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Jeff75 · Oct 9, 2003, 09:48 AM

Anyone had any experiences with eShox e-commerce software? My wife has a good business idea and needs me to handle the computer administrative side of it. I'm not a trained computer science engineer (I'm a different type of engineer) I am really just an "enthusiast" when it comes to computers but I built sites using GoLive and the whole Adobe Illustrator / Photoshop / ImageReady suite.

Is eShox the way to go? I'm impressed with the company's completely OSX native structure, right down to using XServers if you host with them. What else is better?

cnelson87 · Oct 9, 2003, 03:06 PM

I am interested in eShox as well, or any similar eCommerce solutions.

Target Practice · 08:38 PM

Is eShox the way to go? I'm impressed with the company's completely OSX native structure, right down to using XServers if you host with them. What else is better? [/B]

eShox is based upon the open-source osCommerce project. osCommerce is free with a large support community. I presume the cost of eShox would guarantee you a level of technical support that doesn't come with free open-source software.

I looked carefully at both, but decided to go with osCommerce and learn PHP along the way. I'm pretty happy with the results despite the learning curve. Some ISPs specialize in osCommerce hosting and offer free decked-out builds of the stock osCommerce package with more features than eShox.

Definitely check out osCommerce and experiment if you aren't on a deadline to launch a site.

Jeff75 · Oct 10, 2003, 09:00 PM

I was aware of its open source roots. Still curious to hear some real-world experiences with the software. I went to Versiontracker and it seems very popular, but I wonder how many of the reports were put there by members of the company.

Target Practice · Oct 10, 2003, 11:10 PM

The osCommerce project is amazing, and so are its derivatives. Go for it. The only issue with choosing eShox over osCommerce is that you are commiting to a branch of code only supported by secure.cc

That's not a bad thing, but just realize that you are choosing to pay $300 for a less open version of a free open-source package.

Experience with osCommerce is roughly equivilant to experience with eShox. Sorry I didn't offer what you wanted to hear.

foamy · Oct 10, 2003, 11:30 PM

I tried it and ended up not using it after running into the same problem I have encountered with all the "prepackaged" eCommerce solutions I have tried.

The problem I always encounter is integrating one of these solutions with an existing site. That is, the shopping cart is only a small part of our site, yet in order to use a package like eShox, I'd basically have to redo our entire site within eShox. Since I have a ton of time invested in our existing PHP driven site, redoing it from scratch just hasn't been worth it.

eShox was easy to setup and I would recommend it if you are starting a new site from scratch, but weaving it and an existing site together is a royal PITA. It is too complex for a novice PHP person like myself to dive into the code and tweak it to my liking. For example, I got our site limping along with it, then the owner of the company asked me to run a "coupon" campaign. That is, customer enters a coupon code during checkout and gets a discount. That is when I decided to ditch eShox. AFAICT there is not a "coupon" function to the cart and when I tried to hack one into the code, I quickly got lost and frustrated due to the complex nature of eShox. That said, it does what it does well, just don't count on customizing it too much unless you really know your PHP.

Oh yeah. If you already have PHP and mysql running on your machine, eShox can cause some problems. It is a little liberal with the modifications it makes to your system. After installing it, my existing site didn't work at all. I finally figured out that they replaced my httpd.conf with their version as well as modified mysql. My httpd.conf was edited to work with a number of sites I work on--using virtual hosts to test and deploy--so after installing it, everything was hosed. Luckily I had a backup and was back in business pretty quickly.

I don't want this "review" to sound too negative, as the software worked as advertised and was easy to use...just hard to tweak.

Jeff75 · Oct 11, 2003, 07:50 PM

That's really useful information. Thanks.

I just wish they would pick up the phone so I could talk to a sales person and get a few basic questions answered. All day Friday all I could get was the answering system.