VirtueMart vs. Magento: A Comparison of ECommerce Frameworks
I have recently been working on a VirtueMart site and I thought I’d jot down my thoughts on the differences between it and Magento. I wont go in depth in to the quality of the code that these are written with - there are plenty of others out there who have done that. Suffice to say I haven’t had to re-write either drastically to get them to work and most of what I have done has been through their admin interfaces.
I will finish the review with a list of the specs of the two systems in a fairly off the shelf manner. Don’t jump straight to this as you may leap to the conclusion that what you need is the more fully featured option, and this may not be true. Both systems have a whole range of plugins, and both systems have a large development community (although VirtueMart probably does have the edge here).
The versions I am comparing here are VirtueMart 1.1 on Joomla 1.5, and Magento 1.3.
Installation
VirtueMart - Shopping Cart Software
Here VirtueMart is a dream, it is just a plug-in to Joomla and can be installed as easily as unzipping it to the correct directories. Magento on the other hand, is anything but simple. The variety of settings my sysadmin had to change had him swearing never to set up another Magento instance, and here it probably is best to go to a hosting provider that supports Magento. We even had to re-install at one stage with me telling him which PHP files needed editing, and then we needed php_curl and php_mcrypt - it wasn’t fun.
Admin
Magento - ECommerce Platform for Growth
Once you have both systems up and running you soon realise that not only does Magento have more options, but it is also more intuitive when you want to get things done. The Dashboard in Magento is great, it’s your one-stop information screen and everything you need to know on a regular basis is here. VirtueMart has its equivalent of the Dashboard, the Store Summary - unfortunately this is little more than a menu. Once a dashboard-style screen exists VirtueMart will take a leap forward nut right now Magento beats it hands down.
Magento’s admin interface is in fact very professional and better than a lot of the commercial packages out there (Demandware springs to mind). This shouldn’t be a surprise, the Enterprise Edition of Magento starts at $9000 per year, and you don’t get a new product for that.
Products and Catalogues
Both systems allow for a huge amount of product configuration, but again Magento has the edge. Its ease of adding attributes and of setting up-sell and cross-sell options from the product editor really do put it ahead of VirtueMart. However, what both systems are lacking is a simple way to upload bulk products.
If you have a catalogue of 500 products, across a variety of business streams, then you really do need to think how that data will be managed and how you are going to upload it all. Magento has an import/export tool but it is woefully inadequate for the job, and VirtueMart has the option to download a plugin. You would have assumed that this would have been core to the development of both systems, as it is, the options offered only extend as far CSV.
Shipping
The Demo Store from Magento
Everything said so far works out pretty even for the majority of users, it is at shipping options where a lot of people will decide which way to go.
VirtueMart is very configurable here, you set up a shipper and you apply shipping rates to it and two common plugins allow you base the rates on SKU or SKU+quantity. Unfortunately that’s where it ends. If you want to base the shipping costs on weight, have a flat rate or free shipping, ship to multiple addresses, ship the order in multiple parts, or to restrict the destinations the order can be shipped to - then Magento does all of this out of the box, finding it on the admin screens is a bit more tricky. Not under “Sales” or “Catalog” and it doesn’t have its own menu option, instead you’ll find it buried in “System > Configuration > Sales > Shipping”.
The e-Commerce Site
You might have heard that Magento is slow, even so, you will still find it hard to believe how slow it is. I assume this is to do with the way it is compiling pages under the hood, but even so. It makes a JSP encoded site look fast.
Summary
It comes down in the end to what you want from a store and what the client needs. Magento is a very good package, it is slow but I expect this is one of the things the team is working on. If you have a large commercial e-Commerce site to build then Magento is for you, and if the client can afford it the Enterprise model is not expensive for what you’re getting. However, if you are building an e-Commerce site for a small/medium client then I would have to say go with VirtueMart.
Both systems will do 90% of the requirements for 90% of businesses. Magento will do that little bit more, but most people out there wont actually need that little bit (although I’m sure they think they will). Both systems also have a large development community, with Magento’s Enterprise model I suspect you’ll find more free help for VirtueMart although I have always received prompt and free help from the Magento team.
My personal favourite is Magento, for the admin screens and all the options and the configurability, however, it really needs to get faster and until that happens I will probably still recommend VirtueMart solutions to my clients who don’t need all the bells and whistles.
