By Klondike91 on
I'm looking for feedback on Drupal shopping cart modules to be used for a winery website to sell wine and wine club memberships. It appears that e-commerce and Ubercart are the most common modules. Are there other good options? Can anyone provide any feedback or recommendations for e-commerce or Ubercart?
Thanks.
Comments
More info might help
Can you be more specific as to what exactly are you are looking for with regard to a e-commerce module? What are you hoping to customize? etc. Might help you get a quick response on the forums.
There is a better third
There is a better third option IMHO --- zencart.com
--
http://eventzs.com
Zencart as a module or integrated with Drupal?
Do you know if there is integration for Drupal with Zencart?
Bob
Bob Snodgrass
net2Community, Inc
Yes -
The strict answer is 'Yes', but these other two have a lot going for them. You can check out http://drupal.org/project/zencart, though
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Definitely Ubercart! Have
Definitely Ubercart! Have you tried either? Give yourself 20 minutes to get each started up. You'll find you're done, or most of the way there with Ubercart. It integrates perfectly with Drupal (why even consider non-module Zencart?).
here is a comparision
http://alligatorsneeze.com/diving-drupal-e-commerce-ubercart-vs-e-commer...
With ubercart you have to be
With ubercart you have to be a drupal rocket scientist to set it up, I agree zencart is the best by far and most intuitive, ubercart requires too many modules and too much hassle.
This statement seems to run
This statement seems to run counter to almost all of the feedback we've received through the forums and external reviews... so I'm a little confused how you came to that conclusion. Not only that, we have detailed, step-by-step (with links to any required module pages and screenshots!) installation and configuration instructions in our user's guide. To top it off, if you don't have the time to follow the straightforward instructions, we'll install it for you.
I can't imagine an easier complex module system to setup and start using given all the documentation, tools, and community support for anyone who truly gets stumped. No rocket science necessary.
If you want to talk about hassle, just start customizing that osC/Zencart site. : )
----------------------
Drupal by Wombats | Current Drupal project: http://www.ubercart.org
Easier or Complex which is
Easier or Complex which is it, I prefer easy :)) all the documentation in the world doesn't make something any easier. Even the documentation I found a bit on the technical side and all the other modules that it uses made my head spin. It may be well documented but it took me a good while before I had anything close to looking like an online store.
Zencart is easy to theme once you know how and I learned it faster then uber so not sure. I'll keep playing uber to see if it gets any easier.
Perhaps the "problem" is
Perhaps the "problem" is that Ubercart makes no attempt to separate it from its core... Drupal. As such, Drupal itself takes a little getting used to, so it stands to reason that the modular nature of Ubercart will take a little getting used to as well.
If you really want to get up and running quick, you should check out the Uberinstaller I mentioned above. It will install "all the other modules" for you to your own host, eliminating the need for you to figure out which modules to enable when. If that won't do, the install docs explicitly state which modules you'll need and provide links to their download pages.
Basically, we're doing all we can to make "complex" easy while still providing the power that Drupal inherently provides and systems like Workflow extend. Personally, I'm stoked that so much of a store's order processing can be fully automated using existing or custom workflow configurations.
Ubercart may not be for the simplest cart ever produced, but I'm convinced it's worth the effort to use. : )
----------------------
Drupal by Wombats | Current Drupal project: http://www.ubercart.org
Poor documentation
I agree that ubercart is easy to use. But to customize it is a different story. I have read all the documentation which provided by the ubercart team. To be honest, it's too technical. It just contains explanations about the basic setup. But it doesn't contain any explanations about how to customize it (e.g. how to bypassing the "cart" section, so I can click "buy" and directly go to "checkout page" - This feature is listed as one of ubercart capabilities, but I could not find the documentation!)
