Review of Joomla Shopping Carts (HikaShop, RedSHOP, Virtumart 2.0)
If you have never needed a Joomla! shopping cart, finding a good one your very first try can be difficult and waste a lot of time. Skip to the very end for the conclusion, if you’re not interested in the full details.
There are currently twenty-seven shopping carts listed in the Joomla! Extension Directory (JED). I am going to narrow the list down to based on a few criteria.
- Must be available for Joomla 1.7!
- Must show signs of continued support into Joomla 2.5
Must offer a Non-Commercial version— EDIT- Must offer a Non-Commercial version that is “Easy to locate and download”!
It will be a short list but that should be all we need. Not everything in the JED is actually a “cart” so of the seventeen that are available for Joomla! 1.7 only three are viable options.
I am going to spend a few hours looking at each component in depth and I’d like to see how each cart stacks up in a few areas.
- Installation Simplicity
- Coding Standards
- Ease of Navigation (Back-end)
- Basic Setup Time
-
Documentation
- Developer Support
HikaShop
HikaShop was first released October 6th, 2010 has over 4.5 stars and 82 reviews; of the reviews, almost all of them are extremely positive and the HikaShop publishers have been praised over and over for their excellent customer support for all versions of their software.
Installation Simplicity
Finding the software needed and the installation process were as easy as one would expect.
Coding Standards
Once the installation was complete I went right to the file system and database to take a look at HikaShop. I wanted to know how much time and care the developers put into this component. The standard Joomla! MVC architecture was adhered to and the code is clean and easy to follow. The PHP error log is also free from HikaShop errors.
Ease of Navigation
After opening the component I found a clean looking and extremely descriptive interface. The upper navigation menu is clean and will be easy to use once I learn a little more about the component. Adding a product is extremely simple. Everything you need it visible to you on the screen and there are no deep menus that you will have to dig through to set up your products.
Basic Setup Time
For the most part setup is simple. Total setup time was probably only 30 minutes, this was a huge plus. Most of the configuration options are self explanatory and easy to find. The only two things that must be configured are the customer payment methods and the shipping method. I had a little difficulty setting up the customer payment methods, but had the error message been a little more descriptive this would have taken three minutes instead of twenty to find and solve.
Documentation
Documentation is easily accessible on every page of the back-end. So as you setup and configure HikaShop it is easy to find the information you need.
Developer Support
If you can’t find what you are looking for you can always post your questions on the HikaShop Forums. Nicolas is an active developer of and has posted over 14,000 replies in the forums. Needless to say they are extremely active and client reviews are extremely positive.
Summary
HikaShop has been around a little over a year and is shaping up to be a high quality product. It seems to still have a small core of dedicated developers that are sticking to their mission by continuing to develop this “ingenious and user-friendly service”. Without going into too much detail, everything you would expect in a light shopping cart is available in this non-commercial version of HikaShop and if you need more functionality there are two additional versions available with additional features.
If you would like to see more, HikaShop has an excellent demo site that demonstrates the styling and UI flexability on the front end of Joomla! along with the available functionality to manage your products, categories, customers, sales zones, tax rules and so much more on the back end.
RedSHOP
RedSHOP was first released March 13th, 2010, has over 3.5 stars and 43 reviews; of the reviews, most seem to be pretty positive. There are a few really negative reviews with less than adequate responses from the developers.
Installation Simplicity
This shopping cart almost didn’t make it into my review. It was extremely, almost deceptively, difficult to find and download the free Joomla! 1.7 version. While trying to find the 1.7 version you are constantly told that registration is required and then funneled to a free/paid subscription page that doesn’t seem to have a free option.
After finally finding the correct download page you are still told you need to register but you will find the install package you need is listed under “documents” not “downloads”.
The installation was just as easy as any other component.
Coding Standards
Like HikaShop I went right to the code. The first thing I noticed was in administrator/redshop.php. There were two PHP “if” statements that combined had a total of 66 conditions. This is simply not good coding practice, it is bad for performance, hard to read and easy to break. After turning on Joomla! debugging I noticed that RedShop was running an extensive number of queries, well over 150 for every page load. The max seemed to be about 600, this is far above the 50-80 one would expect. This significantly hurts the performance for this shop and if you are a busy shop your you will need a hosting provider that can handle heavy CPU load.
Over all the file system layout is good and is adhering to Joomla! standards. There isn’t much in the way of comments, so if you are looking at modifying RedSHOP in any way, it is going to a bit of time to sort out what is going on. You will also notice your PHP error logs fill up with alot of un-necessary errors generated by redSHOP that can drown out real problems and slow down repairs.
