Why not to use OpenCart – Bad Reviews of OpenCart team
We have been extremely frustrated by our OpenCart experience. We're not the only ones... there are many bad reviews of OpenCart for many different reasons and I'll explain them a bit here.
OpenCart is an open source e-commerce platform written in PHP and is based on the MVC platform. The code is clean and written in a way that is easy to modify and understand. Overall, it's a pretty good e-Commerce system and if you know your way around LAMP technology you can modify it nicely to suit your needs. Of the other open source systems we have tried, it's the cleanest and uses the least amount of files overall.
So that's the good about it. We'll let you know our complaints about the software itself in a bit, but what gets us the most is the OpenCart team. As far as we know, there are two main OpenCart contributors... one is Daniel, who recently moved to China and is the OpenCart founder. The other is someone who goes by "Qphoria" on the OpenCart forums, who seems to be one of Daniel's chosen ones to release updates to the software. Qphoria is also a moderator on the forums along with a couple of other guys.
Here are a few reasons why we take back our recommendation of using OpenCart for client sites. First, if you post a question in their forums, be prepared to not receive an answer. In fact, most of the answers are standard canned, and very derogatory. Qphoria along with the other moderators look down on people and even say things like "Why do I bother writing the readme if no one is going to read it". The problem is the readme doesn't include information some people are asking. If it's a true bug, sometimes your thread will get deleted, sometimes it will get locked, and no explanation is given. The forums and the moderators are a mess.
When Qphoria releases updates, the readme many times says that templates are not affected by certain updates. However, the update patch usually contains default template changes. Not only that, but the problem with this, is that if you have a custom template, you need to be very careful because the template changes go to the default folder, not the custom folder. In other words, if you have template changes your updates end up being very cumbersome and time consuming.
Daniel must have a lot going on. He constantly sets dates or gives time frames for when versions will be launched, but those days come and go. Sure, it's free, and what can you expect, but with attitudes like this, they can't expect us to use their platform on client sites. When we give clients expectations, and set deadlines, it's impossible to coordinate this with OpenCart since they only have empty promises. For example, OpenCart 1.5 was promised about 6 months ago, and every 2 weeks there is a new promise to when it will be delivered. Still we wait.
Unlike other platforms, we don't know when the next patch will be released either. Qphoria just released OpenCart 1.4.9.4 and has already started talking about 1.4.9.5. When you ask him when 1.4.9.5 is scheduled, so you can plan it around your clients, he says, in a very abrupt way "it'll be released when it's released". However, most of the time he won't even answer.
These releases have gotten so bad, there is a thread on the OpenCart forum called "Conspiracy Theories". Sad.
So how does OpenCart makes it's money? From add ons. When someone releases an add on into the OpenCart community, and charges for it, Daniel takes a 20% commission. Many of the add ons won't work with 1.5, so people would need to likely re-purchase any add ons that they bought when using 1.4.x.
Another problem is if you have a store on 1.4.x, and want to upgrade to 1.5, the team has already said that most all custom templates won't work, and also your product options won't carry over. Have fun either manually creating your options all over again, or pay for some custom script to move your old options over. What a mess.
At this point, we have started to play with PrestaShop, and there's more of a learning curve with it, but at least their team is much more in tune with their user base. TomatoCart also looks interesting.
If you want to use OpenCart, stick with 1.4.9.4, and don't give your clients any expectations on new features. When 1.5 comes out, it's going to be a RC release any way, so it's going to go through many rounds of bug testing. I'd stay way from OpenCart until at least 1.5.1.
My recommendation to Daniel:
1) Start a timeline, and stick to it. Give your user base a good release schedule. Your user base is losing faith and jumping ship.
2) Tell your moderators to be more gentle with their users, and if not, fire them. Are they doing this because they love it, or because they have to? They're acting like it's because of the latter.
3) Don't be so defensive. There are many posts of you attacking the poster for giving their opinion. This really looks negatively upon you.
4) Both you and your moderators act like the world owes you a favor. We were just fine without OpenCart and we'll be just fine without it. Don't give us a reason to all bail ship.
Your mileage may vary with OpenCart, but my frustration level is pretty high. Daniel promises that things will get better with OpenCart, but so far none of us have any reason to believe it.
March 24th, 2011 - 00:19
I posted this on the forum. If they delete my post, I’d like this to be a record of what the future holds..
http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=29135&p=143774#p143774
As a brand new opencart user I see a lot of potential. But even though it free and opensource…. if you look at any successful open source project, they care about their reputation. It seems like opencart does not and neither do they respect their users. The 2 person dev team doesn’t exactly inspire confidence either… plain and simple, if opencart wants to survive they better get a little more organized, accountable & transparent.
April 20th, 2011 - 01:29
yup… my post was deleted….