Summary Table
NB: Miscellaneous contains details pulled from the respective websites, so apologies for any repetitions or errors.
| VirtueMart 1.1.3 | Magento 1.3.2.3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Products | Unlimited number of products and categories. | Unlimited number of products and categories. |
| Multiple images per product, but must be added through the media link on the product list rather than the edit product options. | Multiple images per product. | |
| Image display via Lightbox. | Custom zoom-technology on image. | |
| Product ratings and reviews. | Product ratings and reviews. | |
| Reviews can be moderated or automatically be accepted. | Reviews can be moderated or automatically be accepted. | |
| Browse by category or breadcrumb. | Browse by category, breadcrumb or tag. | |
| Stock availability. | Stock availability. | |
| Search on features or discounts. | Quick search. | |
| Hero products. | Hero products. | |
| Virtual products (i.e. downloads). | Virtual products (i.e. downloads). | |
| Stock availability. | Stock availability. | |
| Back in stock emails. | Related products. | |
| Related products. | Grouped products. | |
| Multi-tier pricing upsell. | ||
| Add to wishlist. | ||
| Product comparison. | ||
| Integrated “send to a friend”. | ||
| Payment Modules | Live Credit Card Processing | Saved credit card for offline payments. |
| Pre-defined payment gateways: Authorize.net®, PayPal, 2Checkout, eWay, Worldpay, PayMate and NoChex. | Pre-defined payment gateways: Authorize.net®, PayPal (multiple), Google Checkout (Level 2), Amazon (multiple). | |
| Extensions offering 71 more gateways. | Extensions offering 88 more gateways. | |
| Accepts cheques/money orders. | Accepts cheques/money orders. | |
| Accepts purchase orders. | Accepts purchase orders. | |
| Configurable to authorize and charge, or authorize only and charge on creation of invoices. | ||
| Shipping | Simple carrier and rates configuration. | Shipping to multiple addresses in one order |
| Live-Shipping Rates using Shipping Modules (e.g. InterShipper, UPS, USPS, FedEx or Canada Post; Modules can use the Shipping Rate API). | Integrated for real-time shipping rates from: UPS, UPS XML (account rates), FedEx (account rates), USPS and DHL | |
| SKU based shipping (extension). | On-site order tracking from customer accounts. | |
| Quantity/SKU based shipping (extension). | Multiple shipments per order. | |
| Ability to specify allowed destination countries per method. | ||
| Flat rate shipping per order. | ||
| Flat rate shipping per item. | ||
| Free Shipping. | ||
| Table rates for weight and destination. | ||
| Table rates for product sub-totals and destination. | ||
| Table rates for number of items and destination. | ||
| Miscellaneous | Multiple files (like Spec Sheets and Flyers) per product | Multiple store-fronts managed from a single instance of Magento. |
| Flexible Tax Models Model 1: ShipTo Address-based Tax Calculation Model 2: Store Address-based Tax Calculation Model 3: EU Mode (Store Owner based Tax Calculation when Customer comes from an EU Country) | Flexible Coupons (pricing rules) with ability to restrict to stores, customer groups, time period, products, and categories. For example: Percent Discount | Fixed Amount Discount | Free Shipping | Buy x, get y free. | Buy x, get y with percent or fixed amount discount | Buy x, get free shipping on order | Buy x, get percent discount | Buy x, get fixed amount discount. | |
| Product Attributes (like Size or Color) can be added to Product | Catalog Promotional Pricing by percentage or fixed amount with ability to restrict to stores, categories, products | |
| Product Types for Classification (like “Car”, “Motorbike” or “Music Album”) | Free Shipping Option | |
| Shopper Groups for Customers (allows different Price Levels and Payment Options), | Multi-Tier Pricing for quantity discounts | |
| multiple Prices per Product (Quantity-based and/or Shopper Group-based Prices) | Bundled Products | |
| flexible Price Display (number & currency formatting; including or excluding tax) | Customer Group-specific pricing and group-specific tier pricing | |
| On-the-Fly Price Conversion between different Currencies using Live Rates from the ECB or other banks | Landing Page Tool for Campaigns | |
| Shop Statistics / Control Panel with a Summary of new Customers, new Orders…. | Search Engine Friendly URL’s | |
| Stock Level Control for Products and Item | URL Rewrites | |
| Order Management with Order History, Customer Notification and Order Edit Functionality | Recently Viewed Products | |
| basic Reporting Feature: sold Items, monthly/yearly Revenue | Recently Compared Items | |
| Order Status Management | New Items Promotional Tool | |
| manage different Currencies, Countries & States | Up-sells in Shopping Cart | |
| capable of using Secure Sockets Layer (https) Encryption (128-bit) | Cross-sells on product pages | |
| Multiple Languages (using the Joomla! Component Joom!Fish or Nooku). | Send to a Friend for all visitors, or registered users only | |
| Shoppers can manage their User Accounts (registration required) | Send Wishlist to a Friend by Email or RSS | |
| Shipping Address Management (Customers can enter their own Shipping Addresses) | RSS Feeds for New Products, New Specials and New Tags | |
| Order History: Shopper can view all their previous Orders (and Order Details) | Auto-generated Site Map | |
| Order Confirmation Mail (customizable!) is sent to Shopper and Store Owner | Google Site Map | |
| Multiple Currencies (you can allow Customers to change the Currency and buy using an alternative Currency) | Polls | |
| Newsletter Management | ||
