Shopping Cart Reviews

Shopping Cart Details

Magento Review

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Basic Information

Company name
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Varien
Product name
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Magento
Version
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1.4.0
Sample customer sites
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http://www.homedics.com/
http://www.tcho.com/
http://www.lodgerfootwear.com/
Price
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Free
Average review score
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2 star ratingAverage: 2
(13)
User reviews
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Reviewed by: Jeff
"Oh wow, who would have thought that theming magento would be as simple as 3 steps (and the 3rd step doesn't count because it's a recap)... So make that 2 steps! Holy cow how easy is that, NOT! Anyone who's thinking about using magento should have their head examined; magento is bloated, confusing and bullocks. I'd only suggest using it if you've got a penchant for punishment, or 6 months to learn all their "simple" coding conventions ... But don't expect to do this by reading their documentation, or searching for help on their forums; the information you'll find that way is lacking to say the least. You'll only learn it by wading through the 5,000 files it installs on your server; you read that write, the standard install contains nearly 5,000 files. I stamp magento with an AVOID AT ALL COSTS label. Future users beware!"

Review date: August, 2010   Version reviewed: 1.4.0

Reviewed by: Dani
"I have checked that script for over a month. This is not a straight forward script.Its very clumsy script with tone of layers not friendly and without any proper documantation and proper support. You also have to buy an expensive host which must supports InnoDB. It should be VPS or dedicated server otherwise forget from performance. You should have a good knowledge in codes such as xml, html, phtml, php, css. otherwise you won't get away with anything. "

Review date: April, 2010   Version reviewed: 1.4.0

Reviewed by: Carmen
"This is very hard to learn. I made a trip to the support forum just to add a user, and found a tonne of posts. I added a permissions role and found that I was locked out. Looking forward to deleting the install and getting my life back."

Review date: February, 2010   Version reviewed: 1.3.2

Reviewed by: Marshall
"very confusing admin interface. poor documentation on some parts of the interface. Half way thru my testing, I was locked out of the admin panel. Even though the forgot password reset one and email it to me, it would not work. Finally just deleted install"

Review date: January, 2010   Version reviewed: 1.3.2

Reviewed by: Nik
"Magento has very good API, so it's very easy to connect third party software like warehouse application as well as very powerful Attributes section and product cloning (multishops), but it's not user friendly (neither developer friendly software). There is very messy directory structure and even if you want to install a single plugin you need to add something in your template as well, which is very confusing. There is no single way to add module like best seller or most viewed products from simple user. You need to know at least XML and to know how and where to place the code. Another bad thing is the lack of core developer's support. There are threads which are not commented with months. Another bad thing is the upgrade. Instead of copy a directory and running a single script you need to search in forums how to migrate (if you wish after so many problems) to an upper version. If I have another request to build a eCommerce site I would choose another card for sure."

Review date: November, 2009   Version reviewed: 1.3.2

Reviewed by: Mark
"Magento is not user friendly. When processing orders you cannot change status from pending, shipped, delivered as you can with other software. The emails the system generates gets flagged as spam by Yahoo and some other mail servers as it seems that they aren't fully compliant with mail format standards. Running Magento on a dedicated server with a quad core processor isn't enough to make Magento responsive as pages are slow to load. Maybe the pay version is better but at $8900/yr it's very expensive for a shopping cart."

Review date: October, 2009   Version reviewed: 1.3.2

Reviewed by: Brian
"Magento has incredible potential, but feels convoluted and incomplete as is. The most simple actions, like getting categories to display, required trips to the support forums. There, I've seen mods instruct people to rewrite errors in the program's code - something that should never happen with a shipped product. Plan on investing a lot of time if you want to customize anything. The files are situated like a haphazard, crisscrossing maze of interacting XML and PHTML files. Instead of placing styles in one location (as you would in CSS), adjustments require you to dig through multiple, poorly labeled PHTML to find what you are searching for. Then you will have to dig through the XML files to make sure that your change is only affecting the one feature. "

Review date: August, 2009   Version reviewed: 1.3.2

Reviewed by: Alex
"It's comprehensive and robust, but very heavy handed and over the top. Performance issues you hear about are true, really requires a dedicated server."

Review date: August, 2009   Version reviewed: 1.3.2

Reviewed by: Bart
"Resource hog, no support, errors are never addressed. Poor design. Stay away."

Review date: July, 2009

Reviewed by: Sandy
"I am exploring magento due to the raves and rant i've been hearing, true, it is a good opensource shopping cart however it is quite time consuming to learn and understand it. forum is active to support however for a fast online shop, magento is something that you can put on your second priority list. editor is not wysiwyg, quite hard to move pages especially if you are used to joomla/vmart and others. not to mention, since it is basically new, no skins are really available at the moment. this opensource is promising indeed but i think i will have to put this project on the shelf until it becomes more user friendly. "

Review date: April, 2008

Reviewed by: Musaaf
"Hello I tested this cart. It is one big resource hog. you will find difficulty if you are running your cart on a shared hosting. "

Review date: April, 2008

Reviewed by: goodgbb
"I can't believed that it's beta version. The version is only 0.6 but there are lots of awesome features that enough to open an awesome e-commerce website. Trust me! after 2008 the world will use this shopping cart system. It's FREE. It's EASY. In the future, it will beat all others software. "PERFECT WORK!""

Review date: November, 2007

Reviewed by: Kenn Goh
"The official launch for Magento is on Q1 2008, The beta version is fantastic. I couldn't believe it's free and open-source. Magento look professional and offering unprecedented flexibility and control. With Magento, never feel trapped in your eCommerce solution again. This web application is genius, I would never believe it is an open-source project."

Review date: November, 2007

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Shopping Cart Reviews Comments

When Magento was first released, it caused a huge stir in the shopping cart community. It was a real love it or hate it product.

Now that some time has passed, Magento has established itself as a strong mid-range player. Those pegging it as an alternative to ZenCart, etc, and then complain about performance and complications are missing the point.

Magento is aimed at serious ecommerce businesses, the sweet spot is probably businesses with revenue in the tens of millions.

A serious product will require serious hardware and serious work to set it up properly, but those who put in the hard work will find a competent product. Those people wanting to use Magento for a small shop will likely be frustrated.

Technology

Supported operating systems
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Windows, Linux, Unix
Language
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PHP
Database
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MySQL
Source code
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Yes
Reseller discounts
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No

Features

Product limit
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No
Category limit
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No
Multi-language
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Yes
Gift certificates
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Yes
Loyalty program
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No
Email merchant on order
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Yes
Affiliates program
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Yes
Site search
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Yes
Search optimization tools
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Yes
Product reviews
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Yes
Newsletters
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Yes
Discount coupons
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Yes
Customer registrations
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Yes
Wish list
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Yes

Shipping

Shipping price range
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Yes
Shipping weight range
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Yes
UPS lookup
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Yes
USPS lookup
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Yes
Fedex lookup
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Yes
Canada Post lookup
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Yes

Tax & Payment

Tax by state
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Yes
Tax by country
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Yes
PayPal
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Yes
Authorize.Net
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Yes
Verisign
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Yes
Worldpay
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Yes
Secure Trading
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No
Others
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No
Non credit card options
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No

Support

Customer forums
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Yes
Free support
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Yes
Paid support
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Yes

Reports

Sales reports
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Yes
Search reports
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Yes
Low stock reports
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Yes
Inventory reports
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Yes

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Last updated: 13 Mar 2010