April 18th, 2011 - 13:03
I must say, this is the first review where I’ve been labeled as the bad guy. Truth be told, as the community gets larger and the questions get more repetitive, I do tend to lose my patience more and more. The simple fact is that we are failing to express the points clear enough. All the information is there and when I say “why do I bother making readme’s when people don’t read them” … I’m not wrong. I get 10 emails a day asking about the same stuff that IS in the readme. My struggle is figuring a way to get the message to people and make them see something we are obviously not writing bold enough.
That said, please understand that we are a 2 man dev team and we work on an open source project …. i.e. FREE. We try to do what we can with the time we have. Many people complain that a 2 man team is a problem but fail to look at other projects. ZenCart is a 4 man team. 2 that do actual coding, 1 that does graphics and one that does forum moderation. Not to say they are winning any awards lately. But a smaller team shouldn’t reflect poorly. Granted OpenCart could be split up better to put 1 person in control of modules, 1 person in control of shipping, etc. Typically people who complain about the team size tend to lack the real experience of working on a coding team. Adding more people just puts more hands in the cookie jar and causes more conflicts.
It is no secret that we don’t fully have our design process in order, this comes down to stubbornness from the devs which is another point of why not to add more of them. But like any project, we all have our pros and cons. Planning is our weak point and that causes frustration in the community which then causes frustration back from us for people who complain. We will learn from our mistakes and keep 1.6 completely silent.
Still, you need to understand that constant complaining gets mixed in with actual ignorance of users as well. The documentation is lax for the main cart, but when people don’t read the readme.txt files that come with the software, it gets to a point where even the most mild mannered person can finally snap.
Feedback on how to help make it easier for people to see the readme file when opening the zip would be a better use of your time than this blog tbh.
April 18th, 2011 - 16:03
Reading this blog it strikes me that it is a tunnel vision blog. Written from one side or angel if you want and only to point out any negative thing to be said about Opencart.
Not only this post but any post regarding OpenCart you have written has a negative atmosphere, and you just started to write about OpenCart….. 1 month ago.
And the only thing you wrote about is…. OpenCart. OK, something about Paling and WordPress but what does that mean?
Your refer to “we” when writing about OpenCart, who are “we” and who are you?
I wonder what you will write about osCommerce (still no stable v3 after 6 years). Or PrestaShop, still buggy and bloated even with the 1.4 release.
Looking at this whole blog website it soul purpose is the be negative about Opencart. Why is the home button pointing the a negative post about Daniel when we all know that this has been discussed more then 6 months ago on a much more interesting site then yours. The same goes for the so called vulnerability’s you discuss.
We have a say in The Netherlands “oude koeien uit de sloot halen” and that is all you do.
April 22nd, 2011 - 05:37
Being a moderator, I’d see why you’d take my posts so close to heart. My intention wasn’t to slander OpenCart, but rather warn others who devote time and energy into setting up their stores only to get the same frustration I went through. Once 1.5 comes out, I’m sure I’ll talk about how things improve. Daniel has always said things will be different after 1.5, and I hope he sticks to it.
Trust me, I REALLY want to like OpenCart…
April 18th, 2011 - 21:25
OPENCART IS BY FAR THE BEST CART I’VE TRIED!
PRESTASHOP IS TOO MESSY & SUPER NOT USER FRIENDLY.
Any normal human beings will snap if get asked the same question 10 times a day.
Would you not?
Why don’t you put yourselves in their shoes first before pointing out faults.
Your lost! Have fun figuring out prestashop!
addons are so darn expensive. Opencart’s better!
I’ve tried tomato cart, nopcommerce, oscommerce, zencart, prestashop & opencart.
I would really say opencart’s the best.
Yeah, we’re all waiting for 1.5.
But it’ll be released real soon.
Stop writing bad reviews & spend more time on seeing if prestashop or opencart fares better.
Bye!
April 21st, 2011 - 16:54
Interesting post but I think people keep forgetting this is Free software and not to expect ANYTHING from it, anything you do get is a bonus.
The code is clean and simple and I hope other projects start to follow this example in the future.
The updates can get annoying when one update completely brakes from the last, this is one thing they have said they don’t want to do, I.E 1.5.1 will work with everything all the way to 1.5.9 but we can only wait and see.
As for the forums, once again this is a FREE resource that people are donating their time towards, there are partners who offer paid support if you want to use one of them for a reliable source of support.
It seems your making money from the opencart project (or at least was) by using it for clients websites, not sure what that says about you, using it to make money yet expecting everyone else work for free and help everyone out. Maybe you could stick around on the forum and help people out? That will help with the support side of things.
April 22nd, 2011 - 05:35
It’s free software, but make no doubt about it, Daniel is doing this to make money – just like any other business. He will either sell the product later to another company, or just make money from mods and themes. It’s one thing to be doing it for fun, and another to make a full open source project out of it where you want people to use it.
I agree, the code is clean, simple and easy to understand and modify.
