Yet Another Zen vs. CubeCart thread

[Guest]

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for treading on oft discussed ground here, but I was hoping to get some honest thoughts from everyone.

I learned about CubeCart, interestingly enough, from a thread over at OSC. From what I have seen so far, CubeCart is following a model that I can appreciate and respond to. Both OSC, and Zen seem to be built on ever increasingly bloated code that mixes presentation and logic within the same base. Cube, on the other hand, seems efficient and clean.

With that being said, I'm having difficulty understanding the purely functional differences between Zen Cart and Cube. Sure, Zen on paper has more functionality and features than Cube. But I found when I setup a sample Zen store, I was disabling more functions and elements then I was actually enabling. With Cube, it was basically a wysiwyg affair.

This is what I'm looking to do. How would this fit within a Cube format?

1. UK-based business. Hoping to either ship domestically with ParcelForce (Royal Mail), or across Europe with someone like DHL or UPS.

2. Mainly looking at drop shipping for the time being, which means product A and product B, will more than likely come from seperate places.

3. Because I travel a lot in my work, I need something that can (within reason) be automated (ie order processing and tracking)

4. Have a cart that is straightforward to skin.

5. As product line expands, would like the capability to offer related products in the future.

6. Use a cart that has a good, vibrant community.

Me personally, I'm already leaning heavily towards CubeCart. Why? As a fellow gear head I love clean, efficient code. Looking at Zen, they too are moving to a more CSS oriented layout, hey they even have a template that is CSS driven. The fact that it took over a year to produce that one template scares me. How can I skin something so complex??

There are simply more mods and comtributions to Zen. Granted, judging from the forums, not all of them work, and there is clearly a lot of people begging for help and not getting it. I guess there is always a natural fear in going for something that does not have as many bells and whistles as another. But again, is there really anything the Zen offers that I need?

Lastly, I don't mind paying for software, especially if that helps keep the community and the effort going. What I do mind is not seeing where the project is going, and not having a chance to help shape that. Ergo, a published Roadmap or at least wishlist would be very comforting to see.

Hope this all made sense. By the way, OSC never made it into my equation for a variety of reasons. One thread in particular in their forums helped me discover CubeCart. The post of this thread wanted to do a comparison against various carts. A moderator reminded the poster, that despite being an Open Source project, that it was forbidden to discuss competitors in the forums. What a joke!

Peace,

Geoffrey

[Guest vrakas]

Hi Geoffrey and welcome

I would suggest if you have the time and space to install and try CC3 just to get a first hand experience.

Your post indicates that you know very well what you are looking for and this is good.

I have tested the above mentioned carting systems but ended up here.

Why?

As you very well explained the one is standard and not much you can do about the skining and the other has so many "useless" things in it that you spend, (i dont know how many working hours) just to get rid of the things you dont need and then try to get started.

My strong beleive is that this forum has and will help out people at any time to solve any problems or questions they might have. This does not occur in other carting systems.

This my personal opinion

PS: thats a bad mooded guy lol :D