don't think there's such thing as a "best package/solution", it all depends on your criteria and client requests. Most of these packages have a starter kit, so why not explore these and see if they fit your needs.
If you need more info about each of those packages, just get in touch with the authors, there a bunch of nice people eager to help you out with whatever requirements you have for your e-commerce needs.
I'd just like to add that perhaps you should also have a look a Chainbox, which is also an e-commerce shop solution based on Umbraco. It differs from the three mentioned above since it fetches the data for the shop from the ERP system the customer is using such as C5 or Navision for instance meaning that the customers manage the website using Umbraco and manage the shop using their ERP system instead of keeping the products inside Umbraco.
Be aware that their site is in danish - but you should be able to navigate it using google translate in Chrome.
I was hoping someone already had compared the alternatives and could share some general pros and cons. I'll try to post my thoughts here if the project see daylight and I have to implement one of the above.
If you look at the DNA of the various solutions you'll see that uCommerce is different from the other options available in that we've architected every e-commerce piece from scratch optimized for doing e-commerce. This means that we don't try to shoehorn products into content nodes, but rahter have catalog structures built for that purpose alone.
What this means is that uCommerce can hold a lot (!) of products. Our internal testing went up to 800,000 SKUs at which point we stopped because uCommerce was scaling liniearly as we added more products.
Of course we offer features you'll only find in uCommerce such as:
Multi store support
Shared products between stores
Multiple catalogs
Related products
A nicely integrated language layer for stores, catalogs, categories, and products
Marketing Foundation for discounts, promo codes, and ads
A highly extensible development model (basically everything can be extended, modified, or replaced outright, even the backend UIs)
LINQ to uCommerce for easy data access if you're a .NET developer
Suppport for 15 separate payment gateways around the world as of version 2.5
And of course you can build and deploy production sites for free with uCommerce and add more out of the box features as you need them with Pro and Enterprise editions
For version 2.5 slated for relase by the end of January we've adding a new foundation called Security Foundation. What it does is add granular permissions for each element available in the uCommerce backend. At one end of the spectrum it means that you can build multi store setups in the same install, which are completely isolated from each other frontend- and backend-wise, i.e. store A maintains catalogs and processes orders completely separate from store B.
Of course Security Foundation adds more common permissions as well such as only exposing relevant functionality to store staff, e.g. a person can only maintain some or all aspects of the catalog, but not process orders or the other way around.
Best e-commerce option?
Which of the packages is best? How do they differ? Anyone with expecience?
Hi Kenneth,
don't think there's such thing as a "best package/solution", it all depends on your criteria and client requests. Most of these packages have a starter kit, so why not explore these and see if they fit your needs.
If you need more info about each of those packages, just get in touch with the authors, there a bunch of nice people eager to help you out with whatever requirements you have for your e-commerce needs.
Cheers,
/Dirk
Hi Kenneth
+1 on Dirk's post above.
I'd just like to add that perhaps you should also have a look a Chainbox, which is also an e-commerce shop solution based on Umbraco. It differs from the three mentioned above since it fetches the data for the shop from the ERP system the customer is using such as C5 or Navision for instance meaning that the customers manage the website using Umbraco and manage the shop using their ERP system instead of keeping the products inside Umbraco.
Be aware that their site is in danish - but you should be able to navigate it using google translate in Chrome.
Just my 2 cents.
/Jan
Thanks for the answers!
I was hoping someone already had compared the alternatives and could share some general pros and cons. I'll try to post my thoughts here if the project see daylight and I have to implement one of the above.
Hi Kenneth,
If you look at the DNA of the various solutions you'll see that uCommerce is different from the other options available in that we've architected every e-commerce piece from scratch optimized for doing e-commerce. This means that we don't try to shoehorn products into content nodes, but rahter have catalog structures built for that purpose alone.
What this means is that uCommerce can hold a lot (!) of products. Our internal testing went up to 800,000 SKUs at which point we stopped because uCommerce was scaling liniearly as we added more products.
Of course we offer features you'll only find in uCommerce such as:
For version 2.5 slated for relase by the end of January we've adding a new foundation called Security Foundation. What it does is add granular permissions for each element available in the uCommerce backend. At one end of the spectrum it means that you can build multi store setups in the same install, which are completely isolated from each other frontend- and backend-wise, i.e. store A maintains catalogs and processes orders completely separate from store B.
Of course Security Foundation adds more common permissions as well such as only exposing relevant functionality to store staff, e.g. a person can only maintain some or all aspects of the catalog, but not process orders or the other way around.
You can compare the feature set of each of the uCommerce Editions on our site and of course you're more than welcome to give me a shout at ssl AT ucommerce DOT dk if you have any questions.
Hey Kenneth, I now find myself in the exact same position, can i ask what option you went for?
Stephen
Hi, the project is a bit delayed so I haven't digged into it yet. Any progress for you?
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