Given up, Please recommend an alternative to Presta shop we can migrate to

[jon active]

We have  a large shop using presta shop 1.41. 

Since our web server upgraded to PHP 5 the search engine eon the shop has ceased to work.

We have tried upgrading to 1.6 but the categories disappeared .

We have tried to sort it out but failed.

The cost of getting developers to help out makes presta shop too expensive to use.

Can anyone recommend a better shop system that we can easily migrate to without having to load in all the info individually again?

cheers

Jon

 

[Naldinho]

That we are here means we feel that PrestaShop is one of the best options. I reviewed all the options two years ago and PrestaShop was the best option.

 

I will likely try Megento for a store sometime in the near future and I might even try OpenCart -- main reason being that different kind of stores benefit from different types of features. Those would be the first two I would consider.

 

The type of products you have is a major factor -- if your products are really basic and you want something with no coding knowledge required then you might try one of the SaaS options like Shopify. These types of platforms cost more per month and are really limited but for people with basic products and no skills they are a good option

 

Personally I would suggest trying to upgrade PrestaShop as I doubt you'll find a better option. 

 

Another option might be doing a clean install of 1.6.1 and looking for a module where you can export the data from your 1.4 store and then import it into the clean install of Presta. I don't know if such a module exists but I feel it likely does.

[ragnabt]

Hi

 

I can understand your frustration, I´ve been there, back and forth but now I´m almost at the finishline

 

What I did was to make a fresh installation of version 1.6 and then import categories and products to the new version. 

The new version is on a subdomain and has another database, but on the same server so I wont have to move anything around when I switch. 

 

It did not work for me to upgrade version 1.4.7 to 1.6.

 

I will then use my old shop run on a subdomain (so I can go back for the historic) and switch the new shop to run on the main domain. 

 

I thought is was better to keep on going with prestashop, which I´m a big fan of by the way, instead of beginning to learn another solution. 

 

Otherwise there is an ocean of them out there, Magento, Drupal and many more others.

 

Good luck

Edited September 13, 2015 by ragnabt (see edit history)

[Chaniyth]

@jon active

 

Being 'cheap' has no place in business. It takes money to make money with any business. ANY shoppng cart you use will end up costing you money anyway you look at it be it from VPS hosting [which is what you SHOULD be using as a minimum because share hosting is NOT the way to go these days especially for ecommerce], template designs, marketing or PHP developers / freelancers. As I said, it takes money to make money so it's just best to stick with what you know.

 

Every shoping cart has pros and cons about them, here's some that we have used over the years and will list their pros and cons.

 

Zen Cart -- we've used this since 2003/2004 and it's one of our personal favorite carts to use however it has some pretty harsh cons.

 

Pros: Blazingly fast and stable, easy to learn, good community, PCI Certified, gift cards/gift vouchers/gift certificates, multiple email addresses for different business "departments", multiple admin capability, plethora of free add-ons and generally great support.

Cons: Upgrading to a new release can be a nightmare if you have a number of add-ons installed regardless of what its diehards say. It's not a modular design so most add-ons are not a drop-in solution and require modding core files. Also since it's not modular design template require you to mess around in their PHP code to get the desired look you want. The one page checkout is a very expensive third party add-on costing a whopping $299.

 

Open Cart -- we've used it for a few years there's seriosuly nothing special about this cart it's merely "ok". It generally only gets high praises from template designers and people who are paid to do reviews.

 

Pros: Fast, easy learning curve to use, nice looking 3rd party templates, super simple upgrades, gift cards/gift vouchers/gift certificates, has a free easy to use fast and intuitive third party import/export plugin [not included by default is a seperate download/install].

Cons: The lead developer and owner of Open Cart is a complete douche and has a serious attitude problem that needs adjusted. Security is not taken very serious by the developers. It's PHP code is generally a hot mess with alot of repeating code throughout. Open Cart is very bottom of the barrel basic and requires pay for 3rd party modules to get any "good" functionality out of it. Most 3rd party modules are pay for and not by a certified company only an individual and may or may not have support nor upgrades. There is no multiple email addresses for different business "departments" if you need that type of functionality it's a hit-or-miss pay for add-on by a third party. Very lack luster community.

 

The bottom line is simply because you are familar with it we suggest sticking with Prestashop. As Naldinho and ragnabt suggested do a fresh install of 1.6.1.x and use your CSV import files [which hopefully you've made] that way existing customers, categories, attributes/options, products, etc can be imported easily.

 

If you have not created any CSV import files as Prestashop as of 1.6.1.x by default STILL has no decent export functionality for those things [it never has], and would require a pay for module to do it and even if you did move to a different cart you'd still need the pay for module in order to export functional CSV product import files that you'd have to convert to suit other carts import methods. You could use the Cart2Cart service to convert but that will end up costing significantly more than the Prestashop CSV Export pay for module.