April 22nd, 2011 - 10:04
Everyone who starts making something for “free” has always “making money” in the back of his mind.
There is nothing wrong with that.
And yes, Daniel is already making money wit OpenCart, hell, even I am making money thanks to OpenCart.
And even more than last year when I was still using osCommerce!
April 22nd, 2011 - 13:11
Exactly why this “free” product “what do you expect” isn’t really a free product
April 23rd, 2011 - 00:59
@websynn, I bet you Daniel wasn’t thinking about making money at first, thats why OpenCart is free and not commercial, I bet you that money that Daniel gets is the last thing on his mind! and you know why I know that? because OpenCart is free? duh? and do you know why Daniel is making money? BECAUSE PEOPLE APRICIATE HIS HARD WORK! websynn can you tell me if you actually used OpenCart and for how long? because what I have read, you are a bit stupid mate.. think…
April 23rd, 2011 - 01:23
If you think that Daniel thinks of money last when working on OpenCart then you are a complete fool. Why are you such a Daniel follower? You think he cares about you? Try to be objective and not so on the bandwagon. I have used OpenCart since last June.
April 24th, 2011 - 11:38
LOL. xNeO is so deep on the Daniel bandwagon that I doubt you could knock him off with a sledgehammer.
I’m sure money is now one of the driving factors behind OpenCart. Daniel is getting commissions off of extension store sales, ad revenue from his website, and i’m sure professional fees from any consultation work he does. I’m sure he no longer just develops it to flex his coding muscles to the rest of the community.
April 26th, 2011 - 18:23
Should probably notify you that v1.5.0 RC1 has been released
October 5th, 2011 - 10:17
Lol @ Q
June 15th, 2011 - 17:24
Opencart has its ups and downs, but is still a valuable tool to anyone who is looking for a free, simple solution to their eCommerce needs.
It is open-source, everyone is on the same page at all times. If a known issue surfaces, everyone is effected (even the owner and admins who utilize the software.) It sounds like the guy wanted to sell his services and used bad selling tactics to try and force a resolution to the software. When you use those types of techniques anyone’s reaction is to be resistant and unwilling to even listen. The problem eventually was solved, while taking how ever many times it takes – its fixed… move on..
My feeling, no one has the right to complain about something free – if they don’t like it – move on. You obviously sell your services to clients making profit of something free. Don’t promise things until you see them…? As an engineer, I could talk about all the gadgets on my table – but why would I? My clients will never see them until they are done – fully.
Don’t blame others for your problems if you profit from it… They are your clients you contracted with free software – Find a bug that they won’t fix? Pay someone to do it. Otherwise – deal with it until they can get around to it or another user posts a solution.
Daniel or Q, have no obligation to answer a post, or fix a bug; but they do. They may not get to of the hundred noobie posts – but they get to the ones that count. So they are angry typers – many programmers are…
Maybe Opencart just needs a PR team, and someone to be the link between the dev team and the users. But they are in no way a shopping cart you should not use. I’ve made my company a lot of money using their free software at optimal overhead rates. We are one of the top shopping carts in our specific industry.
June 17th, 2011 - 02:36
Daniel or Q do have an obligation to answer a post or fix a bug. If the obligation isn’t to the end user, it’s at least to themselves… it’s their product, and they do make money from it, even if the initial software is released free.
June 16th, 2011 - 22:53
I had always used osCommerce as our open source ecommerce solution, but got frustrated with the amount of time necessary to keep patching the sites from hackers. I did some research on other alternatives and found OpenCart. I used it for a project and was in awe with how much more it made sense and now use it exclusively.
August 15th, 2011 - 23:24
I’m in the same boat; It’s to the point and well, it just works.
July 12th, 2011 - 08:50
I started using OpenCart many many versions ago for client websites, at first I was really impressed by its clean coding practices (in relation to the PHP and not the HTML, way too many inline styles!) and how easy it was to modify. I written a free tags module for it, before it implemented tags into the core. Everything was going swell.
Then I noticed something that worried me, I noticed a pretty bad vulnerability in the way it processed PayPal IPN’s, it didn’t verify the POST-back came from PayPal. So I posted my concerns on the forums. Qphoria actually replied pretty quickly, but seemed to play it down/dismiss it. So I patched my client websites and then wrote a little script to exploit the PayPal vulnerability against Qphoria’s own web store. The exploit ran as expected and I had purchased my item for free.
I started writing about what I had done on the forums and to my surprise I found myself banned when I come to submit the post (Qphoria obviously set his orders to manual verification and had noticed the suspicious transaction). So I emailed Qphoria and explained everything. My ban was lifted and the post posted.
I was surprised at some of the responses to my post on this issue. No one seemed to take security seriously, though some questionable patch ideas were submitted. Eventually the core was patched.
