This is a very nice component and great e commerce solutions for joomla.

I really wanted to use VirtueMart, actually still do, but after spending several days configuring VM, I finally got to the bottom of the documentation only to find that VM uses its own user profile database instead of integrating with Joomla/Community Builder's. This was a show stopper for me.

I don't need anything very complicated just to sell community event tickets, but I cannot support dual user databases for 12,000 residents.

I have installed it on my site in order to sell a few products and to be honest, it was quite a task to build an eshop with 10 products in it. For smaller shop, there are other solutions easier to manage. But for those who wants to get into e-commerce with a lot of products and categories, it is good, very good. There is I think a problem with some editors such as Joomla FCK.

I have been using VirtueMart for over a year now. Unfortunately, it has too many problems and bugs and I have made the decision to find something that is more dependable and functional for E-Commerce.
This was not an easy decision to make however, I have come to this conclusion:
If you want a serious E-Commerce Shopping Cart Do NOT bother with VirtueMart. You will spend MUCH too MUCH time simply working the bugs out of it BEFORE you'll be able to start actually using it.

I have spent countless hours performing "hacks", "tweaks" you name it... just to get this cart to work right. The final straw hit when I decided to update my version to the newest version. I have run into so MANY problems simply trying to do this that I have decided to find something else. I'm an online seller... Not a computer programmer and this has become way too much of a struggle to keep this cart going.


Pro's:
Integrates easily with Joomla! Has nice presentation capabilities.

Con's:
Too many bugs that are too complicated to fix for the average computer user. No real support for this software.

I honestly gave this Cart more time, effort and attention than it's worth. If you want a practical, functional E-Commerce application I strongly suggest that you look for something else.

Just for the record I've been working with VM for a few years, and one of the reasons that I use it is because it can be modified for other things other than just a shopping cart. A catalog or a city guide etc. I just love it..

There it is.

Now on the other side, it's not perfect.
Some things that I find fault with; have to do with the silliest annoyances, such as clients thinking they could pull off using VM on a cheapo oversold shared hosting account. If you plan on using VM with SEF/SEO components (a must!) than think about upgrading your server to at-least a semi dedicated server... period -- shop around.

Also, you must use the 1.1 or better version, anything less and you would be just cheating yourself. If you are that guy or gal--using something older; you need to update now!!

If not for the security updates (that are maintained quickly, unlike x, zen or oscommmerce) but for the extra features and performance gains that seem to get better with each update.

Otherwise, While I like some of the other carts available.. I'm betting on VM over some of these newer and fancier systems that cost my clients 3-5x as much in development costs.

In an nutshell, VM works out of the box with features comparable, if not better than other carts... and better yet its built on Joomla! 1.x and 1.5.

Right now, I have a client that wants to do a streaming pay per video app... yep there's VM. God bless, (or praise whomever) I can pay my rent this month.

But, be realistic.
with the new auto update feature that has have been implemented in 1.2? (please check) any custom jobs may require a developers touch.

whatever. donate or be cursed to failure.

I have, and will drink less coffee next time.

Best Regards
JHQ


P.S If you decide to take advantage of the free help that is often offered in the forums:

It would help to mention:
what version of joomla
version of os - win or linux
version of VM

I just moved from CRE Loaded to Virtuemart due to its integration with Joomla CMS. I didn't migrate my CRE site to VM (too much efforts), instead I decided to use VM for my next ecommerce sites. It looks like CRE has reached its maturity point and not too much room for improvements, while VM is having a brighter future. I'm seeing, in the future, VM will have more features than any other ecommerce sites because it combines its own cart features plus Joomla extensions features. I can have a shopping cart complete with forum, FAQ and animated contents.

I can't go with other Joomla shopping cart solutions because not only they lack of community support but also some are too costly.

Hope version 1.1.2 can be released soon (with as few bugs as possible). Thank you.

This is FULLY featured. I've begun setting up shop and so far I'm not sure what else I could possibly want. This program looks like it could almost be used as a makeshift in-store POS if you needed to. I guess that's the idea though. I think I actually like the capabilities of this better than I do of the POS I use in my physical storefront. Spot-on on everything. Even allows a catalog mode if you're not quite ready to open up your store but want to display your inventory. I am currently implementing that feature, then once we're ready to sell online we'll be ready to go with the flip of a switch.
Primo!

Virtuemart 1.1 rulez! I use it on several websites. Superb that it is for free! the only thing that would make it perfect is an invoice manager, but it makes a small difference ;-)

After atually reading some of the reviews on this product I am putting in 2c.

Virtuemart is a fantastic extension. Works well, integrates well and to be perfectly honest Soren is very respondent to email and issues on the forum. You just have to be a little patient for day or so.

Please remember that folks have jobs to pay the bills. And if we want to have a FREE community to work with and support we need to give developers time to do this and no sit and answer our inane questions...

Utilise the forums... members on the forums and you will get any and all questions answered.

Take the time to go through this Component and you will get it very quickly.