It would be much helpful if the documentation has some samples or how to's. Anyway, you have done a great job. This is just a suggestion for you guys.
enzoch, some of what you may
enzoch, some of what you may be referring to is included in the Developer's Guide. Others have been explained through the forums as people with the issues ask about them. While I'm not sure that "poor documentation" should be used to describe a project's documentation that doesn't include how-tos on personal customizations, I do agree that we can do more to flesh out the documentation for new users. Some of that happens when people ask questions like yours. My recommendation would be to post a documentation request in the documentation forum.
----------------------
Drupal by Wombats | Current Drupal project: http://www.ubercart.org
Selling a File Download
I just want to sell a downloadable file. Which module should I use?
Here's what I'm looking for:
_ Anon visitors see a Buy Now button.
_ Click Buy Now and go directly to Paypal page to pay.
_ After payment, taken directly to a download page.
_ Also, a download link (or the actual file) is emailed to buyer.
_ No site login should be necessary.
Extras:
_ able to pick between sending download link or actual file in email
_ allow payment processors other than Paypal
I'd recommend Ubercart...
I'd recommend Ubercart... it's got all that and easy to set up (even I managed to do it)
ecommerce
I've tried both ubercart and ecommerce to achieve precisely what you just outlined...ecommerce cameout on tops on all levels, not just the functionality level, but, the flexibility and theming level as well.
I found it very difficult to change things around with ubercart and while changing stuff around in ecommerce isn't 'lego' easy it is significantly easier than uberacart and remarkably more flexible. The thing is, I see Ubercart
So my opinion is:
worth mentioning in a thread about an ubercart v ecommerce discussion is that both are extremely tricky to uninstall from a site. So if you are thinking about tryingout both ubercart & ecommerce to judge for yourself...Don't Don't Don't Don't be tempted to install it on a production site to 'suck it and see'. As I say, they are both extremely tricky to uninstall, so copy across your site theme to a test site and install them there.
Both do Both?
Sophia, Phil,
Both eCommerce and Ubercart will do all five things? What about the 2 extras?
thank you
ecommerce
notes:
_ able to pick between sending download link or actual file in email
ecommerce delivers the file via a download link. An anon visitor doesn't need to register and login to buy a file download..you can specify "anon purchases" and when the transaction is complete, it automatically logs in the user to display their "my files" download link. There's no option to send the file by email although there is an email sent to the customer with their login and download link should a problem happen as they are downloading.
That's very important when selling file downloads. A lot of people use wireless internet connections and for large downloads, problems can arise when their connection cuts out as they are downloading. So, I like the way the ecommerce module offers the download link by authenticating and automatically setting up a customer_account. It means if their connection does cut out, they can go back later and get it.
At the same time the ecommerce module completes the order in one smooth visiit...i.e. a customer doens't have to go through the motions of registering their details, leave the site to check their email, loggin in etc.
_ allow payment processors other than Paypal
both ecommerce and ubercat allows you to offer many different payment types, although the way ecommerce is designed means that it;'s relatively easy to setup your own payment add-on and as a result there are more payment options availaible with ecommerce at the moment.
Another module well worth checking out..particularly for selling file downloads is the Quickfile module for Drupal. I notice the developer has just updated it for Drupal 5.x.
Quickfile
thanks Phil,
I thought the Quickfile module was a great candidate, but the 2006 date stamp scared me away. As you point out, there is a Feb 2008 update on the revisions page by the famous SEPECK. I wonder if it's going to be updated for Drupal 6 .....
thanks
Ubercart Rules
I've tried several e-commerce solutions in the past like OsCommerce, ZenCart, and Cartweaver. I believe that Ubercart is the best solution, and I started to use it for the last couple of months. If you are a Drupal developer, it's very easy to explore the power of Ubercart. You don't have to learn theming from the start, it's Drupal theming. You can connect your e-commerce application with your Drupal site and offer to your customers extended capabilities. And, with Drupal 6 things are going to be a lot easier.
for something simple?
What about for something really simple? like payment upon user-registration, or node creation... or should I use a module other than these two?
Web development & design podcast
It depends on what payment
It depends on what payment system you want to use. If you just want PayPal, some folks in our forums have found the lm_paypal module to be a good solution. Ubercart can do these things, but particularly the node creation one would take some custom code.
