Opinions of FoxyCart eCommerce & Alternatives

[ethanmiller]

Hi,
I am in the process of creating a estimate for a client for an eCommerce solution for an existing site. The client is selling mostly merchandise, and some downloadables, and the site is a WordPress site. I have not built an eCommerce solution before and am looking at the different services that exist that make possible sales flow and payment and all that. Currently, the service that has caught my eye as the best is FoxyCart, due to its claim that it is easy to implement into any sort of custom solution. But I’m wondering if there are alternatives that I should be considering. I’ve also seen shopify mentioned, but it seems more geared toward people who are not developers. I wonder if there’s anybody on here that has opinions and experience on this matter. Is FoxyCart really as good and ideal for development as it seems?

[John]

There’s WooCommerce for WP and it’s free. Where FoxyCart charges you. I was using zencart before, but then the site moved to WP, so I switched the store to WC.

[ethanmiller]

WooCommerce looks good in particular because the plugin on the CMS side seems so robust already in terms of handle Inventory and tracking items that are shipped and so on. But I wonder how easy it is to customize its appearance? On the other hand, why would one use FoxyCart at all if WooCommerce is so robust on the CMS/plugin side for WP. I looked at FoxyShop, the Foxycart plugin for WP, and it seeemed really confusing and clunky… Would be great if someone could lay out the pros and cons of, say, WooCommerce v. FoxyCart…

[John]

You can use WC with your current theme. Some themes have it integrated already. But if it isn’t, you’ll see a notice at the top of the admin page telling you how to integrate it to your current theme. It’s actually pretty simple to do.
I’m actually using a multi-site, so the WC is separate, but it’s a bit harder to maintain with menus that link to the other site. On a single site, I was using the cart widget, but couldn’t target it to a certain page(s) using widget logic.

[ethanmiller]

John thanks! Having looked at WooCommerce a bit more I’m starting to lean toward it rather than FoxyCart. With FoxyCart one while it is hard to say, my sense is that FoxyShop is a bit less organized and easy to use. The WooCommerce community also seems to be much larger and more active. But I still feel as if I havne’t fully understood the difference between these two frameworks…

[John]

Unfortunately I’ve never used foxycart , but there will always be annoyances with either one.

[ethanmiller]

John, True!!

[ethanmiller]

One of the things my client was worried about with FoxyCart is that their list of sites using their service has no one impressive. A bunch of small, even irrelevant, stores. It does seem strange, in fact, with a service the promises to be so robust that they dont’ have more high profile clients. Why might this be? Do the big fish just use bigger solutions, like Magento? Thoughts?

[dhollander]

Hi Ethan,

I just saw this message. I’m the developer of FoxyShop and I have quite a bit of experience working with FoxyCart. Here’s a few thoughts:

• I think the value of having built-in PCI compliance makes using FoxyCart a no-brainer. Getting your site truly secure and keeping it that way is a surprisingly huge process.
• FoxyCart does have some pretty big clients. The interesting thing about enterprise, though, is that you can’t really advertise that in a lot of cases. I would say that most of their customers are small to medium sized businesses. I heard that as of now they’ve done about $600M of sales through their system.
• WooCommerce is more polished that FoxyShop, but FoxyShop is designed specifically for developers to easily adjust the templates and build in their own functionality. And if devs have questions, I’m happy to help and make recommendations.

[joshbartolomucci]

Hey Ethan.
Josh from FoxyCart here. As David mentioned, FoxyCart carries the security burdens so you don’t have to. You can learn more here.

We are here to help if you need anything at all.

Thanks,
Josh

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