Hey guys!

am running an ecommerce store, but am always on the lookout for the best system. Also, my relative would want to open a new ecommerce store as well.

As such, which do you recommend?
1) Magento
2) OpenCart
3) WooCommerce
4) Prestashop
5) OS Commerce
6) X Cart
7) Shopify
8) BigCommerce
9) EasyStore by Exabytes

others? Please list out the strengths/weaknesses of the platform you recommend ya? I hope we would help others planning to enter the ecommerce industry as well


p/s: Kindly do not list out SAAS Opencart, which seems to be quite prevalent in Malaysia

I made an estimate of costs for running an ecommerce site below Appreciate your comments

1) OpenCart
Cost of Software = 0
Cost of Extensions = USD 3k
Yearly Renewals for certain extensions = USD 200/year
Server Costs = USD 240/year or more, depending on traffic
Maintenance = Moderately Easy, 7/10
Cost for developed site = USD 3k to 10k
Rating of Costs = A

2) WooCommerce
Cost of Software = 0
Costs of Extensions = USD 4k
Yearly renewals of extensions = USD 2k/year
Server costs = USD 360/year or more
Maintenance = Easy, 8/10
Cost of developed site = USD 8k to 24k,
Rating of Costs = B+

3) OS Commerce
Cost of software = 0
Cost of extensions = 0
Yearly renewals of extensions = 0
Server Costs = USD 240/year or more
Maintenance = Moderately hard, 4/10
Cost of developed site = USD 3-5k
Rating of costs = A

4) Prestashop
Cost of Software = 0
Costs of Extensions = USD 6k
Yearly renewals of extensions = USD 4k/year
Server costs = USD 360/year or more
Maintenance = Moderate, 6/10
Cost of developed site = USD 10k-20k
Rating of costs = B-

5) Shopify
Cost of Software = USD 350/year or more
Cost of apps = USD 10.5k/year or more
Maintenance = Easy, 10/10
Cost of developed site = USD 10k - 70k
Rating of costs = C-

6) Magento Community
Cost of Software = 0
Cost of extensions = USD 7k
Yearly renewals of extensions = USD 5k/year or more
Server Costs = USD 960/year or more
Maintenance = Hard, 3/10
Cost of developed site = USD 25k - 100k
Rating of Costs = E

For me. i go to magento.. i working with 3 client using magento. they are satisfied. As long u can spend your money to semi dedicated server above..

Thanks, but will it cost much to have the following?
1) Multilingual
2) Abandoned Cart
3) Auto Responder
4) Variable Products
5) Min/Max purchase
6) Cost of goods
7) Stock Level
8) ERP
9) Blogging platform
10) CRM
11) Subscription Products

And could we have one for less than RM 20k to start with perhaps RM 5k yearly for maintenance?

For me. using magento u can save cost because some of feature u need already there


This post has been edited by firesharedx88x: Apr 7 2015, 08:21 PM

imho there is no best solution. depending on your budget, the you might want sumthin that satisfies all your need. thus firslt, u need to identify what you need, what u currently have nad what u can spend to have.

eg; my experience with magento - u need a powerful server, decent server might result in slow response
while
prestashop is fast but u cant have all the ecommerce feature that u want..

that why i said that. u need semi dedicated server above.

hmm, I visited some forums and they mentioned about getting an 8 cores with 16 GB RAM, especially if you're heavily loaded with products.

Also, I noticed that Magento extensions are really expensive, unless you wish to use a vanilla Magento installation

so to get a dedicated server is like 10k annually already

For me. U need think about your target market. Is in malaysia. U need semi dedicated server in.malaysia. So. If u have many products. I can try some semidedicated server. Cheap is serverfreak. Two year for 3k only

dont use prestashop.

I have a client using it and its super lag. Have opencart on the same server and did a comparison

Thanks, but let's not say they're cheap (or any hosting company is cheap), because when we compare apples to apples, server freak isn't really affordable.
If we really want to recommend a server host, we need to do a comparison table with these features
1) No. of cores
2) RAM
3) Bandwidth
4) managed/unmanaged

Also, whether Malaysian server companies can compare to US companies hosted in Singapore like Cloudways and the likes. Please only comment if you've tried these singapore based servers out, because from experience, they out-perform our local hosting companies. (I've been offered the role to head a prominent, local hosting company as well, which I had turned down, as I wanted to try running an ecommerce store instead)

I've started a thread on hosting companies here.
https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/3543517

p/s: That's why on Malaysian hosting companies will never be mentioned on international forums. They're too expensive due to the need for high profit margins.

This post has been edited by TechAddict2012: Apr 8 2015, 02:05 PM

Thanks, prestashop doesn't come with proper caching from the start. Have you tried the other solutions mentioned above?

Compare with US server and Singapore .. Malaysia Server more expensive. Choosing server must base client need. Geo location, customer support.

Load time is important here. Slow load time. same like u can lose your customer.

Magento using lot of server resource.. U need think that too.. Is your budget big.. u can spend to have US server or SG server.

But if u like to start your business with limited resource. better start small before go big..

opencart not bad

oscommerce a bit too old

but end of day, depends on what is your requirements

Actually, geo-location isn't so much of a big deal. Shopify is hosted in the US. Again, we need a detailed breakdown of server specs, instead of fan boys saying exabytes better or ipserverone better or shinjuru better.

I mean, we need to have proper metrics to compare them with brands like Cloudways and A Small Orange, among others.

i built several ecommerce website with prestashop and this is the latest one. http://pasolambak.com/

yes, magento is more powerfull but do you really want to sell 1000 type of product?

actually, am planning to sell 10-20k of products Noticed you built the site on Prestashop. Did you have to use a number of premium modules/extensions?

This post has been edited by TechAddict2012: Apr 10 2015, 03:41 PM

prestashop module expensive using euro.. haha

currently i only need to buy 1 themes(bundle with one blog module-free!). and no other paid modules. yes most of the developer are from euro.. so the price are quite high.. but i can live with stock and free modules.