----------------------
Drupal by Wombats | Current Drupal project: http://www.ubercart.org
Wow did this go astray fast.
Hey guys, I am looking for an aswer or intellegent discussion about ubercart vs e-commerce module. And, I suppose, along with anyone else in my shoes who has committed to Drupal. I am NOT looking for off topic discussion or rebuttle for NON-Drupal solution. There is nothing more fustrating than spending hours searching for info to be led into wasting, (off origional topic) treads that lead nowhere.
I've said my peice. Now, as to the shopping cart modules designed for Drupal, does anyone have an intellegent argument for one over the other. Ubercart VS e-commerce? In my case the points are for membership payment including renewal payments and customer account creation, as the product is a site membership.
Thank you.
I've set up two sites with
I've set up two sites with e-commerce and I'm currently working on one using ubercart. Ubercart seems much nicer. E-commerce still has many serious flaws that the developers won't even bother addressing in the current version, instead saying that it'll be fixed in the next version; however, the next version has been in beta for a very long time and I won't use it after all the problems I've had with the current 'final' version.
So far I've only had one problem that I haven't overcome with ubercart yet and hopefully I'll lick that one today.
Thanks,
David
http://www.floridapets.org
misconception..
HI David,
I think you're being very unfair to the ecommerce developers.
The current situation with ecommerce isn't a straightforward upgrade..it's almost a complete re-write of the entire suite of modules. As an example, the difference between version 3 and the version 4-dev is a few hundred kilobytes in size. (the v3 download is about 1.4MB and the version 4-dev download is about 400Kb).
The lack of obvious updates is because they are focussing as much time and energy on version 4. Ecommerce is a huge web application. Not the sort of thing you can just patch a few lines here and there.
I've tried both ubercart and ecommerce and I always find myself going back to ecommerce because of it's more flexible than ubercart and when you're working towards a client spec. it's much more intuitive to modify things.
I recommend you download and install the latest version 4-dev ecommerce and have a look at the new features and how streamlined everything is. It's a development version so install it on a test site.
Strong Points for particular use...
I thinks both systems have their strong points. The comparison chart that sherifmayika Referenced above makes good starting points. Based on this chart I chose e-commerce to setup a site where the only product is site membership. This portion of The Drupal Install is still very new to me so, if some one has experience with a successful install please give input as to which shopping cart would be better.
can either of them.....
I want to set up a market type site where multiple users can all sell their particular wares. Can either module be configured so that funds coming in can go to different accounts according to user or product or taxonomy or whatever?
Thats a good question. I
Thats a good question. I have not tried anything like that yet, however I remember some comments on the ubercart forum. If no one responds here you might try there.
Anything is possiable!
I currently have multiple sites running a drupal website with a zencart store, I've merely automated some features so users don't have to login twice and placed add to cart form buttons to drupal pages where needed.
My main reason being zencart is the best free cart system out there. And as a drupal developer I found the e-Commerce modules very unprofessional, not anywhere near real world production ready reliability and further more the onset intent was a turn key shopping system, they so far have failed. But with zencart I'm able to integrate a store front with drupal CMS mastery in one great package! e-commerce seems more confusing than it needs to be and maybe it needs a once over by some real retail experts and less by coders! I'd hate to see all of the work go all for not or smiply turn to various paid versions on the internet. Come on people - it sucks for a reason!
One other note - with the use of template design, you never now when your on the drupal site or the zencart store section, ha! I love it!
Ubercart and Signup module
Hi,
has anyone had any practice with ubercart and the signup module?
I want to have people signup with a yes, no, or maybe (signup just does a yes)
I want to be able to integrate payment if someone says yes.
I want to do this for events.
but I can see down the rode wanting to use it to have people buy memberships, download content, or other features.
Any thoughts you have would be very helpful.
Thanks,
Chris
http://SocialNicheGuru.com
Delivering inSITE(TM), we empower you to deliver the right product and the right message to the right NICHE at the right time across all product, marketing, and sales channels.