Ease of Navigation (Back-end)
The back-end has a familiar Joomla! 1.7 feel using the same style buttons as Joomla! with their own mix of icons. For the most part the layout is simple and it is easy to find what you need. Though not all of the buttons do what you would expect and in some places buttons simply don’t work. Don’t let the side menu scare you, it is a little overwhelming trying to find what you need since there aren’t any good visual cues to separate the menus.
Adding basic options to a product is pretty simple. There are an abundance of options, not all of them are required and the average small to medium sized shop won’t need to use most of them.
Basic Setup Time
Set up is easy, RedShop comes with a setup wizard to get you started but it lacking any shipping set up. You will need to download and install “rs_shipping_shipper_1.1.4_1.7j.tar.gz” along with one of the payment plugins from their download page. Once they are installed and set up to meet your needs you should be able to process your first order.
Documentation
Documentation comes in the form of a downloadable PDF at first glance it is extensive and easy to follow. I needed to use it to configure a couple of things and it was right on step by step.
Developer Support
The forums are active and full of information. Requests for help get answered quickly and individual problems are addressed by the developers.
Summary
RedShop is a good option if you are looking to expand your existing online store. It took a long time to locate, download, install and configure the basics needed to purchase one example product. A small business that has a limited number of products probably isn’t going to want to use RedShop, it takes the time, man hours and resources of an established business to setup and run RedShop and all of it’s features.
Along with being more powerful than most small to medium shops need it has a few serious downsides. It appears as though they developed this without consideration for performance and good coding practice. They admitted to intentionally not adhering to web standards, which though not always easy to follow, do still play an important roll on the web. They don’t make it easy to find the free version and when a user requested a refund they did not issue a refund because it was GPL software. An acceptable policy but one that should be noted.
VirtueMart
VirtueMart was first released March 5, 2006, has over 4 stars and 276 reviews; of the reviews, most seem to be pretty positive. Most of the reviews from experienced VirtueMart users are very positive. It looks like newer users are having basic setup problems that seem to come from a lack of experience with VirtueMart.
Installation Simplicity
I had no problems finding what I needed to install VirtueMart. I was able to upload the file and load the component without any errors or problems.
Coding Standards
Over all the PHP looks good. It is clean, organized and commented well. There are large blocks of legacy code commented out and left without any comments or notes. Though this isn’t really a problem it probably should be cleared out in this version since it is marked as “stable.”
Ease of Navigation (Back-end)
Unlike the other shops VirtueMart keeps a consistant look no matter what you are trying to do. The menu is easy to use and has a good layout that makes navigation simple.
Basic Setup Time
Setup was fairly easy, everything you need is easy to find and error message were descriptive enough to find and fix any errors in just a few minutes. You will need to download, install and set up a shipping and payment module.
Documentation
There are two versions of documentation for VirtueMart. The user documentation is extremely extensive and can walk anyone through the setup process. There are full screen shots that are up to date and highlight the buttons and links necessary to use VirtueMart. The developer documentation is also extensive but to the point, most developers shouldn’t have any problems using it and the forums also offer developer support.
Developer Support
The forums again are extremely active. I wouldn’t expect support directly from a developer but the user base is large enough that you won’t have any problems finding someone to answer your questions.
Summary
One of the great things about VirtueMart is they choose to be GPL because that is what they believe in not because they have to, and you can count on updates to VirtueMart being free as long as it is around. VirtueMart really shows its age but the experience it has earned since it was first released in 2006 makes it a really solid cart with great options. VirtueMart stands out with it’s feature list, extend-ability, user generated support and longevity.
Conclusion
Like I said before, choosing a cart can really be a daunting task but you really need to decide what your long term goals are. Some carts are great at the basics and leave out all of the complex set up, while others will streamline the sales and delivery process, but take more time out of the box.
If you are a small shop just starting out and you want to hit the ground running without spending a lot of time setting up all the complex options of a full featured cart then HikaShop is perfect. It is the newest of the three components and therefore is still missing some common features. There is currently no way to track sales inventory or group shoppers, like you can in Virtuemart.
RedSHOP looks like it is trying to become as full featured as Virtuemart but with some of the simplicity of HikaShop. It seems to be happening at a cost though. The software is slow, buggy and lacks refinements that Virtuemart has. Maybe someday it will be a great cart but today isn’t that day.
If you are looking for a cart with unlimited possibilities, Virtuemart is a top of the line non-commercial shopping cart that is stacked full of features. It has, by far, the largest user base and almost 500 available extensions, that’s more than any other component made for Joomla!.
