Epos & e-commerce software - vend vs shopify vs magento vs ?

[Si1295]

Currently we use vend for epos and woocommerce for internet sales. Vend seems OK from an epos point of view but I'm unhappy with how woocommerce is integrated, particularly how search results are displayed plus I would prefer to have it all integrated into one system.

I would be interested to hear what the rest of you are using and how you get on with it, what you like and dislike etc...

Thanks

[Altrezia]

Could build you something bespoke for your business if you want it tailor made.

Magento is a solid 'off the shelf' solution for the shop side of things, and there are about a million EPOS integrations for it.

[DSLiverpool]

I was amazed at how easy Shopify is to set up a guys proper shop with his online using the terminal built in for free - any dev should be able to include it foc as its under an hour.

[dmsims]

Curious to know why you have separate systems ?

Magento "off the shelf"

[silobass]

Magento is good, but it's certainly not off the shelf as in you can just fire it up and away you go. As a non techy person, it's not overly easy to install, then it's a PITA to get set up right. Installing anything can be confusing. Patch updates for security etc aren't the easiest to install and getting anyone to do any Magento work on the cheap isn't going to happen. However, when it's set up and running, it's great. Certainly very flexible and will do what you need, whatever that is.

We changed to Shopify just over a year ago as I couldn't get anyone to update our Magento site within what I thought was a reasonable budget. Saved a few thousand and was up and running with it in no time. I do wish it was a flexible as Magento but for our needs it's good enough and we work around.

[DSLiverpool]

silobass said:

I do wish it was a flexible as Magento but for our needs it's good enough and we work around.

What do you need coding - we use a good dev on rewrites

[Mudgey]

+1 for Magento, I use it for my website, I looked at the other packages but everybody wants more money or a percentage of your takings. Some will also apply a percentage if you use an external payment gateway. I have found about 95% of my customers checkout with PayPal - it seems to get used an awful lot these days.

[silobass]

DSLiverpool said:

What do you need coding - we use a good dev on rewrites

Nothing really thanks.

We have a section where you can personalise items and use an app but you have to set up rules etc and it does work fine but in Magento, we just used the custom option (or whatever it's called, I can't remember) where it's case of just ticking it and then giving the option a title. These could be set per product which was really handy. The app in Shopify you set up the rules, then assign the products which is fine but I often forget what I've already assigned to what rule and when I add new products, I sometimes forget to assign them to a personalisation rule - if you know what I mean! Anyway, it works, it's just not as smooth. I have to say that's the only thing.

Everything else is better in Shopify. We use their payment system too online which whilst I may be paying a bit more per transaction than when we used Worldpay, most of our transactions are paid for offline so it's not an issue - Things like not having to pay a monthly fee on top of %'s for a payment gateway help. Also their fraud prevention has helped us on a couple of occasions - I'd have not had that flagged if we still used Magento I don't think.