Pros
Has almost all the basics built in and is easily to customize.
Cons
Bulky, and some features are just plain built wrong like the search function.
Summary
Over all, It's good, if old. I used v5 I believe, but spent most of a year building it out and adjusting it to do business with both customers and GSA and integrate it with the accounting software. I had over 70k products running in it using SQL Server for the database and with full text searching enabled to fix the search functionality and processing $300k in sales per month. I say had because I don't work there anymore.
All I can say is I just made a sale to build another e-commerce site using that same code base for another company with a GSA contract, and that is good enough for me!
Pros
Its open source, so you can see every line, it is well organized, each script has a purpose and it is easy to identify functions and change things. The layout is fully customizable, we have changed 2 files and the entire store identity changes.
Cons
Only a few good templates are offered online by Comersus but you can still integrate any custom template.
Summary
My opinion is very different than others but the thing is that I started with Version 7 (and right now, there is a version 8) For my wristwatches business, Comersus Cart has been a great, reliable and customizable tool.
Pros
Good for those with little to no programming knowledge.
Good support forum (not sure where this came as a con for some, maybe user error?)
Ummmmm....IT'S FREE?!?!?!
Cons
If you want to use it as an actual commerce site, I don't know that I'd trust it if you have no programming knowledge.
Summary
I am the marketing coordinator for a company. Our budget for out of pocket web development costs? Nothing. So I needed to find something that was easy to update (we use excel, so updating the Access database is quick for us), required little to no programming knowledge on my part and could be customized.
Google and the support forum were my best friend. Emails were always responded to with in 24 hrs (remember this is free, if you expect immediate responses you should pay for it) I do know html and css, but no ASP/PHP/SQL. I wanted something that I could edit out the pricing and shopping cart functions - we sell anywhere from $250 to $25million dollar pieces of equipment and don't want to sell it online. BUT we do want people to be able to see what we have and call the appropriate sales rep. Through Google and the tech forum we were able to get EXACTLY what we wanted at no cost (other than time) and have increased our web usage, sales inquiries and quotes dramatically.
In the future we may invest in something if we see a good ROI, but this is a great way to dip a foot in without getting taken to the cleaners on a custom program.
Pros
good documentation and nice features
Cons
This software has way too many bugs. I am a software developer. I paid for the software but have to spend last few days fixing the bugs. Some bugs are small so I fixed them myself. I did not bother to reports them unless I got the software for free.
Summary
I wonder if the company ever test the software before release it. Those bugs will be easily caught if someone QA the software or do code review. So pay for your support if you are not a developer!
Pros
I'm an ASP programmer and didn't want to re-invent the wheel so I downloaded a few asp carts and this one was very easy to install and very easy to set up and begin adding products, reviews and everything else. Comersus is Painless, Customizable, Stable, Very user friendly, Easy to modify and they have a very good forum support. They also have certain features that I didn't see in other carts like WAP store for cell phones and Balancing between servers for high traffic stores. Kudos for Comersus!
Cons
Haven't found any. More documentation would be nice.
Cons
It does not work out of the box- you have to chnge permissions- which on home edition XP is impossible- there is NO support and the forum- that is the worst joke.
Cons
The fact that I even registered to make a comment about this "product" should say enough. Yes, this cart is free (for the basic version) but if you are expecting any help in setting up your store you are wildly mistaken. The manual is a 112 page joke and the support forum is absolutely useless. I'm not a professional programmer but I'm not stupid either and the best I've managed to get out of it is an error about shipping costs that wont go away even if I follow the "instructions". Save yourself the time and leave this one alone. I only gave it one star because I had to in order to write this review!
Read replies (2)
Reply by gentlebrezze on August 8, 2006
We actually purchase the upgraded version 18 months go and have experienced nothing but problems with it. No user support, unstable program and a total waste of the monies and time invested.
Reply by rmccarrell on May 5, 2005
Hi,
I am looking for a program, or a shopping cart that is user friendly. I read your review about Comersus ASP Shopping Cart Open Source 4.23 What did you end up using? Did you find a shopping cart that was user friendly and presentable? Your assistance would be grateful.
Ronnie M.
Summary
I nearly sunk my business by moving from actinic to comersus. If you are serious about selling online don't even consider it. It's full of bugs which go unfixed. Forum is total garbage "that is very strange". We had major problems with cookies and server hungry session variables dropping customer orders at random. Basically this is a poor open source cart which you pay a premium on to get required features but without the support you would expect at the price. Go with something tried and tested such as cactushop !
Summary
I purchased this product based on the features and other reviews I had read. I needed to get an e-commerce site up and running very quickly and it got the initial job done.
If I had to do it all over again I would spend more time reviewing the coding practices used to develop the software. Nothing is consistent. Way to many Include files, very poor spacing, and comments are cryptic and sporadic.
As someone who as 6 years of ASP development under his belt I would not recommend this to a seasoned or novice developer who has any sort of modifications in mind.
Search engine optimization is non existent. Features which claim to work out of the box such as froogle submission, catalog output, etc simply donÂ’t and require programming that is made much more difficult by the hard to follow code.
Summary
I do not understand the negative comments. The Free Product works right out of the box. If you have trouble setting up your database or anything thing else a user's forum is available with answers.
With a little studying you can easily customize this cart. Oh, and for atsmith7, the credit card stuff works if you understand how the cart works. The free version allows you to capture credit card info for off-line processing, but you have to tell it to.
Complainers, what do you want for free? This is the best out there, and the cost of their full version is relatively cheap. Play with the code and you have a great solution.
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