I only have a few clients, and considering these two options for my e-commerce clients on this host. Can anyone tell me the real difference between these two programs for small business? Yes QuickBooks is important. Yes I am expanding, so will grow.
Thanks :)
In brief: OSCommerce is an open, easily customizable solution. Miva is a closed, black-box, less customizable solution. Plus, there are hundreds of community-provided contributions which add new features to OSCommerce.
The bottom line (IMHO): I would see no reasons to prefer Miva over OSCommerce.
You may also wish to check out OSCommerce forks like Zencart and CRE-loaded.
Hope this helps,
Corrado
I posted a response to a question not unlike this one not long ago: "Should I use MIVA or OS Commerce?".
In my opinion, if the cost of deployment is not as important as the cost and time necessary for supporting and maintaining the solution you choose, then I would recommend Miva Merchant.
It's true, though, that osC is not greatly deficient in any functional way compared to MM. If flexibility and custimization is important to you, and you're capable of working with and around php code comfortably, then it's openness and large repository of free addons would make it a great option.
Either way, you should definately play with the demos for both carts (MM (http://smallbusiness.miva.com/products/merchant/mm5/demo_mm5.html), osC (http://www.opensourcecms.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=139&Itemid=159)) , and see if either presents any glaring usability problems for you. You should also peruse their support forums and available documentation to see what sort of learning curve you'll face and how much help you'll have getting around it.
If it helps, check out the comparison table at http://www.westhost.com/e-commerce-hosting.html. You'll also want to go through the admin and user demos of both applications (oscommerce (http://www.westhost.com/oscommerce-hosting.html) / miva merchant (http://www.westhost.com/miva-hosting.html)) and get your own opinions. We have many on staff that have used both and still have differing preferences. Bottom line is they are both good carts and extremely popular, which is why we offer them.
I have used both. The huge number of man hours you have to put in to "vet" OSCommerce add-ons makes it a lose-lose for a developer. Plus the templating is hard to make look good. You can tell someone has an OSCommerce site from across the street.
MIVA is proprietary, yes. And the developers aren't awful helpful.
But...the user community is excellent
The customizing modules you can get from proven developers allow you to make the store do what you want it to, plus they are known quantities who stand behind their products, charge very little and are there to help.
And with version 5 you can do a totally CSS site that looks professional.
I did a site recently for a company that does both retail and wholesale in North America, Europe and the Far East.
The product lines offered to the public were different depending on what continent or country the customer was from. Logged in dealers saw their available product lines depending upon what continent they served, and the prices were adjusted according to their sales levels.
The setup looked better, and was far less expensive and far more reliable than the OSCommerce version would have been.