I've really enjoyed Tienda so far for www.vanessajoysings.com, but I agree it's not totally intuitive and this seems to be done intentionally to get paid support contracts? Documentation is poor. I nearly gave up on it. And I have to admit I really hate virtuemart... it does feel old and ugly and monstrous. and I ran into too many buggy issues in the past and DID give up on that one.

Hi Jason,

All three of these components have active development under way. They also have commercial as well as community business models associated with them. We focused our evaluation on what we could view empirically, without rating the relative merits of the business models that fund development. It will be interesting to see how things progress.

So did you actually test any of the 3 with SSL? What about making them use both paypal and google checkout? Ive been using Joomla for over 3 years, I even hired 'Virtuemart experts' and they couldnt even get virtuemart to accept both paypal and google checkout. I spent thousands trying to get virtuemart going and landed up giving up on doing an online store.

Hello Matthew,

Our evaluation did not include testing checkouts under a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)—though we agree that's a very important part of checkout security—nor did the Team try to set up advanced options such as multiple payment gateways. These three components are very extensive in their feature sets, and as volunteers with limited time and an editorial deadline to meet, there's no way we could test everything.

What our testing group chose to do instead was to see how far they could get in a set amount of time (two hours) installing and configuring the most common tasks for an eCommerce shop, noting the usability and interaction highlights and problems of each.

Our aim was to provide a starting place for evaluating eCommerce options. We hope we were still helpful to someone like yourself with some more advanced ecommerce knowledge. Listen to the podcast; that discussion allowed us more time to talk about advanced topics like Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

nice , helpful

You've done a very good research! Thank you for updating our knowledge

Thank you Daniel! (and for your Compojoom Comment component - now we have nested comments!)

As many other people, we chose VirtueMart for its maturity and expandability (although it has some limitations on inventory management and product file downloads).

Anyhow, it's a good e-commerce solution, with some extensions filling the gaps.

Now, once you run a successful online shop, there's one thing you really miss: a powerful report system that lets you know what's going on in your shop, and provides you all the information you need to take action.

There were some products available for that purpose, but none of them suited our needs to the extend of a powerful, versatile, and fast reporting system. As software developers, we have built it our own.

It's called SALES ANALYTICS and as version 1.0 it's compatible with VM 1.1.x, but we plan to make it work with Tienda and Red Shop also.

<a href='http://joomlaextensions.latitudweb.com/images/stories/newsletters/ sales_analytics3.png' rel='external nofollow' alt='Visit http://joomlaextensions.latitudweb.com/images/stories/newsletters/ sales_analytics3.png' >View image</a>

If you want to take a look, you can see more information here: http://joomlaextensions.latitudweb.com/products/sales-analytics.html

Kind regards.

The comparison was light on comparisons and incomplete IMHO. Each of these shops have good and bad just like every other Joomla product but, you left several out which should have been included like JHShop, Seber Cart, etc. This feedback is based on direct experience, not what-if's.

We have worked with them all and we use different carts depending the features customers want. For instance, we use JHShop (based on opencart.org) for our JumpStart carts (visit web-jive.com) because it's a breeze to setup, has a lot of shipping and payment modules, and simple to add products and categories. Clients pick it up quicker as well. Now, it falls short in the SEF category.

Whereas we prefer VM and RedShop for clients who want more features and way more flexible layouts and need more 3rd party product integration (e.g. Virtuemart). Both are fine products with Redshop being the clear leader on support and closing fast on features. Redshop is shy on the 3rd party products (ver 1.1 is due out shortly though). Both of these products have strengths and weaknesses.

Seber cart is a solid product with a lot of features but, we're not too fond of the default layouts. It takes more work to customize than the others.

As far as Tienda, without the Pro version they advertise, it's not even a comparable product yet so, it's not fair to throw them in since they aren't even halfway to a 1.0 yet. Still beta software.

