| Magento Sucks! |
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Page 2 of 3 Simply one of the worst e-commerce platforms on the market today!...but disguised as one of the best. In this article we'll dive into the platform and really explain why we feel its not worth your time at all! I'll keep this article short and sweet. People are going to disagree, but only because they haven't really done their research. I don't think anyone who has truly spent a good amount of time working on the Magento platform will disagree with me. We may have different opinions, but the facts are the same. This e-commerce platform sucks out loud and I'm done with it. Along with that, it is my opinion that you should not waste your time with it. It is a trap that was built to pull you into needing support and paying the developers for to come to your rescue. There is no other reason to build a system that is so complex and fails to work 80-90% of the time from installs to upgrades. Trust me, I'm just like you. When I saw Magento for the first time I was REALLY excited. E-commerce is what I do. Its what pays the bills for me, and aside from that its my passion, I love working in this industry. I've worked with pretty much every shopping cart on the market from APS.net to PHP, I've tried them all and Magento looks better than any of them from the outside. But wow, does the old saying "can't judge a book by its cover" hold true here! As I mentioned before, I'm not going to drag this out into a huge review, that will come later, right now I'm just trying to save you some time and frustration. Though this may seem like the dream product it really is just the biggest headache you've ever had waiting to happen. Do not use this software if you need a website to be stable. DO NOT use this shopping cart if you want features and fucntionality that are production ready, DO NOT use this software if you ever plan to upgrade the system. I'm not just trying to be mean, take a look at the forums on the Magento website, they are litterally filled with people who are at a deadlock and can't get their store's up and running due to an upgrade or bug or any other reason.You'll also want to note that there is NO ONE from the Magento team there to offer help to the new comers. this is beacause the Magento team charges for support. That is their only business model to be exact. This means Varien (the makers of the software) only get paid when people need help. I'm not suprised that the system is so complex now....it makes perfect sense. Make product that is beautiful from the outside, but make it so complex that people are going to HAVE to have support in order to get things working enough to support a production e-commerce enviroment. -------Updated---------- I posted the article above a long time ago. I had just lost pretty much entire 2 weeks worth of work because I tried upgrading my version of magento to the latest stable release. Needless to say....I was bitter and just plain pisses off. So how have things changed now? I've had the time to rebuild everything I lost durring that first upgrade, and I've pushed the system onto a production website! It wasn't easy. I had to make tons of little fixes along the way. The permission issues with the file system is unacceptable, but since it exists in every update I assume the Magento team is ok with it or they would have fixed the issue by now. So now All the little fixes aside, like I said I pushed the site built on Magento into production.....and then another upgrade came down the line. At first I said to myself "No way, just keep using what your on. Don't risk it man...don't risk it". Well all the bugfixes and improved functionality got the best of me. I used SimpleScripts to upgrade my version (I us SS because I was told by the Magento team that most upgrade issues are caused by the users...way to blame the problems on everyelse guys). Plus Simple Scripts not only upgrades the software, but automatically makes a backup of the current version first in case of issues....this is Magento...there will of course be issues. So after I get the "Upgrade Complete" message from Simple Scripts I blast over to my site to see the new version running live (The site, although live wasn't being advertised at the time). So what do I see when I bring up the upgraded site? Of course I see errors! I really can't believe I expected to see anything else. I look into the issue, can't really find a problem, so I hit the Magneto forums.....but as I mentioned before, the forums are just for the community, you can expect no assistance from the team on any issues. Man are there issues, there are at least a have dozen threads, each with tons of replies complaining about how the upgrade broke their sites. Pretty much everyone is having similar issues. The entire site is either down, or the administration section of magento isn't in a usable state. You would think that with this sort of public outcry the develpment team would step in and make everything right with a quick fix right? Not going to happen. The Magento team rarely posts anything on the support section of the forums. The only realy help to be found is what the other users have been able to hack together and get working. In my opinion this is a direct reflection of the fact that Varien charges for support. This is why they are slow to fix problems, this is why the system is so complex. They want to make you feel like you need help. I'd love to say things turned out well for me and my Magento install, but truth be told I ened up trashing it and going with a different platform. A year ago I had an unlimited amount of hope for this product. But today I can say that I know what failure looks like, for I have used Magento.  