After seeing the way people responded to the security flaw I didn’t think it wise to continue using the software and haven’t since that day. In all fairness though, I haven’t found another OS store that is as easy to modify.
It’s a shame that the software is let down by the developers. They need to sit down and figure out the best way to solve these issues together.
July 15th, 2011 - 16:14
I recently completed a project for a client that involved a complete store design from PSD to the Open Cart framework and then other custom modifications to fit their needs. We came to a part within the project where they had requested a custom shipping feature that we found to be available as an extension. We asked our client to purchase this $15 extension and we’d configure it.
Anyhow as clients are sometimes confused or tripped up by simple things, our client said they weren’t able to purchase the extension because they didn’t have a license.
So we wrote to OpenCart through their contact page, please keep in mind this was our FIRST time to ever communicate with anyone from OpenCart.
I’ll page our email written to OpenCart and I’ll paste the unpleasant response from Daniel Kerr:
I’ve recently setup a Open Cart store for a client using one of the free
downloads and they are interested in purchasing an extension for order
tracking, it was only $15 – however he says that he’s unable to purchase it
because he doesn’t have a license.
Can you tell me more about this?
————————————————-
Daniels Response:
From: Daniel Kerr (blueyon@gmail.com)
Sent: Fri 7/15/11 10:50 AM
To: Jonathan (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
you have not provided me with decent information what you are talking about.
you have not sent one link. I don’t if your talking about the opencart site
or your own.l if its your own its not a demo is it!
I don’t have time to play guessing games.
———————————————–
I was shocked to say the least, I felt frustrated and most of all, I felt that I had led my client in the wrong direction by suggesting the use of OpenCart. I’ve been a big supporter of OSCommerce, CRELoaded and Interspires carts, I’ve written many contributions and spent thousands of hours customizing clients carts on those platforms, but because OSCommerce isn’t as nice as many of the other options out there, I figured I’d start heading in the direction of something nice and new.
Like many others, I was attracted to the clean code and features of OpenCart, but as many of us have found, that means absolutely NOTHING if there isn’t a good person behind it. Daniel Kerr seems to be irritated by simple questions and that’s a big turn off.
I do not recommend OpenCart and I will not be using it again for any future projects. If Daniel Kerr isn’t a people person or doesn’t have the social skills to interact with people in a nice way, he should consider searching for someone with those skills to represent his product. If their support was better and they actually talked to people in a respectable way, they’d have a great future ahead of them.
July 15th, 2011 - 20:04
Amazing. Thanks for sharing. You should check out the 1.5.0.5 bug thread they have going, it’s full of Daniel’s rage.
July 19th, 2011 - 18:48
Wow, I am new to online shopping world, but doing my best to figure it out. I have found this to be quite an interesting read. My webhost recommended I use shopping cart and I can honestly say I am having difficulties figuring it out. I am no techie by any means and had told my host that. I have searched the forum but there isn’t much help in respect to “opencart for dummies”.
I did find a manual online, which I thought was interesting, it advertises as free, yet you must pay $19.99. I am reluctant to purchase it though, as I have wasted money on ebooks in the past that have been nothing more than junk.
That being said I am sitting on the fence between paying for shopperpress or continuing to try and figure out opencart. Has anyone used shopperpress? I am thinking with them they should be able to help pretty well, as there are live chat personnel, to answer your questions. I mean I could spend $59 for shopperpress or $19.99 for a manual that could tell me nothing.
I don’t like the email that was sent by Daniel mentioned above. Whether it is free software or not, they are providing service. There number one service should be customer service, because without the consumers they wouldn’t be making any money and no one would even know what opencart was.
It’s unfortunate if this is the level of customer service to be expected from them.
July 21st, 2011 - 15:19
Wow, and to think this is still going(then again this isn’t the first site and probly won’t be the last to slander Open Cart, Daniel, the software or Qphoria). Found this while searching for something else, oh well. Been using OC 1.5.0.5 since the 7th of july and have had no issues with it. I guess I’m too simple to try and mess with custom templating or db editing. I also don’t use paypal for my transactions so I’m not worried there either. Paypal in itself is full of issues I’d rather not get into. I’m no programmer, but being in the computing industry 20+ years, I understand where Qphoria’s coming from and why him and Daniel treat everyone the way they do.
I had an issue towards the begining of the month where 1.5.0.5 wasn’t working right on my host(x10hosting) at the time. It wasn’t accepting the security token on login and was having me put in my admin name and password up to 8 times before it would take. The folks on the forums had suggested various versions to try and we ended up settling on 1.4.7 The problem I had was X10hosting decided to only allow so much viewing of the MySQL db, causing conflicts with the software. I’m now on godaddy where I have full acess to MySQL db and using OC 1.5.0.5 without any issues(and I mean none what so ever).