As far as not testing with SSL, short sighted. You should have taken the time to include that since it's key in the checkout process and a necessity for payment gateways beyond Paypal. Some carts need some nudging to get this right and others get it right out of the box. As much as I semi-like Virtuemart, it does allow me via settings to create a one page checkout experience. RedShop has the same but, a bit more coaxing.

Just my 2 cents on it all based on working with each product and customizing.

Eric -

Thanks for adding this information. It helps to have folks with experience add their commentary to these types of articles. In doing so, it becomes yet another resource readers can use to select the option best suitable for their needs.

This is a community magazine and so appreciated when community take time to share well seasoned opinion and advise. You might also consider authoring an article for a later issue.

What is annoying about some extensions (I won't name names) is that they are free in name only. There are many tricks developers use to force people into paying - either support models, free outdated versions, documention etc. I wish they could be more upfront about whether the product they've developed is really open-source and free or not.
I guess the way people look for extensions has something to do with it, and a 'free' one will get a lot more traffic than one listed as commercial. Even if the commercial one retails for a few dollars, which most people wouldn't blink at if it does what they need.

I agree... like a certain (promising) extension where the Add To Cart button doesn't work in the free version. I may shell out for the commercial version, but not until I can fully test the free version to make sure it does what I need.

Great comparison.

just one point: to my best knowledge, virtuemart doesn't allow to sell subscriptions without installing external commercial scripts like OSE (and patching, thus messing up updates).
Virtuemart also has a huge advantage when it comes to local payment gateways (specially european like Multibanco, 4B, SEPA transfers, etc..). That can define the choice if you are installing a shop to serve a specific country (example: food, retail, etc...).

1. I must say that most the negative comments and opinions about VirtueMart are not correct. It is always crazy to read reviews of people who do not know a bit about html at least and want to start an ecommerce site for free. What they look for is a solution that offers all, needs no extensions, needs no coding knowledge, no server knowledge, no time to learn about it, no sense about what a forum can provide and what not, integrated payment gateways for all the payment system available that can exist on this planet and like I said, they want it all for 100% free, no costs involved. Making a eCommerce website with no costs involved, but the site make shall huge income! I have been testing several other cars, Magento and OXID CE for example. Those come with few more basic functions then VM, looks good on the first look BUT then comes the bill. Extensions you can pay 100s of Dollars for, templates not working as proposed, even more complex coding and hosting needs you cant compare with a joomla and VM site. So, those who talk about VM being no good solution, either they should rethink if eCommerce is really what they want to do OR please do not come with Magento is better just because you can charge 200% more on the development of a Magento store, fellas from the coding branch!

2. In regards to the people mentioned in this article, (the following had been discussed publically in the VM Forum) called VM Expert. They have been suspended from the VM DEV Team some weeks ago for kind of fraudulent activities with clients who purchased tickets to get help with VM but never got an answer (excuse was that too many people requested help) and for misusing the name of VirtueMart! So maybe this article should reflect these changes as most people made no good experience with them AND they DID NOT support the Project with a ton of codes as mentioned here, they even rejected to support the core team of VM BUT actually rather started their VMX Version of VM that is the biggest FLOP and has been taken offline again! Better ask the VM Core team directly, the thread regarding this topic has been taking off-public, you may guess why.

It is completely not true what you are writing (anonymously):
- i have left the team after a long time dispute with the team leader. (it is true that he deactivated my account minutes after that saying that)
- we fully supported the development of VM 1.1.x until then
- it had nothing to do with our business / vm-support
- we never "misused" the name Virtuemart. Ask Sören - the founder and trademark-holder of Virtuemart if there was any problem ever
- VMX has been held back after very bad pressure from the VM-Team

We to suggest to both of you that this is not an appropriate venue to continue your dispute. Further comments on this topic will not be approved.

i want to try

This is a fantastic article.

However, I wish to understand if there is any facility/extension that can be used to create Matrimonial Sites.

Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestions Sir, I only knew abt Virtuemart, I came to this site searching for alternatives of virtuemart.