Quote this article on your site
31. 06-10-2009 17:29 http://drytac.com The hardest project i have ever had the displeasure of starting. a nightmare from the start, i was always consoling myself that magento was at least take care of the order fulfilment side of things. I'm now going back around adding hacks in here and there. Like many others here, my client had better not upgrade!! I have warned many people away from magento. over engineered. i keep finding little functions like: function isValid(){ return true; } nice one guys. 32. 01-11-2009 00:28 wow.. it really isn't that complex. You're "review" had me laughing for quite a while. I always think it's funny how retards blame the software (thats working for 100s of 1000s of other people btw) for their own stupidity... If you're not competent to run first class cutting edge cart software, stick to cookie cutter 90s ecom software. 33. 08-11-2009 08:33 function isValid(){ return true; } Clearly the mark of OOP obsfucation... Now imagine how easy it must be to audit it for security problems... This post has convinced me that this product should never be recommended to anyone who is interested in free software... I will be surprised if this doesn't turn out to change consumer opinion on the web regarding safe and reliable e-commerce... Way to go Magento... No doubt this open source philosophy will be the downfall to many a small business trying to earn trust from it's customers... 34. 02-12-2009 14:26 Have you guys also noticed, all those who are pleased with this software are companies with some sort of partnership, either business partner, or enterprise partnership, and all those who just wants to use the free solution with no support at all, think it sucks, sums up a nice business model for the magento team i guess, and i guess it only shows, you aint suppose to use magento unless you are willing to pay for their support, or if your able to actual code a similar ecommerce with the same complexity tho just dont have the time ... 35. 02-12-2009 21:26 Magento is more disappointing than Rocky 5. It is JUST as bad, albeit in different ways, as osC and its children. Anyone that says 'lol ur just 2 dum 2 use it' is either fine with the default everything, or part of a clever astroturfing campaign. 36. 05-12-2009 08:58 The install for magento was as easy as could be. But Magento was difficult to setup the way I liked and it took me about 7 installs because I messed things up trying to see what I could do with it (Settings). I do agree that it needs a few safety blocks put in place to make sure you understand when you change settings the possible consequences. I have done two upgrades and have had NOT ONE problem. Once you get your head around the system its not that hard. I have purchased a few modules instead of getting them for free but overall it cost me about $500 in modules and its worth every penny. I really enjoy the system now and see no reason to change. I also do not see ANY shopping cart system that comes even close to this. 37. 11-12-2009 09:02 Hi there, Thanks for sharing. It looks a bit like a rent goin on here, but while reading it occurs to me as pure and real frustration. I am a 100% Drupal/Ubercart developer and this is close to the holy grail, but this too has borders, limits and can cost you many hours. But, when hours are spend, things are fixed. This is because support is good, code fairly well documented and the framework is modular and flexible. I was looking for reasons to try something else that might be even better for the job, for now I just keep looking ;) 38. 19-12-2009 05:40 F*CK magento. I bid a project based upon the hours I've taken in the past to setup an e-commerce solution for a client. I chose Magento this time, assuming it couldn't be TOO different from the other solutions, and even built extra time into the project in an attempt to compensate for the new platform... I'm now 120 hours overbid. My client probably feels like I've lied to them, and I have a sour taste in my mouth... Yes, Magento is SLOW AS HELL. Modifying anything, takes 10 extra steps. It is documented poooooooooorly. None of the staff are there to help. I've had to consult the forums at least 30 times, and each time it was some other member who hacked his Magento together that helped. This is my first and ONLY magento project. Never doing it again. Trust me, you have absolutely no control over what you are doing with Magento. You have to bastardize everything you do to fit what the Magento developers had in mind. Want to add an image to a CMS or non-cart page? Just create a module using their abstract and convoluted language, modify and create some xml files, create a .phtml file, and then declare this inside the CMS panel inside the backend admin area... F*CK this sh*t. 39. 