Using ecommerce or ubercart to replace signup module?
Hi,
has anyone ever tried to use ecommerce or ubercart to replace the signup module?
For example, for events I would like to have three options: Pay, Maybe(Put me on the list and notify me later), No, and Waitlist me.
For a free event, this is trivial. I set the price to $0. I click on which ever one I want and that state is incremented.
For a paid event, this is where it becomes interesting.
Can I have one click checkout?
Is there a customer page to show past purchases?
Does ecommerce or ubercart fully integrate with views? If so my second question is moot.
Is workflow-ng integrated into ecommerce and ubercart?
How about location?
I can have every node on my site be a product of sorts that people can signup for as far as access.
Thanks,
Chris
http://SocialNicheGuru.com
Delivering inSITE(TM), we empower you to deliver the right product and the right message to the right NICHE at the right time across all product, marketing, and sales channels.
Never, never, never, never,
Never, never, never, never, use E-Commerce! I've wasted many hours on it.
And what about Ubercart ? Comparison: Ubercart E-Commerce
And what about Ubercart ? Comparison: Ubercart E-Commerce
Hi,
And have you tried Ubercart ?
Incredible that a special theme for Ubercart is not provided ! Do they give one with E-Commerce ?
I still don't know which module to use, and can't find any good comparison online, please help !
Thanks.
ecommerce V ubercart
A simple rule of thumb might be:
Choose ubercart if you're new to Drupal and if you're happy with the way it works out-of-the-box.
Choose ecommerce if you're very familiar with Drupal or if you need to make changes to the default.
Ubercart was a fork of drupal eCommerce, so they are very similar feature wise, but, ubercart is more of a turn-key solution than drupal ecommerce...i.e. you can get up and running very quickly with ubercart.
Drupal eCommerce is designed more like an API..which plugs into Drupal core a lot, so you don't need as many modules to do the same thing....Ubercart is catching up, but, is still pretty much designed like the old eCommerce package, albeit with comparable features.
Drupal eCommerce was around long before Ubercart and it is more for seasoned developers who just want the bare bones and want to have full control over the shopping solution rather than install modules and just go. I.e you're building it for yourself, not a client who wants specific features or a specific UI.
I've tried both...and I have found Ubercart to be extremely code-heavy (there's a lot of modules required. A lot.) and extremely difficult to customise. Drupal eCommerce, on the other hand, is much slicker and "lighter" code-wise but you do need to be very familiar with Drupal to make the most out of it.
Maybe it would be best if
Maybe it would be best if these two join to make one solution and then we can stop the endless search for the answer
Both are fine modules, definitely capable
and can do the job. Ubercart is more modular which also means module dependent. And they seemed more active. e-commerce seems simpler and easy to setup which also means loose integration.
If you don't mind lots of modules and/or need fine controls and/or extend using additional modules- you need Ubercart. It seems more powerful (needs additional configuration). If your shop requirements are simpler- go with e-commerce. You can sell- either ways.
Just to add to that...
Good comment. Just to add to that..there are two underlying design philosophies at work, which are worth mentioning..and they are:
Ubercart was a fork of an old Drupal ecommerce version and is designed more to be a turn-key solution than Drupal eCommerce which has undergone a complete re-write recently and is designed more as an eCommerce API for Drupal. In other words, if you're not fussy about downloading and installing a lot (I mean a lot) of modules and you're happy with the out-of-the-box experience, go with ubercart. If you're a more advanced developer who is code-aware and need to create a shop that matches a specific design...definitely go for Drupal ecommerce.
The key design difference is with ubercart you have to download a huge amount of modules...but Drupal eCommerce acts more like an eCommerce API for Drupal and plugs into (mostly) existing core modules. So it's much slicker and more efficient code wise. The down side is that you need to be VERY familiar with Drupal to get the most out of Drupal eCommerce.
