Magento: Community, Pro, Enterprise, 'Go'? (or something else entirely?)

[Kershaad]

Hi guys,


We're looking at setting up a large eCommerce store with the following:

• Some products drop ship straight to them, others are sent out from our store, etc.
• There will be hundreds, and then eventually thousands of products (well, there is thousands to begin with, I just cbf adding em all straight away).
• Gift cards & coupons
• Decent handling of returns/refunds/store credit.
• Some sort of Amazon-esk 'People also bought / others recommended'
• Decent searching facilities
• Custom buy rates for bulk/wholesale clients
• Want the site to be 'more than just a store' (ie. content areas, general info, etc).
• Must be fully PCI-complient and support merchent cc/payment facilities, as payment will be made on-page rather than going off via a paypal button or any such nonsense.

Once finished, the thing will be bloody massive, and eventually will have 1-2 people just managing orders/stock etc for the orders.

We were originally thinking that something like Shopify would be quick and easy to get going and would probably work well for us for about 12-18 months while we're growing our user base, but it looks like it's more of a prick to work with than originally anticipated, their fee structure is kinda bs, and no one can design to the damn thing (the 'liquid' engine seems to be a somewhat unpleasant mark-up to work with)... so we're looking at Magento instead.

This leads us to the problem of trying to figure out which version is most suitable. They offer some level of a breakdown of the feature set, but it's your normal upsell-push pile of giant X's to say 'zomg, go with the $12000/year option!'. :-/

So, my question is...

1. Which version should I be looking at for this, or how do I find out? ie. Magento Community, Pro, Enterprise, or 'Go'?
2. Is there an upgrade path from one to another (both from a billing side, and from a technical aspect of upgrading it)?
3. .. or am I better looking at a different platform all together?

Also.. Yes, once we've finally decided which platform we're going to be running on, I will eventually be looking for someone with an itrader score above 5 to manage the custom design/development aspect, as well as suggestions for good Australian PCI-compliant host.. But that's not the question I'm asking right now, so please do us both a favour and don't try and answer it. There will be another thread (in the correct category) about that aspect of the project.
Thanks in advance for any help/advice.

Cheers,

~Kershaad.

 

[marketer23]

I tried out Magento and Prestashop before and found them too confusing. I guess I got overwhelmed by them.

Check out OpenCart. Im using it for an ecommerce site right now for most of the reasons you have listed above.

 

[Jake232]

Before jumping on the Magneto bandwagon, check out Pinnacle Cart.

 

[Jake1125]

Magento sucks. Terribly buggy, and deficient. It has no display of your inventory history. If you want to know how many of an item was received, on what date, who bought that item, how many were returned, how many scrapped. Magento cannot tell you anything about your inventory, just the QTY that it thinks you have. Terrible software, loads of hype though!

You will need many buggy extensions to make up for the deficiencies, it's a total fail. Magento = hackers heaven, but commerce disaster.

 

[ThatGuyRob]

A lot of cart systems have exploits for hackers. I sent you off a long mail about everything. It's not that difficult to create a custom solution as well.

All pre made carts have pro's and con's to them.

Hit me up and let's chat more man...