28-12-2009 18:26 Magento should be called "bait & switch-ento". They were telling us all "Oh the community is SO important to us! You guys are going to make this a success! And we're really doing our best for you open source developers, really!" So they got free feedback, beta testing, and when the rubber met the road, they didn't want to support anyone because they were too busy fixing their crapware. Then, to add insult to injury, they promise gift registry features in the open source version - a PRETTY BASIC FEATURE, and then turn around and decide its going to cost everyone 11 grand per year to try and float this monolithic blob of a package. But its so pretty, right? Marketing at its best, and how much money are they making on the "Meet magento" tour where you PAY to meet Roy and his sales crew? Good lord, please tell me I'm dreaming. A PERFECT example of how a pretty package can hide some of the worst tools and most disingenuous business strategies in the history of the web industry. I was there from early early on in beta and suffered with it for the promise of it being better. Well, I gave up and decided to wait for the release of Isotope e-commerce instead. You haven't heard about it? It's a hybrid system that is built in the context of the TYPOlight CMS (www.typolight.org) and is going to rapidly redefine e-commerce as we know it. And I'm not just saying that because I'm the lead developer, I'm also an e-commerce developer who was burned by Magento and sick of everything else. 40. 07-01-2010 01:19 So what if not Magento? Be sure to check out UniteU.com. They have hundreds of live sites you can look at from their site. They have customers in the Internet retailer top 500! Seems they really know what they are doing. It's an SaaS model, total turn key product and they guide you thru the set-up and host the site, provide support and help the retailer grow the business. 41. 07-01-2010 06:19 Do you have examples of Ubercart shops ? Ubercart is the best ecommerce module for Drupal ? Thanks. 42. 12-01-2010 16:32 DO NOT USE MAGENTO, IT IS A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME. For Business Owners: You will spend more time and money fixing problems than on any other part of your e-commerce business. For Website Developers: You will not make money on any Mangento projects without tripling your standard rate or completely upsetting the customer by not fixing the bugs. For the Student: You will learn more about troubleshooting, PHP and everything else used in Magneto that makes it not work than any classroom will every teach you. Just don't use it after you graduate. Need Proof it Doesn't Work? Visit the users forum and read some of the post. http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards The post are almost funny...except that the only ones having fun are the developers getting paid hourly with no regard to the finished product or time they're spending on the simplist features that don't work. One poor soul loses 10 to 15% of all business because the "checkout" system doesn't work consistantly. If this doesn't work, what's the point? Thankfully, I've only lost a week's worth of time and about $500 I spent on upgrades for the site. Many more people out there are out of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and ongoing costs as they push forward hoping for better days ahead. I am not sure where I'll go now, but at least I've crossed-off Magento from the list. 43. 27-01-2010 19:35 Magento does suck! I have tried it for a few things with terrible results. Overly complex and full of bugs. I have been beta testing LemonStand and I love it. It's a new PHP shopping cart that is easy to use, flexible and easy to design for. It's not open source, but the authors stand behind their work. You actually get support and a response from people unlike Magento. And it's way better in almost every way. Try it at http://lemonstandapp.com 44. 02-03-2010 13:09 Author like crying little girl, btw, there's no arguments in this article about "Why does Magento sucks". just another stupid post... Author, may be you suck and not Magento ? 45. 02-03-2010 20:50 CS-Cart is more feature rich than Magento, stable and properly built. Worth a look. It is commercial, but fairly cheap. 46. 03-03-2010 16:33 Magento really does suck and the comments here are very true. We were sucked in by the promise of an amazing system. 