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Ubercart has a new Open Source competitor
Submitted by daniel.s on Fri, 01/11/2008 - 17:17
And it looks very well done: It's still in beta, but there are plenty of good features in it already - and more on the roadmap: Ubercart suits the project i'm working on, as it's a site with a store on the side, not primarily a store. Anything that can help kill off OSCommerce is a good thing...
a review of note: which prompted the response: That roadmap looks pretty ambitious, but there are some neat features there. Well... it's not really new, having been around for quite a while (at least as long as Ubercart according to their blog posts). I'm not too worried about competition as there are some fundamental differences (check their download size It should prove to be quite popular if folks can get it up and running, though. Seems like every time I stop by there the recent forum posts are 75% installation problems. What's better then Drupal and Ubercart.. I been in the business for over 15 years selling online and ubercart is top knotch. There's still a way to go, but I can see the bright light at the end of the tunnel. There is a learning curve but I prefer that over the cookie cutter ecommerce solutions. My 2 cents worth :>) Like I mentioned in my previous post: If you want a CMS with a store on the side: Drupal + Ubercart If you want just a store, I believe that Magento will be the way to go. I think that the clean store-specific admin interface of Magento is better than Ubercart's, eCommerce's, and VirtueMart's. As mentioned in the article posted above, Magento will make an excellent osCommerce replacement. I've put too much time into my friend's online store using Ubercart to switch - plus Magento in its current state is still lacking some fundamentals such as the 'Contact Us' form (on the roadmap, but should have been implemented from the outset) Am I the only one who can only see "Magneto" whenever I see the new system's name? Anyway, it looks nice (I really love the Ajax usage) but as daniel mentioned, it's fine if you just want a store. But as the reaction article posted above sort of implies, if you need a site that's more than just a store it's best to stick with the code that was meant for your CMS and not try to bridge them. (I was about to do that before I stumped upon Drupal last year). But yeah if it's just a store you need, Magneto ... er, Magento .. looks like it'll do the job. cs-cart is probably the best on the market as a stand alone solution but it's not FREE. I think it's an off string of X-cart. I'm impressed with Ubercart the most because anything is possible with Views, Workflow_ng etc. Am I the only one who can only see "Magneto" whenever I see the new system's name?
I thought the same. They've even bought the domain name http://www.magnetocommerce.com/ I give my take on this commerce package: Converting their OS to Drupal will be harder than they think Converting their OS to Drupal will be harder than they think 
Since when have they said they're converting their base framework to Drupal? There's no point doing that, as they'd have to redo everything they've already done. They may build some sort of integration/bridging between the two systems, but I don't see the point with ubercart being as good as it is.  Honestly, the only super attractive feature for me is ship to multiple addresses. Other than that, Ubercart does everything I need and works with my favorite CMS, Drupal. I don't think Magento's integration with Drupal will be at a very high level like Ubercart, as a module - it will be some kind of bridge with it maintaining its own database, would be my guess. Magento is a neat cart with some nice features. If I were still new to online sales and e-commerce, it would probably be my first choice, but I'm not, and it isn't. There is one simple reason why not. Magento does not have good (or even decent) CMS features. I use to think "who needs a CMS? I just want to list and sell products. I don't want to deal with the learning curve for a CMS." Then I started selling goods online. I created a (for the time) good website with good products and good prices with oscommerce. I had everything I needed, except customers. In order to get customers, your need traffic. In order to get traffic your site must be placed well in search engines. Your site won't get placed without either paying for placement / advertisement (which destroys your margins), or having good content. You can't have good content without a good CMS. So, if you want to make a living selling goods online, IMHO, you need CMS. Now you think "But Magento is going to integrate with Drupal." Honestly, I doubt it will work. Before we set out to create Ubercart, I spent a great deal of time looking at the available options. I spent weeks planning what it would take to integrate a cart into a CMS. I looked seriously at Zen Cart and Drupal along with others. Integrating a stand alone cart into a CMS is a nightmare. We quickly decided that the correct thing to do was to start from scratch. Around the same time Ryan looked at integrating Vbulliten into Drupal. I have seen many examples of attempts to integrate carts into CMS's, integrate forums into carts, integrate CRM's into carts, etc. . . And I have never seen one work well. At best they are a hack, with one notable exception being CiviCRM. It works with both Drupal and Joomla. I don't know if it was designed that way from the beginning, but that is quite a feat. I tip my hat to the bad ass developers who pull that off! To recap: I believe that in today's environment a cart is not a good cart without CMS. Integrating a stand alone cart into an existing CMS is extremely challenging. Magento is not going to succeed in integrating with Drupal. Magento is never going to be the cart that Ubercart has the potential to be because it doesn't have good CMS support. I believe that Virtuemart, or the E-commerce module for Drupal are true competition for Ubercart. Administrators lacking experience may choose to start with Magento, but time and experience will show that they are better served by a tightly integrated Shopping cart and CMS like Drupal. I guess we will see if I am right. Yes, I might have jumped the gun when saying they would "convert" their product to a Drupal module. I said/thought that because their is no real benefit of doing it any other way. Here is the post that lead me to believe they were serious in doing it the "drupal way". I came to know about Magento before Ubercart. But as ubercart is a drupal based module where you can install other modules like forum, blogs, etc without a problem and handling is so easy that I personally prefer Ubercart in front of any other shopping cart including paid ones. The most important benefit that you get from ubercart is of SEO (title, headings, url, descriptions are in the way the search engine requires), easy navigation and off course valid XHTML. Changing themes (design) of your website is easy. I give Ubercart 9/10 (including all open source, free and paid shopping cart). I believe that Virtuemart, or the E-commerce module for Drupal are true competition for Ubercart.
If you want to use the best SEO shopping cart then Virtuemart and E-commerce module are not near to Ubercart. If ubercart doesn't stop its continuing effort to make it more better and better, I think it will be one of the most sought shopping cart in coming years and will eventually get the maximum market share. Apeee - I didn't say I thought Virtuemart or E-Commerce were as good as Ubercart, I just said I think they are more competitive with Ubercart then Magento. Of course, I am an Ubercart admin, so I am certainly biased. Other then that, I agree with everything you said. Ubercart is a good cart. What makes it a great cart is the features provided by tight integration with Drupal like forums, blogs, SEO etc. . . Thanks for the high praise Apeee. We will try to live up to your expectations. Dragging this back up again.... The more I use Drupal and Ubercart, the more I fail to see how any other solution such as Magento can come close. I love the way Drupal and Ubercart are so extensible. Being able to override functions is absolutely awesome. I just figured out how to overwrite the default Drupal "under maintenance" page. As Borat would say: "Is Nice. I like"
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). They definitely have a fine marketing department, but it's hard for me to imagine their CMS features or extensibility will come close to Drupal's.
Joined: 10/10/2007