading edge. A step or two behind is most prudent for stability, cost and investment.

- The newest CS uses Twig. Twig is much better than smarty IMO, esp for writing mixed mode tpls.

I believe the only part of current cs-cart that uses TWIG is the new email editor. From an addon developer standpoint, it is time consuming, overly complex and requires 10 times the effort to do simple things that I might do with the existing smarty templates. I believe they used the email editor as an experiment for TWIG and have learned enough NOT to go forward with it.

- OC has OCMod/VQMod. This is only for emergency use, but when you need it you need it. I can think of many times i have had to edit CS core files because either there was no hook, or it didnt work right.

Why not just use a template file override then and wait for the hook you need (per request) to be provided and/or the functionality (from bug report) to be fixed? If you're talking about missing php hooks and/or business rule changes, then the hooks can be requested and the bugtracker is the place to post issues with behavior or functionality.

- CS has too much legacy codebase that doesnt work right in regards to runtime id. Ie, its very hard to "force" the store to "become" something it doesnt want to do without writing custom functions or overwriting registry

Broad statement. Can you be more specific? I haven't encountered this much at all and I've been working with cs-cart for over 8 years now.

- CS has too much overbuilt functions. For example the 301 redirect func is insane. Its so complex that trying to fix the disabled object "issue" turns into a 5x loop chase when you think "why isnt this just grabing an old to new relation?"

Because SEO naming is broken into two pieces. The core SEO name like (my-product) and the SEO rules which govern the actual url. I.e. foo.com/this-cat/that-cat/my-language/my-product.html. Almost every component of that path is configurable so determining what an old url maps to if the SEO rules have changed is in fact very complex to do without defects. And they are different for categories and products.

- CS location & subsiquent tax system is fundamentally flawed, and in many cases doesnt work in the real world as a customer would see it

Agree but would like to hear an alternative that is reliable and which can also be used for shipping locations.

- CS reliance on arbitrary letters for indicies is tedious, inconsistent, and confusing. Example, option type "XYZ" in addons is different in form builder is different in blocks. Why not just use names for indicies instead of all these letters?

Completely agree with this one. Not using constants to define settings is a royal pain. I.e. should be able to use ORDER_STATUS_OPEN for 'O' and INVENTORY_OPTION_TRACK for 'K', etc.

I will add that the embedding of optional items in core code is a pain when it comes to logic of the code. And the heavy embedding of business rules in templates breaks down the architecture.

Also things like their custom JS for ajax calls with all their goofy requirements such as id attribute being the last attribute of a tag and having to duplicate the 'id' as an html comment before the closing tag is also pretty bizarre in today's world. Granted much of the ajax stuff was done before jQuery was even commonly available (cs-cart V1.x). But this should have been replaced long ago. The AJAX data returned should be parsed on the server side, not in JS code. Performance would be vastly improved not to have to initialize the whole cart for every ajax request.

Right on man. Regarding "The newest CS uses Twig." -- that was totally a typo, my bad! I fixed it. I realize today newer CS indeed uses twig as well, from that thread you were speaking in, regarding tpls in /mail/. I still havent checked that out yet, although i need to since im also using /mail/. I admit you got years on me, im like a year into CS, the first 8 was basically simple theme opts, prob only 4 into all the good places....so im prob missing a bunch of stuff :) Anyways not to hijack this thread:

The thing about legacy codebase is in regards to runtime + forcing state to "become". It doesnt work right in certain places and its like pulling teeth to find hooks to manipulate it without override, specifically in regards to admin side (all stores mode is notoriously bossy, esp on older CS). Admin was what that comment was pointed towards. Examples, not to badmouth the codebase cause its sweet, but here are a couple challenges that blew my mind and debug time, should have been simple fixes:

- Prior to the fixed release, try to get the logo function to display anything besides demo store in invoices whilst viewing them in all stores mode. Image pairing goes nuts, then gives up on the last 2 array items (mail and i cant remember other). Forced runtime sorta works, but then nukes everything haha. Its so easy with a custom query, like 8 lines of code compared to who knows what calling 3x deep fn_ only to come back 1/3/d built, from a basic runtime mis-understanding.