The forum rants I see are typical. People don’t use the search function to find their problem so they whine about it. The moderators snap back, and people whine some more so sites like this are made with comments like these that are yay long(and don’t ammount to anything). Only way I see not using Opencart would be if they decided tomorow to shut the whole thing down(and I wouldn’t blame them with the way people are these days).
August 15th, 2011 - 23:21
OpenCart is where it’s at; Don’t know why I didn’t try it sooner. It knocks any Joomla! or WordPress based ecommerce solution on it’s ass!
September 13th, 2011 - 16:29
“However, the update patch usually contains default template changes. Not only that, but the problem with this, is that if you have a custom template, you need to be very careful because the template changes go to the default folder, not the custom folder. In other words, if you have template changes your updates end up being very cumbersome and time consuming.”
I have to ask if you had your custom template in the default folder?
September 14th, 2011 - 07:53
Opencart is openSource
If you feel so upset that timelines are missing, please feel free to:
1) Develop if yourself
2) Hire Daniel or someone else
People like you prevent the success of openSource. OpenSource is all about community. If you dont want that community, thats feel and there are litterally hundred of paid products which will give you a SLA your asking for.
Now take it on the chin, grow up and get on with some work
September 16th, 2011 - 03:41
Not upset about missing timelines, upset about empty promises. If you promise something, stick to it. Otherwise don’t promise something.
September 28th, 2011 - 21:34
I disagree,
I’m not going to start talking about people, Daniel , QPhoria and Whoever i communicate with is in anyway connected to my company, they are not in any way involved in my business, i cannot trust something as serious as my whole business to a unknown person.
As a user on the forums , i see frequently people who are looking for a boxed solution , sometimes people thing they have a right to demand things… dont kid yourself, the money made by the website is by no means close to the money that they would made selling such a solution directly.
now for the updates, i do agree it`s disappointing to not receive the functionality by the deadline but if you take the opencart announcements and just spread it to you costumers you’re the one doing it wrong. Once again they are not my employees , business partners or in directly related to my bussiness. When 1.5 i was tempted to announce my whole userbase, but i didn’t because it would be insane.
September 18th, 2011 - 08:23
I will not defend or attack. I will just talk about my experience. I LOVE OpenCart. I love how it is very well supported in multiple language. I love their forums. I disagree with the claim that your posts will go unanswered. I rarely have seen an unasnwered post. Most of not all problems brought up are answered. I personally managed to find all my answers (silly “how did i not see that” to “help me NOW!!!”)
As one user rightly said. Other cart system are in their 6th year or so and they are still unstable.
BIG THANKS to all open source devs. a BIGGER and FATTER THANKS to opencart guys.
October 3rd, 2011 - 20:15
This is pretty sad. So many people making excuses for inexcusable behavior. When you put anything out to the public free or otherwise, you’d better have your emotions in check and if you are as easily irritated as the people supporting this cart then you need to just go sit down somewhere and play with Mr Potato head or something because you are an infant incapable of supporting a viable product or service to the public. If it’s really being released “as-is” then kill the forum and any way to contact you. Let users form their own forums and assume the responsibility. By creating and managing a support forum you are offering support and to not do so in a professional manner is unacceptable. There are many free programs floating around with no support forum, no release schedule and no way to contact the developer. People still use them and get updates whenever they are available. Those are clear examples of “here something cool, if you can use it, cool, if not, cheers!”. But somehow we are supposed to just accept a group of apathetic developers and moderators with thin skins and egos who are really too fragile to be providing anything to the public?
I don’t think so! If you are going to run and operate a support forum or imply even a little that you are supporting this cart then I suggest you drink a gallon of professionalism, grow up and support your work!
I’d rather there be no effort whatsoever to support something than there to be an “illusion” of support. You guys are like “yeah… we’ll support it if we feel like it.” or “Yeah… we’ll hype up the cart and our great releases when we want you to be hyped up with us for that moment.” Whatever. Grow up or disappear.
This blog is being truthful. The world can live without this cart, especially if it comes with shit throwers. …”wow, that’s a nice car!….oh and it’s free!….oh but when you take it back to the dealership for repair, the mechanic punches you…. yeah, I’ll pass.”
I’d rather pay money for a working cart with good support than a working free one with terrible support.
October 26th, 2011 - 22:24
This is pretty much exactly what I think about it, and I’ve had the discussion about professionalism (or lack thereof) with Daniel and Qphoria on the forum a number of times. From memory, all of those discussions were deleted by i2Paq.
Like you’ve said, the fact that OpenCart is free does not, in any way, imply that you’re entitled to be spoken to harshly for asking simple questions or providing honest feedback. Regardless of anything to do with pricing models or support obligations, at a human level there should always be a level of respect (in both directions).