10 months later and $15,000 less having worked with 30 developers nearly every single day and long hours we have still not got a working system. When it does work it will cost so much to update or even install an extra plugin. It's a complete nightmare. If you use magento make sure you stick to these rules Only use it if you are based in the USA and dont need to change any country setting. Only use it if you sell single products, forget bundles and complicated stuff its too much hassle. Do not install more than 3 plugins. Be prepared to spend at least $1000. NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER edit the core code. change one letter in it or even think about changing the core code and your life will be over. You will regret it. DO NOT upgrade magento unless you have to. Make sure you on a super fast high end dedicated server. Without this your site will slow down with a lot of concurrent users. FAST CPU is needed. Typical user accessing a none cached page will use 10 to 30% CPU. MAKE SURE you setup and optomise magento. You must used cached pages. Without it customers will leave when it takes a minute for the page to load. Have at least $500 available to fix bugs in any release they have. Every version has bugs. If you dont fix them you will loose sales because of them. I said it before and will say it again. If you edit the core code your on a costly trip downhill. DONT be fooled. Use something else. 47. 30-03-2010 20:57 Magento is a total support trap. If more companies use their business model, the free-open-source community will suffer for it. Commerce Style person: Your Meta Title tag is misspelled. Please fix it so that more people find this page :) 48. 30-04-2010 01:57 I am a web designer and i found it very hard to achieve the design i desire - had a few issues on the way but no one could help me in the forum. I will stay with the good old OSC & Zen cart 49. 09-05-2010 06:17 I have to out of the box and user friendly.....that's a laugh. I'm not a developer, but I'm fairly computer savvy. I have been at it for over a year now with Magento. I've learned more than I have ever dreamed about hacking but finally reached deadlock with Magento's newest release 1.4 anything but stable. Why did I do it? Why did I upgrade? I knew better, I just couldn't stand it. I backed up my database and went for it. Too bad the new version won't allow an imported version of a database and the Simple Scripts install ran into issues with Foreign Key contraints and trashed everything. I lost 600 products and rebuilt to a mere 30 so far only to find out that Magento send Paypal Payments Pro the wrong info so I don't get paid anymore. I'm disgusted. I'm going to try an rebuild in an earlier version although I don't know why, I will never be able to upgrade. Magento is like an abusive husband, just keeps being so nice on the outside and beats the crap out of you. This is my last ditch. Please somebody tell me.....is Zencart any better? It' the only one my host offers that even seems to come close. 50. 28-05-2010 01:06 I have a site built in magento, by a very experienced developer and would have to disagree with 99% of the comments here, Magento is a good platform, it does every thing asked of it and if you have it on the right server it is not slow, (I have our site on a shared server as well) I have over 10,000 items with up to 20 images in each item. I have even set up and also duplicated this site and new magento installs myself with out problems, and I am not a developer or a programmer. We have done a lot of modifications to suit our business and do not have any problems with it, if you are building an e commerce site that is tailored to your business needs then you are going to have to take the time to get it right to suit your needs, I really can not see why every one is bitching about it, get some one that knows what they are doing (actually really knows what they are doing) and you should have no problems. 51. 08-06-2010 11:49 Magento is definitely a trap. We setup 2 websites last year with Magento. There's a fairly steep learning curve but we weren't daunted by that. The platform offered a lot of flexibility so we just decided to bite the bullet and do it. Don't bother. Can you get e-commerce working on Magento? Certainly, we have 2 sites live (until we switch them to a new platform!). There's some HUGE problems with Magento.[1] The database is a black box. If something happens (and believe me a LOT can happen to Magento!) best of luck to you! [2] There used to be some kind of support, but over the past year as Varien has introduced paid support the "community edition" is basically up the creek without a paddle-just check the posts if you want to verify. [3] Bugs, bugs bugs, everywhere you look. Half the listed features just don't work. [4] Really poor (and getting much worst) documentation. [5] Just TRY to upgrade I DARE YOU! We upgraded to Version 1.4 and Google Analytics went bye-bye. No Analytics! I would consider this a relatively serious problem, like on a scale of 1 to 10...1! Not even a MENTION of this anywhere. After digging for hours we were able to find a posting by someone who had developed a hack to the file in question. GREAT way to run a business! Yes analytics is working again but... We do e-commerce for a living and this is no way to live! We're evaluating other carts and will be bidding good-bye (and good riddance) to Magento. We've just put up a website using OpenCart which appears to be a much more straightforward solution. At least you can query the database! 