A prospect has asked us about building him a site with Magento. I’m leery of learning a new platform for one client but he’s willing to be our “guinea pig” as we learn, and it might open up new business opportunities.Has anyone here in the clubs used it? What did you think?

@rich-brooks @hjelliott I used Magento a couple years ago for a short period while I was exploring an affiliate business.  So my comment is based solely on that brief experience. 

Having said that, I have to agree with Holly (and her husband’s input).  I think for the experts, Magento may be the platform of choice because it offers a lot for start-ups as well as established businesses. At the time I used it, I thought there was a lot to learn – in order to take advantage of all of those “cool features”, but who knows, they may have simplified things since I last ventured there.

Perhaps, one factor that should influence your choice is the nature of your client’s business. For example, does he/she sell homogeneous product or diverse items?

Bottomline is I think regardless of the platform you choose for your client, you have to be prepared to spend some time learning the tool (beyond the installation phase, which itself could be complicated).  Also, you have to allot time for (ofttimes pesky) upgrade and security issues. Of course, there’s the ever present need to maintain SEO.

I am personally eying OpenCart for my next adventure into ecommerce.  I’ve heard good things that need checking out!

My site was previously built on ZenCart.  I liked it okay, and like OpenCart, it was a free shopping cart system.  ZenCart had far more of a patchwork look/feel to it from the admin end, I think largely due to having been developed by a number of software contributors, not all taking the same approach (for instance, some selections would be field inputs (1=on, 2=off), while others might be True/False checkbox selections or radio button selections).  Not being the one who has had to do all of the heavy IT lifting on either platform, I can only add that my husband has repeatedly said that he prefers OpenCart over ZenCart.

With OpenCart, we have purchased a handful of extensions, some of them fairly basic but really necessary features; others costing $10, maybe $20, but big time savers when it comes to listing setups, etc.  While that takes it out of the “free” column, we’ve spent well under $200 to get what we have. (I’ve lost count of the hours of setup and tweaking.) 

OpenCart comes with various features that weren’t part of ZenCart – Wish List, Compare, related products, affiliate, just to name those that come to mind at the moment.

@atlantarobin @rachelagheyisi