Sadly, the team — particularly Daniel — have a long way to go before they will win any respect from me. Qphoria is generally fairly helpful and will go out of his way to answer some questions, but generally only those that affect him personally, such as his own modules or OpenCart code that he has only just recently updated. Most other questions will receive the kind of response outlined in this original article. Sometimes the questions are repetitive, but have some common sense and understand that that will NEVER change. Go to any forum on earth, any office on earth, and you’ll see that there are always going to be lazy/uneducated people who will ask silly questions when the answers are freely available. But you know what? Replying with ‘You can find the answer here… (link)’ is just as easy as replying with ‘You’re a moron, get lost’. It’s really not that difficult to bite your tongue and demonstrate just a little patience. There’s absolutely no excuse for abusing people outright unless they’ve done the same to you (and even then, a better option would be to simply delete the post or respond privately).
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen Daniel abuse people, some of them first-time users/posters, and he has often resorted to childish name-calling such as “idiot”, “moron”, or worse. From a user perspective this is terrible, but what about from the perspective of OpenCart? How can a product be ultimately successful, even if it’s free, when the users are being abused?
OpenCart is a fantastic product which ticks all of the boxes for me as a web designer/developer. However the support is extremely poor, and frankly that’s not good enough. Customer service is, at the end of the day, the number one factor in determining the success of a business. Daniel and co need to wake up to that fact sooner rather than later.
October 5th, 2011 - 10:34
Famous quote: Statues are never erected of critics, critics are merely the pigeons that poop on the statues of great men.
Open cart is clean, easy to modify and has A TON of support available. In the few short months we have been using it I have already met three modification writers who are more than helpful and extremely knowledgeable, I have also had excellent support from daniel personally.
Modules and mods for open cart are cheap averaging at only $10 to $15 to add functionalities as required by clients.
Stop and think people!!! Think about the cost of developing an ecommerce system, hell think about the cost of running to scriptlance and having a custom mod written. A free clean ecommerce system, easy to mod, easy to skin and with a wealth of modules for next to nothing WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT????
Back to my famous quote, where’s your ecommerce platform websyn so we can compare the two???? What are your experiences on a development team how did you cope with the pressure? You don’t have one? You are not on a development team???
Pigeons!
October 10th, 2011 - 11:34
Well I tried OpenCart and was disappointed for a ton of reasons, although it has a promising future…if the team extends a bit. Daniel should really hire a guy from India to help !
Someone told me to try Concrete5, which is a very easy to use open source CMS. I love it after one hour. Was a bit reluctant to buy the $125 e-commerce addon they sell on http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/ecommerce/, but then I decided that support was important, and afterall if my client wants a good solution I can charge $125 more, it will spare me some headache… Their refund policy was a bit weird. But I did not have to use it.
Indeed I got a reply and the solution 5 hours after posting a request. Updates and patches are also made as soon as a flaw is discovered. So, bye opencart. Concrete5 is much better for small ecommerce. Although, for big ones, I’d go with magento.
October 25th, 2011 - 17:47
I think the guy who posted this thread is too harsh ! I don’t know them in real life, Daniel and Qphoria
but here is the main point I believe will convince anyone
I’m a professional web developer, e-commerce, engineer.
1) They are goodhearted people
2) OC has a great number of follower
3) OC is goodlooking, sleek, fast, small size, more than enough basic functions
4) Chinese are generally smart-in this case: smart and good heart for Danile and Qphoria
5) OC is free !
Read more: http://www.websynn.com/2011/03/22/why-not-to-use-opencart-bad-reviews-of-opencart-team/#ixzz1bohwsYqi
October 25th, 2011 - 20:05
Well, all I can say after only using Opencart for a few days, is that it is fairly easy to set up. But, I left osCommerce for lack of support, and I am feeling deja vu with Opencart. I asked two simple questions, two days ago, and no reply/help yet. If I get abused in the reply ( if I get one ), I will warn, you treat me like crap and I will return the attitude! I am no little kid here. You will talk to me with respect, or I will not hesitate to act in kind! We’ll see how this one turns out.
My big, and this is a very big one, is that there is no help in making a custom module. You have to buy them. There isn’t a module for what I need. I am not that proficient with PHP coding yet. So it would have been nice to have this feature in the set up, so I could add a custom module easily. Or at least a tutorial that doesn’t involve buying someone else’s add on and modding it to suit my needs.
The products I sell are made by me. I am not a re-seller.
After reading some of this, I am glad I have only added one product so far. If I have to pick up and move again, at least it will be easy on my brain.
A lack of real support, or staff acting rude ( As mentioned, you need to have a professional attitude! ), and no real tutorials won’t get you far with many merchants. I have to fire staff for being rude in the past, it’s just not acceptable.
October 25th, 2011 - 21:35
Hi everyone;
Opencart is a great ecommerce platform and considering that it is free, it is more than OK for it to have some shortcomings in code or support. Code is written by humans and support is also given by humans, not machines.
I’m perfectly happy with it after having tried many ecommerce solutions both free and not. Just look at the prestashop code and see how messy it is. Opencart is clean. Look at the module prices at prestastore. Rip off !