| Integrated with Google Analytics | ||
| Admin Dashboard for Report Overview | ||
| Sales Report | ||
| RSS feed for New Orders | ||
| Tax Report | ||
| Abandoned Shopping Cart Report | ||
| Best Viewed Products Report | ||
| Best Purchased Products Report | ||
| Low Stock Report | ||
| Search Terms Report | ||
| Product Reviews Report | ||
| RSS feed for New Reviews | ||
| Tags Report | ||
| RSS feed for New Tags | ||
| Coupon Usage Report | ||
| Total Sales Invoiced | ||
| Total Sales Refunded | ||
| Best Customers Report by Total and Number of Orders | ||
| 100% Search Engine Friendly | ||
| Google Site Map | ||
| URL Rewrites give full control of URL’s | ||
| Meta-information for products and categories | ||
| Auto-generated Site Map for display on site | ||
| Auto-Generated Popular Search Terms Page | ||
| Control multiple websites and stores from one Administration Panel with ability to share as much or as little information as needed | ||
| Multi-Lingual | ||
| Support for localization | ||
| Support for multiple currencies | ||
| Administration Permission System Roles and Users | ||
| Web Services API for easy integration between Magento and any third-party application | ||
| Flexible tax rate management with support for US and International markets | ||
| Fully 100% customizable design using templates | ||
| Customer Groups | ||
| One-Click Upgrades | ||
| Content Management System for Informational Pages | ||
| Google Website Optimizer Integration for A/B and Multivariate Testing | ||
| Inventory Management with Backordered items, Minimum and Maximum quantities | ||
| Batch Import and Export of catalog | ||
| Batch Updates to products in admin panel | ||
| Google Base Integration | ||
| Simple, Configurable (e.g. size, color, etc.), Bundled and Grouped Products | ||
| Virtual Products | ||
| Downloadable/Digital Products | ||
| Customer Personalized Products - upload text for embroidery, monogramming, etc. | ||
| Tax Rates per location, customer group and product type | ||
| Attribute Sets for quick product creation of different item types | ||
| Create Store-specific attributes on the fly | ||
| Media Manager with automatic image resizing and watermarking | ||
| Advanced Pricing Rules and support for Special Prices (see marketing tools) | ||
| Search Results rewrites and redirects | ||
| Approve, Edit and Delete Product Tags | ||
| Approve, Edit and Delete Product Reviews | ||
| RSS feed for Low Inventory Alerts | ||
| Layered / Faceted Navigation for filtering of products in Categories | ||
| Layered / Faceted Navigation for filtering of products in Search Results | ||
| Static Block tool to create category landing pages | ||
| Ability to assign designs on category and product level (unique design per product/category) | ||
| Configurable search with auto-suggested terms | ||
| Recently viewed products | ||
| Product comparisons | ||
| Recently compared products | ||
| Cross-sells, Up-sells and Related Items | ||
| Popular Search Terms Cloud | ||
| Filter by Product Tags | ||
| Product Reviews | ||
| Product listing in grid or list format | ||
| Breadcrumbs | ||
| Multi-Lingual | ||
| Support for Multiple Currencies | ||
| Tax rate support Includes support for WEEE/DEEE in EU | ||
| Localization | ||
| Configurable List of Allowed Countries for: Site Registration Shipping Destination Addresses with ability to specify per shipping method Billing Addresses with ability to specify per payment method | ||
| One-Page Checkout | ||
| SSL security support for orders on both front-end and back-end | ||
| Shipping to multiple addresses in one order | ||
| Checkout without account/Guest Checkout | ||
| Shopping Cart with tax and shipping estimates | ||
| Checkout with account to use address book | ||
| Option to create account at beginning of checkout | ||
| Accept gift messages per order and per item | ||
| Saved Shopping Carts with configurable expiration time | ||
| Contact Us form | ||
| Feature-rich Customer Accounts | ||
| Order History with Status Updates | ||
| Order Tracking from Account | ||
| Forgot Password Email from front-end and administration panel | ||
| Order and Account Update Emails | ||
| Customizable Order Emails | ||
| Create and Edit Orders from the Admin Panel | ||
| Order status and history | ||
| Re-orders from account | ||
| Recently ordered items | ||
| Downloadable Products | ||
| Address Book with unlimited addresses | ||
| Default Billing and Shipping addresses | ||
| Wishlist with ability to add comments | ||
| Email or Send RSS feed of Wishlist | ||
| Newsletter Subscription management | ||
| Product Reviews submitted | ||
| Product Tags submitted | ||
| Account Dashboard for overview of: recent orders, personal information, newsletter subscription status, primary billing address, primary shipping address, shopping cart, wishlist, recently ordered items, recently reviews and recent tags | ||
| View, edit, create and fulfill orders from admin panel. | ||
| Create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order to allow for split fulfillment | ||
| Print invoices and packing slips | ||
| Call Center (phone) order creation Includes ability to create new customer, or select existing customer and view shopping cart, wishlist, last ordered items, and compared products list, as well as select addresses, give discounts and assign custom prices | ||
| Create re-orders for customers from administration panel. | ||
| Email Notifications of Orders | ||
| RSS feed of New Orders |
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Hey! Nice job here! I’ll be dropping by from time to time
Good and in depth article but full of useful information
I like the way you write! Nice blog.