Humm, I downloaded the comparation sheet, and I don't know, what to do? to be amazed or angry??
Many of existing VirtueMart features wich are available since even when the project was called "Mambo phpShop" are grayed out, as unexistent.(To exemplify let's mention only the existing language system, with 50+ supported languages). And other strenghts, as the sheer number of payment and shipping modules available aren't even mentioned...
So I have real doubts about the value of the comparation for newcomers.
But there are couple of worthwile remarks too, like "The truth is only you can answer which shopping cart is best, given the needs of your customer."
There are situations where VM is the only real choice for building a Joomla based e-commerce site. None of the others are providing the wide range of localized shipping and payment plugins needed to build a really localised shop for Australia, Europe, South America, and other, "non-essential" (read - not continental North America) based shops.

I have a few sites running Virtuemart and have found it OK to work with. I chose Virtuemart based on the available payment modules. I wanted a payment module which worked with a merchant in Canada.

I also wanted an extensive shipping module which worked in Canada. I purchased a 3rd party shipping module which works fantastic.

I went through the various steps in setting up my server - SSL, PCI compliance, McAfee scanning..etc. It was a lot of work however essential.

What is important is the shopper experience. Once I had the kinks ironed out my clients' shoppers were very happy.

I look forward to continuing the use of Virtuemart and supporting the future development of the software.

OpenCart 1.5 kills all these shopping cart, and there is a Joomla bridge in the works.

Was the comparison done early dawn after full night of party?

The Virtuemart comparison is not fair, it has been compared against paid version of the other shopping carts, not the free version, which Virtuemart is.

If you take into account the subscription fee for other shopping carts you can easily purchase needed plugins and add-on for Virtuemart and it will still be cheaper.

Please fix the comparison table.
Notification on orders: – Virtuemart does have this feature from day one.
Other Payment Gateways: Virtuemart does have other payment methods 19 included on Install.
Discount Coupons: Virtuemart does have discount coupons.
Translations available: Virtuemart does have translation 33 at the time of writing this (download language pack)
Numeric formats: Don’t know what it meant by Numeric formats
Dates: Don’t know what it meant by Dates (VirtueMart store can have it’s own date format, independent of Joomla)
CSS: Virtuemart does have it’s own CSS for admin and site.

Now if for other shopping carts ‘3rd Party’ and ‘in Pro version’ is mentioned than same should be done for Virtuemart too.

SEO: 3rd Party (free and paid)
Pre-order: 3rd Party (paid)
Watermark: 3rd Party (free)
Data Migration: 3rd Party (oscommerce/xt-Commerce)
Single page check out: 3rd Party (paid)
Google Checkout: 3rd Party (free and paid)
Tracking codes: 3rd Party (free)

Please appended the corrections to comparison table, thank you.

Peter aka Aravot

Hello, I'm in Brazil and here is a very large number of users of Virtue Mart. But Virtue has a problem with the frontend modules. When you put on a site of Virtue Mart modules on the home page and clik on a product, the user is not led to a sub page and so the product details appear below the modules from the home page. This is a big problem in Virtue Mart. Some people say that this problem is the Fly page of Virtue.

Hello JMag,

please correct in your PDF following for VirtueMart:

Coupon System - Yes
Order Notification - Yes
Translations available - Yes (Language Pack)
CSS - Yes
Files - Yes (Easy upload with the VM Media Manager)

Google Checkout – 3rd party
Tracking Codes - 3rd party
Data Migration - 3rd party
SEO - 3rd party
Video - 3rd party
Pre-order: 3rd party
Watermark: 3rd party
Single Page Checkout - 3rd party

It would be fair to add this.

Thank you in advance.

Urs Brülhart
VirtueMart Supporter Team

Thank you for the testing, i did these tests too and found that some of the information in your EaSE_eCommerce_comparison_Sheet1.pdf is not complete.

- VM has more payment gateways then described.
- VM has translations available
- VM you can change numic formats and dates
- VM You can use CSS for templating
- VM has files functionality