52. 08-06-2010 23:22 As a fairly seasoned developer I can say Magneto is absolutely terrible. It's a bait-and-switch, clear as day. I've literally seen console game engines that are less complicated. It had to be developed like this on purpose to encourage expensive support and development contracts. Anyone who's worked on enterprise software will tell you it get's complicated, and often good practices end up out the window. But this is just incredible. It seems disingenuous and I would recommend any business to look elsewhere. The overall package looks so tempting, rich features, beautiful admin, but you will be ready to put your head in the guillotin before you know it. 53. 12-06-2010 07:01 The original author was correct. Anyone who thinks Magento is great hasn't tried building and maintaining many stores for any length of time. Our company has worked with many e-commerce and content management systems over the years. We had many clients on our own in-house software for a while. I personally maintain about a dozen Magento sites, a few using an in-house e-commerce package, and many more Drupal+Ubercart sites. The amount of bugs encountered with Magento several magnitudes larger than the others combined. Magento is also very slow. Any programmer knows they should be writing modules to interface with the Magento API, as opposed to directly accessing the MySQL database tables. However, the API performance sucks. The whole database and the EAV tables suck. Even the most basic import script that can be written to interface with the API and run via cron will take days to import 200k of simple products without photos on a decent server. What alternative do you have? You can perform your actions on the database itself, but good luck grasping all of the EAV tables. By the time you do, the next few releases will be available and you'll have to start over. That was my last straw with Magento. Yes, the AJAX admin interface is nice, but try managing a few thousand products with it. You need to access the data via the API, and the API and database structure are crap. Drupal + Ubercart + Node Import via Cron blows it out of the water. I have to say, Magento is a nightmare to maintain. Those who disagree say one of the following: 1. You're changing core files. You're not supposed to. Fair enough. We don't change core files. However, even when you create your own modules and templates, they will likely not work after upgrades. You have to merge in the changes from the latest release into each and every custom module, template, and style sheet you created. 2. One author stated that you usually don't upgrade an e-commerce package after buying it. Seriously? What about security upgrades? What about the fact that the Flash image upload dialogue in Magento version 1.1.6 would not work with Flash 10. What would you do? Explain to all of your clients that they must downgrade Flash and pin it to ver. 9? Magento should have created a minor release to fix this. Instead, you must upgrade to the next major release. The more basic solution would be to have an alternate upload dialogue that is not Flash based. This should have been there all along. So should Gift Certs, a decent CMS, a WYSIWYG editor, among other things that are now available only with the enterprise version. Magento's beauty is only skin deep. 54. 12-06-2010 07:17 Hi Jim, Very well written assessment and this is exactly why we moved on as well. Literally the same terrible experience. Since fall of 2008 we've been producing as part of a 2 man team a cms & ecommerce solution that is built in the context of the Contao CMS (contao.org). Just two days ago, we did a code line count on our package which is in active beta and although missing a few small features Magento community has, its actually a whole lot more with a fully featured CMS using a MVC framework that is absolutely phenomenal. We counted lines of code and found that including the CMS + all of our Isotope ecommerce work, we have about 120k lines of code, roughly 20k of that is the ecommerce portion. In comparison, because Magento sits on top of Zend framework and the Varien framework, they are at over 459,000 lines of code for less functionality. You could literally fit 3 of our systems into their one and not even have a decent CMS to work with, even if you go with the enterprise or mid tier offerings you can't match Contao's framework as a developer, or its ease of templating, and because Isotope fits into it, it enjoys all the benefits of the core without modifying it. I'll email you this comment as well as I'm sure you would be intrigued. In closing, I have given Magento a nickname - it is the Spruce Goose of ecommerce pacakges. 