Is PrestaShop for me?

[msmith0957]

Hello! After going through an exhaustive search for finding the "best" cart software I came across PrestaShop and decided to give it a try. My purpose for using this cart is probably different from most users. Basically, what I want to do is "add" only the functionality of certain PrestaShop features into this new web design I'm developing for my father's company. To not get too detailed, his company offers various products, a couple services, but the website is more or less an online 'catalog'. I would love to use PrestaShop to manage perhaps product series and various models within each series, including product descriptions, images, etc.

His company is a manufacturer however, and sells mainly to distributors; each have their own discounts depending on how much they buy per month/year etc, so prices should only be seen once logged in by one of these clients. And, as of now, I'm not sure if we will even accept online orders... Not my decision, just how things are done I suppose.

So after reading this, does PrestaShop seem like a viable solution? Would it be difficult to adapt these features into my design or should I be looking at a different piece of software? I'd like to consider myself an intermediate web developer and programmer (I'm a CS student). I don't mind spending time on a project, but as they say, "time is money".

Thanks!

[rocky]

PrestaShop can't do what you want out of the box, but it could be modified to do what you want. Basically, you'd need to modify all the TPL files and add the following before the prices:

{if $logged}...{/if}

This will display the prices only when a customer is logged in.

You could uninstall all the payment modules and cart module so that customers can't check out, and go to Employees > Permissions to hide the orders and payment tabs in the Back Office to simplify the Back Office pages.

The only potential problem I can see is if there are many products with different discounts. In PrestaShop, you must enter them one-by-one on each product. You can't set a manufacturer-wide discount.

If you can accept all that, then PrestaShop is suitable for you.

[msmith0957]

Thanks for the response. I'm glad to hear I can modify PS to tailor my needs. Sorry but did you mean you can or can't set manufacturer wide discounts/prices?

[rocky]

I've corrected my post above. You can't have manufacturer-wide discounts.