Also..because Ubercart forked the Drupal eCommerce community a few years ago, there have been less newbies picking up Drupal eCommerce....so, while it appears less popular in the usage stakes...t's got a very solid, very experienced user base. Gordon the lead developer for Drupal eCommerce is a bit of a Drupal legend at this stage with all that he has contributed over the years and is without doubt one of Drupals MVPs.
Excellent breakdown -frame it
@Phillip Mc, thank you for the perfectly worded explanation. Now this is not so much of a mystery.
I really was torn between the two. Knowing that both are good solutions and both have been in active development didn't help to answer the question. I loaded them up in a test site, but still had the nagging question, which one should I lean towards. Knowing that Gordon has worked for years to get to this point has been important to me in the consideration as well.
I am just about ready to create my first Drupal shopping cart site.
Thanks again
@dbeall - it's perfectly
@dbeall - it's perfectly worded except for all the misinformation. I wasn't going to comment on Phillip Mc's latest posts in here because I didn't think anyone was still reading this thread, but for what it's worth, Ubercart is not a fork of e-Commerce (i.e. it's an entirely different code base) but was in fact produced to be a turn key solution as Phillip points out. (The questions of the project origins have been clariefied with explicit proof elsewhere, but Phillip Mc continues to say the same thing over and over hoping it sticks. He just has a bone to pick with it.) However, still being a Drupal module, it is customizable and extensible, as evidenced by every major site that's rolled out Ubercart.
Finally, the only dependency Ubercart has is on Token, which has actually been rolled into Drupal 7. In other words, there aren't all kinds of modules you have to download and configure to use Ubercart. If you want an even easier install process, you can use the UberDrupal installation profile. Ubercart will automatically configure image support if you'd like as well using the major contributed modules designed for image support. These are all quite standard, even to the point that Acquia Drupal supports every single one of them.
When evaluating a solution, you should go for the tool that fits and the tool that works. Check out the sites people are producing, ask around for what they're using for e-commerce and why. Usage statistics and issue trackers are another good place to evaluate a project.
Finally, we'll be putting out an Ubercart 2.0 today that I'd encourage you to at least evaluate on a test site. If you have any other questions, hop on IRC in #drupal-ubercart and folks should be around to assist.
!!!
How can you possibly say that????!!!! UBERCART is CLEARLY a FORK of Drupal eCOMMERCE. Just because the people behind ubercart didn't copy all of the ecommerce code, doesn't mean it wasn't forked!
The Drupal eCommerce community was forked....which meant energy and effort was forked, testing and bug fixing was forked. The clue is in the name "forked".
What is very frustrating for drupal users is, to paraphrase beeradb, there are a lot of areas where Ubercart and E-Commerce obviously overlap, interfacing with the exact same external systems, which require the same API calls, there's no reason not to combine efforts to make those APIs/services more usable for drupal.
What's even more frustrating is why the ubercart team haven't responded to the drupal community and gordon the lead developer of ecommerce to support a single ecommerce payment gateway api so we don't have the ridiculous situation where drupal needs 2 payment gateway modules for paypal...or google checkout.
why is that, I wonder?
Not this again...
All anyone takes exception with is your misuse of the term fork to downplay of one over the other. Other than that nobody disagrees that there are duplicate implementations of e-commerce solutions.
Give it a rest already and accept terminology agreed upon by the rest of the world.
_
Not this again indeed-- there's plenty to read on this subject already. Thread locked. Find someplace else to troll your fud.
_
Another thing you'll want to consider when choosing any drupal contributed module is the usage statistics. I learned the hard way-- after choosing some low usage modules on d5 only to have them completely abandoned for d6 (which ended up causing an extensive delay to the d6 upgrade as well as lots of additional work to migrate to better modules).
Yes, the stats are only a guide-- it's not a hard and fast metric-- but you can bet that a module with 50k users is not likely to bite the dust as easily as a module with <1k users. It also means that there's a larger pool of users from which you can receive help when posting issues.
Thanks to all for the info
I am sorry if I played a part in waking up this thread. I will try both projects and evaluate them on a test site to which one I might use..