55. 12-06-2010 14:49 how do you unsubscribe from this piece of shit thread 56. 17-06-2010 10:44 http://www.magentocommerce.com/bug-tracking/list/ 6307 Bugs listed in the issue tracker 6020 Bugs that are not marked as resolved Nearly no activity from Magento devs in the forum. The only thing contributed is marketing BS. No way to submit patches to Magento. No way to contribute other than creating Wiki articles or helping in the forum. The community has the Magento devs and the non-Varien devs completely segregated. There is essentially no information flow between the Magento team and the community. Upgrading to 1.4.1 ( "stable" release ) is likely to hose your site. Items that were promised in the roadmap for the Community Edition ( CE ) version years ago have been developed, but only released in the $8900/year enterprise version. 57. 19-06-2010 00:19 Friday April 18, 2010 19:11 EST The magento site: http://www.magentocommerce.com is DOWN. If you are running a version less than 1.4, then YOUR Magento site's admin will be DOWN TOO. http://www.edmondscommerce.co.uk/magento/magento-sites-go-down-if-magentocommercecom-goes-down/ How about that? If magentocommerce.com is offline, you cannot access the Magento backend on your own web site. Magento's admin section checks for updates from magentocommerce.com when the admin section is loaded. When it cannot connect, your site's connection times out. So, right now, any of my sites that are running a version prior to 1.4 cannot be administered. My clients cannot update their site or products. They cannot process orders. Nothing. The solution? Hack the code to remove the check, or upgrade to 1.4. Upgrading will take your site down anyway. So, don't bother. That is why all but one of my sites are staying at 1.3 until 1.4 "stable" release is actually stable. 58. 19-06-2010 02:07 Why dont you guys just stop complaining, and get some one that knows what they are doing to do what you need to be done, its pretty simple and it works, i think most people would have the check removed from their site so you dont get annoying pop up messages every time you log in to admin. 59. 19-06-2010 03:14 Sorry I got upset, I just try to make the best out of any situation. The fact is we're all settling for crap because the choices are crap, Magento included. 60. 19-06-2010 03:38 Zachary Spee wrote: "i think most people would have the check removed from their site so you dont get annoying pop up messages every time you log in to admin." For the record, it is checked by default. Despite the fact that you think it is annoying, it is reasonable to assume that some people might not want these notifications turned off. Otherwise, what good reason would Varien have for having it on by default? Who really cares if you "think most people would have the check removed", just because it annoys you? This statement has no relevancy to anything. Zachary Spee wrote: "Why dont you guys just stop complaining, and get some one that knows what they are doing to do what you need to be done, its pretty simple and it works" I did not pay for Magento. I am not forced to use it. So I really can't complain. Although, I will explain the problems encountered with Magento. People who are considering Magento are reading these posts. I am providing them with reasons not to use it. I'd like to save them the trouble. What exactly did you opinion based post contribute? Was there a single fact stated? If you found an error in one of my posts, you could have corrected me. Instead, you basically told me to shut up. Zachary Spee wrote, "it's pretty simple and it works". The track record shows that it does NOT work. Granted, it is simple to fix when you know what your doing, but I fail to see the point. I never said it was impossible to fix, nor difficult. It IS time consuming though, especially when a manage many sites. Do you agree that it takes more time to fix a bug than it does to _not_ fix a bug? A little bit here... a little bit there... next thing you know you've wasted an entire day upgrading a single Magento site to a newer version. I would like to think that we have a fairly good system, with version control and our own in-house scripts to synchronize sites and databases between workstations, staging servers, and production servers. It takes care of the host name replacements, permissions, caches, etc... automatically. So, we save a lot of time, but managing these sites is still a pain. Something like this takes minutes with another e-commerce platform, including the time it takes to back up the data and complete post-upgrade tests. So, to any business owners looking to open an on-line storefront, please take Zachary's advice and get a skilled programmer for the job. Once you find that person, choose a shopping cart other than Magento. It will save your developer half the time, and you half the money. |
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