This chart is absolutely amazing. The sheer fact that you create this and explicitly pointed out the features of both Virtuemart and Magento is perfect. Keep up the good job. Do you think you can do one for Magento vs Zencart?
nice comparison.
so virtuemart doesnt allow manual/check payment?
1st error - You can add multiple images per product in virtuemart!
Hi Fishu, I’d love to know how you can add more than a single image and single thumbnail using the admin interface.
For the project I was on it didn’t matter, but I can see it being an issue for them at some point - so any pointers you have would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Jim,
My mistake on that one. Virtuemart does allow cash/cheque and purchase orders. I’ve updated the table to reflect this - thanks for the kick.
Zencart too! Maybe after I finish the other 5 draft articles I have
important information. It’s really useful. Thanks
What do you think would be a perfect shopping cart gallery for a website selling furniture products around 500 or so?
I would probably go for Magento, assuming that you will need a lot of product images and you’ll be expanding your catalogue.
Great article, lots of intersting things to digest. Very informative
There is a mistake in the comparison table: VirtueMart 1.1.3 does support multiple images per product.
Hi Dmitry, thanks for reading the article. You’re the second person to say this but I haven’t had a chance to have a good look in to how.
Where in the product admin screen can you assign multiple images (other than main and thumbnail)?
Rex..
Magento’s flexibility and slowness have the same source: the fact that is was built on an EAV database (”database within a database”). Such approach is indeed very flexible, but it will become exponentially slower as your data grows. Fundamentally, the problem cannot be solved by additional programming or additional database tuning. If you think a newly-installed, almost empty Magento system is slow, just wait until you load it with some data and history.
Hi Cabiri, virtuemart support multiple images per product, in virtuemart product list, click on a media icon and add new.
Thank you. Very educational article.
Hi Fred,
Thanks for that, that fantastic. Why isn’t this documented? And why can’t you do it under the edit product options?
I’ll update the article.
Hi Cabiri,
Do you know if Magento supports the Dropship online business model, I mean setting up multiple dropships accounts, managing dropship orders, will magento e-commerce helps dropship kind of business, Please do advise if any e-commerce which supports dropship?
Thanks
Hi Maruthi, There are a number of drop-shipping plugins out there. I believe the best (although I haven’t looked at it) is the one by Doba, it’s called MagenPro.
Hi,
Fantastic article mate. I run 10+ virtuemart sites and use a component call CSV Improved for importing product en masse.
Ive just import 3000 products via this tool and you can use xls (though you need to split across several files it seems to struggle with > 1000 rows).
I’ve tried and failed with Magento they need to sort the installer out and also hear the speed is an issue. Ive got virtuemart shops with thousands of products running perfectly on bog standard shared hosting with no problems.
Virtuemart looks pretty ropey out of the box but there are loads of virtuemart themes around if you look that you can buy for a few dollars.
Dave
Wow man, that’s really helpful info, cheers.
Virutemart 1.5 is being developed by a new development team and
Virtuemart 1.5 will be MVC.
Here a list of the Virtuemart 1.5 upgrades and new feature in virtuemat 1.6
http://dev.virtuemart.net/redmine/projects/virtuemart/roadmap
Great Article. But Ofcourse, there are lot more needed to make it complete and Perfect.
Virtuemart is Part of Joomla which makes it a giant and with endless options, which i don’t believe any other can compete for now.
Specially Magento is more a Commercial Product.
What can be developed with Virtuemart in few bucks needs thousands in magento.
I agree - Joomla is a big factor in deciding which to choose, but here I was just focusing on the differences between the commerce functionalities. You can run a pure Magento store after all - without the need for the functionality of Joomla.