Miva vs. osCommerce

[intheholegolf]

I am looking at a new project. I've worked with MM4 for a number of years and I certainly know it pros and cons. Can anyone give me any feedback on Miva vs. osCommerce or any other carts. This will be a sporting goods store, probably 2000+ products with quite a bite of custimization.
Any reccomendations would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Michael
InTheHoleGolf.com

[d_host]

Re: Miva vs. osCommerce

This is a pretty pointless debate... here's a hint: Call osCommerce for support and see how many years it takes to get an answer. You want a real e-commerce platform - choose it from a company that backs its product and supports it - internally, or through a network of partners that support it. osCommerce has a "reasonably good" support via free forums and newsgroups, but when you really need a major bug fixed, you can't depend on anyone to fix it for you in a reasonable amount of time. Heck, the last update to osCommerce was released about a month ago, and that was the first update since... 2002? The world of e-commerce moves much faster than this. I'd recommend osCommerce for small scale operations that still handle most of their back-end and fulfillment manually, but if you want something that has more up-to-date support options, go with Miva Merchant.

[Brandon MUS]

Re: Miva vs. osCommerce

This is a pretty pointless debate... here's a hint: Call osCommerce for support and see how many years it takes to get an answer. You want a real e-commerce platform - choose it from a company that backs its product and supports it - internally, or through a network of partners that support it. osCommerce has a "reasonably good" support via free forums and newsgroups, but when you really need a major bug fixed, you can't depend on anyone to fix it for you in a reasonable amount of time. Heck, the last update to osCommerce was released about a month ago, and that was the first update since... 2002? The world of e-commerce moves much faster than this. I'd recommend osCommerce for small scale operations that still handle most of their back-end and fulfillment manually, but if you want something that has more up-to-date support options, go with Miva Merchant.

Is Miva any better? We have very SIMPLE bug fixes that haven't been fixed. Luckily for us (hopefully) we have new owners that seem interested in bring Miva support back to where it was a couple years ago. If they are successful, Miva will be a better option than osCommerce.
However, osCommerce isn't dead either, they have been actively working on a complete re-write that has potential...

[d_host]

Re: Miva vs. osCommerce

Not saying it's dead, just that it hasn't had a major update since 2002... and there is no "official" support available from them. You can't simply pick up a phone and contact the developers or the company behind it to report a serious bug or security issue - it's all still run very much in the spirit of community support and updates are done by what seems like volunteers that work only when it suits them.

Miva has slipped over the past couple of years, but now under the new management I am expecting things to change quite a bit. Heck, if you check some of the posts made here by Miva staff, they've even mentioned that they DID implement a lot of fixes for the small bugs that people have reported - they were just never "allowed" to release them. Talk about politics... Now that chapter of Miva history is closed so I'd expect to see all these bug fixes making it to official releases very very soon.

The big difference between osCommerce and Miva is that you can call Miva and talk to someone responsible for it, or if you host through a Miva Partner, we can open support tickets on your behalf at no charge (direct support has various fees associated with it). Either way, you can usually get prompt response - not something you can say about osCommerce.

[Brandon MUS]

Re: Miva vs. osCommerce

There are positives and negatives about open source, and that discussion is really off topic from this thread. osCommerce is both widely used and widely criticized...

I have high expectations for the new Miva staff, and I can't wait for them to start implementing the bug fixes that have supposedly been collecting dust for the past couple months