- Try to get the default google sitemap addon to loop through stores using its native fn_. Its pretty easy to extend to one store by hijacking runtime before the exit(), but looping becomes interesting. A simple sitemap cron addon was much more intense than anticipated, i so dont wanna use a Http::get wrapper or sh kinda shim, but that exit() throws off looping chances without using cheesy timeouts or whatever.

- Location operates somewhat similar on catalog side, its a beast and there is nothing you can do to tell it different unless you once again use runtime shims or other non stock ASDF's that violate the update hashes/validator. Try to get the locations to work together, at all....for bonus points from an addon lol. The tax system takes qty 2 aprx ~10 line blocks to fix, but its limited by the behavior of locations (only 1 works at a time). All dreams are crushed, but i may have missed something ;D Sure its feasible to refactor, but how do we justify (or understand) removing the temp $_var fallback-to-some-ancient-version support injecting 2x weight arrays of redundant/tmp indicies? ...there seems to be alot of that in the location/tax forest.

- Regarding the overbuilt 301 thing, we might as well pile it in here. Trying to get a store to display a redirect for another route when it exists on an object that is disabled is a massive pain to debug because there are like 3 loops in 2 master loops, with 2 of them defaulting back to master in so many circumstances. It rivals the tax + location loops for something as simple as 301's. I know there is more to it, but seriously: check the company_id, check applicable redirs, then check applicable object routes disregarding disabled state (perhaps make it an admin option, so OPs can let things 404 decay by default like the old behavior).

- There are more "liberties" many of the fn_'s take in regards to runtime, specifically company_id that seem to be leftovers from a time when mime runtime mattered less. Heck even the fn_ for gathering company_id condition itself is guilty as the lame company id override index it looks for doesnt seem to work all the time, and possibly is way more dependent on addon/priority/chain than initially thought (you dont want your company_id changing halfway through constructing your clauses).

In regards to business rules, your last statement. AMEN brother. I think part of the issue is that controllers inject vars too early, and on demand. Like, when a mode is hit, they get right to town throwing it to smarty. Who cares what comes after. Perhaps it would be more eloquent to have a final check, whereas pre, main, and post controller load, take all the assigns for smarty vars in some handler container, then in the "compile" controller after all that (for lack of better words) actually assign the smarty vars to tpl. Perhaps this would cut down on both the need for devs to do logic at tpl, and effects of that happening when you re-load a var assigned higher up from smarty (it sucks but required aprx once).

Anyways, good convo. OC is good. CS is good. All is good :)

I have used X-Cart (still do), X-Cart Platinum (MVE), Magento and now CS-Cart. I really like CS-Cart's layout editor and mod installs are super easy. But CS-Cart has some real weird attributes: Manufacturer/brand is not an element of the product it is treated as a feature - plain weird. That makes it difficult to use with feeds etc.. No other cart developer that I am ware of does it this way. In MVE there a lot of things that don't make sense: store administrator has to create sales tax methods for each vendor (vendor should be doing this), Store locator does not auto-populate - really.

Bill

ezhobbies.com

Manufacturer/brand is not an element of the product it is treated as a feature - plain weird. That makes it difficult to use with feeds etc.

I agree that this is strange. Considering storefronts, vendors, and suppliers exist in one form or another, manufacturers should too.

I think to fix manufacturer or other similar requests as a whole would be some work :) Itd be moulding vendor into a super object that is an "organization" with types so that it could become a vendor, supplier, manufacturer, or even custom defined ones, with permissions groups extended. Basically a node with a schema.

Since they are "re-purposed" vendors then, other things like extending CS to allow a supplier/manufacturer to log in to their line would be possible, just as a normal vendor does. Addons could be used. Etc.

Would be super cool imo, especially for those who need more specific organization types.

My 5 cents.

Choosing between opencart, prestashop, magento, cs cart, still prefer CS CART, althought it has many disadvantages especialy in constant unpredictable code changes (from left to rigth and back), slow bug fixing, and lousy forum support from CS.

But from many years of experience I could say that the biggest advantage of CS CART that this platform is very good for big projects and it really sells (only magento can be comparable but more expensive in support and custom devs, although it is free).

Used to work with some projects on Opencart and Prestashop = good for small projects. As to Opencart, it is not very flexible for big custom devs in my opinion.

But if you are happy with the basic package on Opencart just give it a try. Never late to come back.

b.r.