It is easy to install, configure and manipulate to your specifications if necessary. I am not a programmer... Don't even get the php language andy more than I speak Upper North West Mongolian.... But folks if I can build 10 e-commerce sites with Virtuemart.... Well anything is possible with it really...

VirtueMart has revolutionaized my web development arsenal tremendously (along with Joomla, of course)! I can't imagine putting together anything less than VM. It's absolutely free!!!!!!!! You can't beat that. Not only is it free, but I know NO OTHER shopping cart extension for Joomla that can top it - not even the commercial ones!

I'm THOROUGHLY impressed with this extension!

I WILL DEFINITELY BE DONATING MONEY TO THE CAUSE!!!!

Great job!

I just spent several hours setting this up and testing it before I realized it doesn't work with Canadian taxes. Someone in their forums has developed a hack for this, but they are charging $100 for it. Very disappointing, but if you're in the US I'm sure it's great.

I can't believe all the bitter comments toward a full featured, completely free piece of software.

I've tested VM on smaller personal sites for over a year before being comfortable enough to use it on a client site. I set the client up with the FedEx real-time shipping module processing payments through Authorize. The website processes 2.5K - 4K in orders per week. We've had it running for a little over 3 months with no problems whatsoever.

The software required a little hammering out to make it work exactly as we wanted it, but as a non-programmer I was able to get it exactly as the client requested.

As a result, this is the first open source software I've made voluntary donations to. It's an excellent piece of software. Installs easily, completely customizable, and always forward moving.

Install VM and test it out. You won't be disappointed.

On first review looked complicated but I'm getting to grips with it after a couple of days. I like it. Fits very well with joomla with a look and feel matching the joomla site. Covers most things and only a couple of small problems setting up states and dropdown values for registration fields. Integrated with Paypal in a few minutes.

Well I must admit I was very pleasantly surprised when I installed virtuemart, esp after reading all the other recent reviews. The install went smoothly, and I had my product added and listed in about 10mins without any trouble. Maybe that's the secret, do a fresh install??

Anyway, very pleased with this version of VirtueMart.

I am not a VM developer, but I think it's not fair to give comments before you know quite well how the system works, unless you are an oscommerce (or its derivatives or other cart softwares) users or developers who are trying to give bad image about VM in this forum.

If you are new to VM (but I hope you are not new to Joomla 1.5. If you are new to Joomla 1.5, you should get familiar with Joomla 1.5 first before installing VM 1.1), I would suggest that you not try to install on a non-clean Joomla installation. Try to install VM 1.1.0 (it looks like 1.1.1 is coming out shortly) on a clean Joomla 1.5.3 (1.5.4 is on the way soon) installation. Or you can just simply install Joomla 1.5.3 ECommerce Edition.

I also would suggest to not install the dummy data (both from Joomla and VM), just do purely clean installation. Then start playing around by putting your own categories and dummy products including pictures and images. That way you will get familiar of how the system works. Try to add, delete, edit the data and do virtual transactions using Paypal Sandbox Test Environment. Once you are getting more familiar and comfortable, then start try the advanced features such as Product Attributes, Multi Vendor, etc. (I guess someone else already mentioned all the advanced features built-in this new VM).

Because Joomla 1.5 is adapting MVC framework, somehow it causes all extensions including VM looks slow. I admit that there are many things to be fixed at the backend side but the whole results are not as bad as you guys wrote here.

In regards to a comment that suggesting Zen Cart, I just want to let you know do you research first before adapting the softwares. I am not saying that VM is the best, but at least the advantages are more than the disadvantages compared with other open source shopping cart softwares (especially with OSCommerce and its derivative such as CRE Loaded and Zen Cart). I believe there is a comparison review in VM forum. Just search with keyword oscommerce, cre loaded or zen cart. And you will know what the advantages and the disadvantages are.

It won't take hours to know what the CSS classes/IDs are (especially if you think that you are a professional web designer/developer). Not only all the classes are kept in theme.css file, but also there are many developer tools out there to do this simple task. If you are really a professional web designer/developer, you will know what those tools are.

But for you who are not a professional web designer/developer, don't worry, help is on the way. Beautiful VM templates (like those for oscommerce) will be coming out soon in the next couple months. Just stay tune. Don't go away. If you really need a live store now, I would suggest to go with VM 1.0.15. If you can wait, just wait until Joomla 1.5.4 and VM 1.1.1 are released. Hopefully many bugs will be fixed. In the meantime, just play around with VM 1.1.0 on your local computer using xampp or wamp.

In regards to bad forum support, I saw all other open source forum supports are just about the same (including all other Joomla extension forums and even oscommerce). Well, two-way fixes are always the best way, meaning while we hope more experienced VM users are willing to help the newbies, the newbies themselves are more willing to learn and work harder (and as much as possible to not throwing questions especially the silly ones). If it is really necessary to find the answer, try to search the forum first with as detail keyword as possible (always try with different keyword if one keyword doesn't work). I am 100% sure, for all silly questions, the answers are already there.

So bottom line is, be mature and don't be childish, unless you are a competitor.

Hope my 2cents can shed some light for the darkness.