I used nopcommerce a few years ago, and I'm sure it's changed a lot since then, but we found it frustrating to customize. If you want a store with the features it has and just want to skin a theme and have it work as is, it is probably a good solution. I'm a big fan of Merchello, and think that it provides a great way to build ecommerce that integrates with Umbraco. And it has come a long way over the last year so it should have most things one really needs for ecommerce. That said, you should make sure that it has all the features your project requires. I recommend that you install the Merchello Bazaar store front (starter kit) and try it out. Assuming you are familiar with Umbraco, you can get a quick test install running quickly.

What Alex said. Merchello is still new, but with 1.8.0 it received several new features and Bazaar, which means you have a functional store in one install.

Hi Alex.  What was frustrating about nopcommerce?

I tried to find info on integrating but people seem not to want to share too much about how they have done it.  I can think of different ways to attempt it but it will be time consuming I think.

I have looked at both of the platforms code.  I guess either way I go will be a lot of work and I won't know until end which was better.

My heart says Merchello but my brain says nopCommerce lol.

Hi Kyle, I haven't seen it since last update so I will go back to it.  I think long term Merchello will pay off as long as the project stays active.

Hi Mike,

I have also used nopCommerce a few years ago. I think you're right, if you don't want make major adjustments it's great.There is also an another open source ecommerce solution besides merchello for umbraco: uWebshop (http://uwebshop.com).

The great advantage of an umbraco ecommerce solution is you can manage shop and website in the same instance of umbraco. You don't have to switch between two systems and you can customize and change anything in the shop like in other umbraco websites.

Best regards,

Sören

Hi Sören,

I saw uWebshop but I do not think it is fully opensource.  I just had a quick look at the code but it seems they give you some of the code but not all of it.  That's quite common but for my purposes I only want to work with 100% opensource code so community can fork it if needed (I have had lots of experiences with companies that have ancient systems they are unable to fully update because they do not have all the source so I have decided to choose opensource whenever it's a viable option).

I had a play around with the plugin code for nopCommerce.  The documentation is brief but there are other plugins you can look at to see how it works.  What challenges did you encounter when customizing nopCommerce?

Hi Mike,

uWebshop was not initially open source. But now it's full open source. Here can you download the full source of uWebshop:

https://github.com/uWebshop

The challenges were very diverse: from the overall restructuring of the frontend to the complete adaptation of the shopping cart and ordering process. 

In most cases, then we have used the umbraco ecommerce solutions such as TeaCommerce and uCommerce. This was easier and has saved in advanced development costs. Therefore I don't use nopCommerce for about three years.

Best,

Sören

Ahhh nice!  I downloaded package from projects section I think and then after when I looked at git I saw the description say:

"This github contains the open-source parts of uWebshop e-commerce software for Umbraco"

I assumed they were still holding back some source.  I'll add it back on the list.

In your opinion what benefits did uCommerce and TeaCommerce offer that made the fee worth it over going with a free opensource option?  I don't mind paying license fees when the project has the budget but it just worries me having parts of the code unavailable.

Hi Mike,

of course, you can ask the package owner Arnold Visser (Twitter: aim24) if all files are in the github repository or something is missing (http://uwebshop.com/contact). 

The differences are, firstly, in the features, on the other, in the data management. I use TeaCommerce mostly for smaller projects or if the customer will have his products in the content section as nodes. uCommerce I use only for very large projects. In uCommerce all products are in the database and is designed for thousands and millions of products. 

The advantage of commercial ecommerce packages is that you can of course definitely gets support from the developers and that you aren't only dependent on the great umbraco community.

Ultimately, it is a cost issue, a question of the required feautures and of course how the system should be expandable.

Best,

Sören

Mike,

It was a few years back, but I think the frustrations we had was the designs/user-flows that we needed to implement did not match exactly what nopCommerce implemented. Plus we wanted to integrate it with Umbraco for content management. If it does what you want and you like the way it works, then I think it might work out for you. The best thing is to take some time and try them out to see if they meet your project requirements.

Alex

Hi all,

I am a former developer of nopCommerce (joined the team from v1.1 and left after v1.4 - due to the lack of time) and I can say that eighter one you choose will be a good solution. Both of them have pros and cons, both use Asp.Net MVC, both have customizable themes. A long long time ago I was in a search for a good ecommerce solution and dashCommerce/dotshoppingcart were preety ugly to customize and one day nopCommerce appeared. Tried it for a few days and then I joined the team so I can bring some features that I was interesed in.

NopCommerce is stricly for ecommerce. Most features are there and you don't need anything else. The source code is preety straight forward and you won't have any headaches to do some customizations. If you want to get something else in there you'll probably end up with hackish workarounds - e.g. tree structured, data types.

Merchello combined with Umbraco makes a great CMS/ECommerce solution, but you have to learn both frameworks. The pros for Umbraco/Merchello is the PetaPoco data access layer which is fast, compared to the swiss army knife the EF.

Regards,
Daniel

Hi,

but the problem is not only the "code" but also the features. I think that Nop request a lots to deep customize the layout but after all is there... I wish to use Merchello me too, but I don't find some features or response to my questions like recurring payments, filters, how to manage 500+ products and not to input them two times, and so... I've tried the last Nop version 3.6 and it's faster than before and now you can create template and override views.

That is an interesting discussion.

Recently I'm facing the same dilemma. Especially after suffering a little bruise from Umbraco in my previous project.

In my previous project, there was a case where we had around 2000+ locations and we structured it like this:

Locations
|------> Location1
|------> Location2
|------> Location3
|------> ......
|------> Location2000

It blew up the performance of the website as it is not a good practice to hold many child nodes under one parent node. We fixed it by separating the locations across regions and areas.

In my current project, we are speaking about 50K+ products and Merchello leverages UmbracoContext Cache, will it affect the performance of the site?

We can run a quick test but wanted to check with the community before we spend our first penny on that effort.

We are considering Umbraco/Merchello mainly because it is open source (easy to bend rules or extend) and almost free, and we are a startup to justify the economical approach.

Hi Mike,

I'm from nopCommerce team. Currently we are doing integration with Umbraco. If youare still interested, you can join the discussion.

Best regards, Dmitry

UaU. Hi Dmitry. Is the Umbraco integration about the content pages and so or ecommerce cart?

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