 

As for categories missing that's more than likely a template compatbility issue with 1.6.x and should be easily resolved with the purchase of a new template.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Chaniyth (see edit history)

[jingle0]

I really enjoyed reading this thread!  I'm researching carts for a client and this one is in my testing bin right now.  I've been reading review after review on various carts and shortlisted things down to the following ...

Ecwid (on either Wordpress or Joomla) because that's what the client currently has and it works ... just needs an upgrade and a tweek

Magento (because the reviews all state it's well worth the time to implement regardless of the big resource requirement), definitely scalable for a growing business

Opencart (because I've seen several sites where it works well) but after this thread I may reconsider!

 

there were also several I really thought would be a good fit but I don't feel my client needs to pay a percentage of his sales to both the cart provider and payment gateway provider.  There are too many other good solutions.

 

So aside from what I've already stated, perhaps I can get some feedback on what you would use for your client who has 5 or 6 custom made products, ships internationally, and gets atleast 25 orders a month. 

 

[Naldinho]

@jingle0

 

Selling custom products makes things so much harder (all my shops involve custom products). For starters custom products typically eliminate all the SaaS offerings.Even most of the main carts don't offer much when it comes to customization of products so you typically need to inventory the add-on modules to see what features can be added. 

 

The main reason I want to try other carts is mostly just to have the experience to know which cart is best for a particular kind of custom product. Overall I am really happy with PrestaShop but my second store required a feature that isn't available for PrestaShop (at least I couldn't find it) but which could be added to Magneto and Open Cart as a module -- of those two the Magneto modules was close to ten times as much so obviously assuming everything else is equal Open Cart would have been the way to go. I actually did it with PrestaShop by adding the feature myself and it was pretty easy to do but if I was paying a developer it would make more sense to just learn a different cart since they are all very similar. 

 

 

I have never heard of Ecwid but as a general rule I have a dislike of e-commerce platforms that are wedged into CMS platforms. It is probably an irrational position to take but I've always felt the desire by many to use Wordpress as a general tool that can be forced into various roles when there is actually software designed for that role is motivated out of lazyness.

[jingle0]

@naldinho

 

thanks for your feedback.  I would be very interested in seeing your shops to see how your custom products work.  I could spend another month looking for the perfect solution but based on reviews from various forums and the stuff I can google, I'm quickly narrowing down my options. 

 

Has anyone had any experience with Leaded Commerce?

[tuk66]

Everyone has different needs. There is no such thing like "best shopping cart for all".

 

Some hints - http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7707-best-ecommerce-software.html

[Naldinho]

@jingle0

Only one shop is currently live (I am almost done the others but still on local server) but here is an example of a custom product

http://thetabdepartment.com/colour-custom-tabs/32-custom-tabs-set-of-8.html#/stock-90lb_index_stock/mylar-clear/sides_printed-front_and_back/spine_reinforcement-reinforced/drilled-3_hole_punched/collated-collated/turnaround-3_business_days_standard/paper_size2-letter_8_5_x_11/orientation_2-long_edge

 

and some of the issues that you have to consider with custom products

 

1) Product has 12 attributes with 2 to 14 options per attribute. The result is that product actually has over a million unique ways to configure it. If a cart system uses combinations then that is either going to break the cart or at a minimum make it really slow. The only reason I can have a product with a million combinations is a module that changes how PrestaShop handles attributes.

 

2) I needed file upload as an attribute. PrestaShop allows for file uploads as an attribute, but you can't use PDF which was essential for my application. Lots of good file uploaders are available but then there is the issue that I wanted to have a price impact for file upload which only one module did.

 

For my another store that is still in development I needed fix quantities -- store is print shop and can't really let people order 588 business cards. I wanted to limit it to fixed amounts like 500,1000,2000, etc. I was actually surprised that I couldn't find a module to do that on PrestaShop. I was able to modify PrestaShop so that it does that now and it was rather easy but for someone who doesn't feel comfortable doing that Magneto and OpenCart both have modules for fix quantities although the Magneto one is much more expensive than the OpenCart one.

 

Another consideration with custom products is conditional attributes -- I really haven't found any cart that handles that well. Prestashop with the addition of a module does a passable job. That is to say you can set up products where the attribute options change depending on selections in other attributes,but you can't really have the attributes themselves change based on customer selections.

 

I have a lot of other issues but they are pretty specific to my stores all being somehow print related so those issues don't really apply to others. When it comes to general issues with custom products the combinations multiple issue (any custom product with a few attributes will quickly cause issues) and lack of conditional attributes are the two things that I think cause the biggest issue for people trying to sell custom products.