1.5 is a big improvement over 1.4 as well.
A big plus for OC !
Cheers !
October 26th, 2011 - 03:34
I am not bashing them. So far, I am fairly happy over all. I had a few more questions, but I just dug deep and figured some of them on my own. I am a fairly intelligent man, so I can usually figure things out on my own. Not everyone can do that. I had a free site for over a year and offered free products to build a fan base, even with free products I stood behind those products. I read a few threads today, there is a lot of attitude in the support forum.
As I said, that doesn’t bother me, I can be just as nasty as the next guy. I just hope it never has to come to a font war in a forum. I sold my www war helmet years ago. LOL
October 27th, 2011 - 03:01
Actually, I am now extremely sick of the lack of support in Opencart! When I have an issue with customers not getting the DL they bought in their Downnload Inbox, I am not happy. I posted this issue and there were 3 staff members on, twenty minutes later poof, gone. I still have no help on this one.
I am going to get stuck with a reverse transaction fee.
I didn’t start a store to give out money, I started it to make money.
October 27th, 2011 - 10:34
Here is my opinion for what it’s worth. I have tried Presta it’s a tad more work but it does provide a good all round ecommerce site with the all important META TITLES which I find extraodinary that opencart do not provide except that is to say the Homepage where you can input meta titles.
I have spoken to a few webdesigner friends and they all say the same you need the meta titles … I am no seo expert this is an opinion based on what I have been led to believe.
Secondly the Forum attitude is a disgrace ,I posted on there once and got a reply about being melodramatic and not to put opencart down etc….. Needless to say I won’t waste my time posting on the forum again. Every poster is unique and has different levels of understanding. I am learning as I go along. So every poster should be treated with the utmost respect. if a question is repeated .. so what?? Just polietly quide the poster to the correct link to find the answer.
Apart from the lack of meta titles and disgraceful forum I enjoy using opencart for my ecommerce shop.
I have set up a presta shop and slowley working towards adding products when all is done I have the choice do I remain with opencart or not?
It costs nothing to be polite … I will happily donate something if Daniel would add meta titles , I know other users have done this so why can’t it be a implemented in the first place?
More importantly treat all opencart users with a tad respect and provide a forum where people are not afraid to ask those questions
November 2nd, 2011 - 18:56
My apologies in advance if any of these points are duplicates of what’s been said already – it’s a long thread and I’m not scanning it all. Suffice it to say the first ~20 posts pretty much give you the general idea of the discussion.
My personal, 2-cents, for-what-it’s-worth overview of OpenCart:
After going through about 20 different carts (Zen, Cube, X, etc), and rejecting them all for various reasons (dead project, outdated code, inflexible, etc), I finally found Magento. An awesome system – IF you’re a 100% fully competent LAMP programmer and/or you have a support team. It’s the “Swiss Army Chainsaw” of OSS carts. The problem is, it’s so bloody complicated and opaque that it took me about 4 months to find a semi-decent programmer who could take it on (after about 400 rejected ones). Still didn’t work out, so it took me the better part of a year to learn it enough to customize it in any significant way. So, A YEAR AND A HALF in development, it was coming along but was still a mess with many “mystery areas”. Anyone who has played around with Magento internals will know what I mean.
And then I found OpenCart. And now, less than 6 months later, I have a customized, fully functional, E-commerce website. For that, I thank the OC developers, and the authors of several extensions I used. Compared to the outdated mess of ZenCart, the ironclad-closed-source-ness of Bitrix, the lack of even the most basic features in Presta and Agora, etc etc, OpenCart does what I need – and it does it well enough that even a “marketing geek” with absolutely ZERO previous programming experience was able to build a web store.
Yes, the forums are dead silent sometimes. Several ways to compensate for that:
(a) plan your work in advance, and when you come to an area where you’re not sure how to proceed, and you do an experiment there, and you find out that you can’t get anywhere – post the question THEN, and go back to your main development timeline, so by the time you get to the problem area, there’s a chance someone has answered your question. Don’t expect an answer overnight.
(b) between Google and PHP forums, I bet 95% of OC-related questions can be answered without even hitting the OC site. WebMasterWorld has plenty of info on SEO, htaccess, and other “linky” topics. And so on.
(c) ask questions in relevant, specific ways, and provide details. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen a question, and it was one I’ve already encountered & solved – but the asker didn’t provide their OC version or any other relevant details. “How do I make URL’s look nice?” is NOT a good way to ask a question. Neither is “My product page is broken!”. I’m not going to ask for info, bookmark the thread, and then check back with it to see if that additional info has been provided. If you give me an ANSWERABLE question, and I can give you an answer “on the run” – I will! But don’t make me work for it. I’m doing you a favor, not the other way around.
(d) it may be an a-hole maneuver, but asking the same question in 2-4 different areas, appropriately rephrased, is a good way to get answers if you’ve ignored (a), (b), and (c), and really are in a hurry. Don’t spam though – there’s a difference between emergency measures and asking the same thing x20 versions 4 times a day.
[continued later]
November 5th, 2011 - 13:49
what Joe Schmoe says is true. i had a similar experience. started with oscommerce, purchased a template, started to customise it (i had no experience), than droped after 6 months of work when i have sean the lacks it has compared with other platforms-have stumbled upon magento. so, abandoned the project, started working in magento. at the beginning all was fine, upgraded the new template with many addons and customised it again (took 1.3 years) than one day i decided to terminate it as well (i was done 95%). this was the result of the poor performance to load a simple page and the countless errors i had-have even tried 2 diferent housts to solve the problem but no luck. after this have looked again for a new platform and i found opencart. what can i say. from the start i loved it becouse i reseabled the magento in wich i spended so much time but had a huge performance in speed on the same host. purchased a new template and modified it again, added several modules and today i am finished, after 6 months.
the problem with all ecommerce platforms is that they are not stable and error free 100%. i would love to see a good platform wich is version let’s say 1 and has absolutley no errors. it is a myth. each developer tries to solve certain problems and by modify the files(to make the corrections) they introduce other errors.
it’s like someone on the magento forum said to the developers, by each version you corect some problems, others are left unsolved and you introduce as well other problems. i come to understand that this is so true….at least in magento and opencart. but i belive that this is the case with all of them
November 6th, 2011 - 05:39
Quote From Adi “the problem with all ecommerce platforms is that they are not stable and error free 100%”
See, therein lies a huge issue! If the software is buggy and doesn’t work right, customers will go elsewhere. That’s flat out not good business. No matter how you look at it. Remember, when owning a business, the customer is always right. Even an online store! Customers have to trust you ( the owner ), and you ( the owner ) have to trust your software, and that software needs solid support. Even if it’s free.
Andre helped me solve my customer’s issue and it sort of worked out. The customer bailed, is bad-mouthing my shop, and that’s not good! I know what I was doing wrong and it’s fixed now, that’s good. Will my store over come this mangled bridge? Time will tell.
One big thing is that anytime you offer something to the public, even if it is free, you should be stand up about it and back what you offer. Not shove a stick up your ass and get all pissy when people have a complaint or ask for help. If you don’t want to back up what you offer, the don’t offer it! I have been lucky enough to have only had one wad be rude in the support forums, and I was actually nice enough to ask him to stop. You don’t know me, but I am not a nice person when you act like a stain to me.
As it stands, I am trying my best to stick it out with OpenCart. We shall see where this road leads.
January 3rd, 2012 - 07:23
The fastest way to get good service from the designers, is for users, particularly those profiting from its use to make decent sized donations.
I use it and love it. And have made many donations.
January 5th, 2012 - 19:42
OPENCART is free. Support is not compulsary. Though moderator and owner should not be close minded for the sake of opencart future. User suggestions must be SERIOUSLY considered. Dont abuse user or being SINISTER when replying to people!
anyway here is the solution for your oc problem:
1. have bugs,suggestion,modification request?
2. post on support forum
3. no support no reply?ok np
4. hire a coder @freelancer.com or anywhere in the world
5. abuse,mutilate opencart frame as much as u want.
6. PROBLEM SOLVED
7. REPEAT?
January 31st, 2012 - 03:25
Many of you developers really, in my opinion, have a nerve. You’re charging your customers to develop an e-commerce website and yet you’re using a free open source shopping cart. And then you have the audacity to jump on Daniel and “Qphoria” because you don’t like their service or the tone of their responses. Well, then, pay for a cart and then you’ll be perfectly within the bounds of civility to complain to the developers if things aren’t working as you expected them to. Neither Daniel nor “Qphoria” are your slaves (working for you for nothing), and anything that you get from them you should consider to be a gift. What a bunch of cheapskates!
February 1st, 2012 - 11:01
Opencart was great.
For simple ecommerce solution, it was very great.
Until… comes 1.5.x… ugh, that thing is a mess. I can’t place anything anywhere. Time to learn new system are too damn high multiplied. I personally still use 1.4.9.6 and i think i’ll keep it as long as posible. For the devs, i think you should mantain the 1.4.x branch, scrap the 1.5.x. Make your money by creating original plugins.
Prestashop are far complex, have more feature, and nice. By standard, Prestashop is a “department store” while Opencart is a “boutique”.
January 9th, 2012 - 23:52
Hi Jason,
What is ecommerce cms/engine you are using now? I’m also in process creating my own ecommerce engine. My First step is creating the php framework, and it’s already done. I’ll take a lot the idea from opencart, since it’s the only MVC ecommerce engine i ever know.
Should you have any good ecommerce engine, please recommend me.