I have played around with the new kids on the block, but Virtue Mart is still the best and most comprehensive shopping cart for Joomla.

And it is free like Ubercart for Drupal.

I only wish that more developers get behind the project and would like to thank sincerely to the current team for all their great work.

Thank you!

There are many good things about Virtuemart. It is free and open source. The database design is efficient which means that it can handle pretty much any size of store. I use it for a client's site which has over a thousand products and several thousand registered customers, it handles this with ease and I am sure could handle even bigger sites.

They seem to have ironed out a lot of the more annoying bugs, also they have introduced a system which allows you to extend the main classes through the template, which should allow for a lot more flexibility.

As the creators themselves say, Virtuemart is not intended to be a 'straight-out-of-the-box' complete e-commerce site, you do have to put a bit of work in yourself - or find a good template that does this for you. What it is good for is providing an e-commerce framework that you can customize to do most things that you want.

The annoying things about it (and which prevent it getting 5 stars) are that it is not well integrated with the Joomla menu system, which can cause problems. Also the support is truly terrible. I have never had a question answered in the support forum, really there is no point in even posting.

Virtuemart isn't too bad. It's definitely not the best shopping cart I've worked with. On the plus side, it has lots of features.

But the downside is that support is poor. Yeah, the forums are large, but actual clear-cut answers are scarce. I'm STILL dealing with the "...totals do not match order amounts" error, which is extremely frustrating. Also, adding additional modules are a HUGE pain. It needs it's own integrated installer, like Community Builder.

Gonna be trying others since nobody seems to know why this error is being thrown, nor does anyone have a solution for it.

i`m using this component these days for a cosmetics shop. my theme is include in mesolite template and everything in is fantastic:

- great back-end full control
- sub-items is very important feature i`m using it
- absolutely complete extra modules
- and so on

you want to implement an online shop?
i advice you test VM at first your selection!

thank you.

All was well with my installation and configuration, though in this jet age regular update will be welcomed.
Great piece of work. Thanks

So far so good! I have only been using it for a couple of weeks, but it seems to be doing well.
Rhonda W.

Virtuemart promises a lot, delivers some, and infuriates you constantly. It does not play well, at all, with other joomla components, especially those that deal with user records.

There is a custom registration and login module, but no user hook plugin, so you *must* use the virtuemart user manager, login, and registration modules. Using the core joomla user manager, or allowing core registration results in the user database getting out of sync.

There is no built in user sync capability post-installation to rectify this, you must handle the problem manually in the database.

The documentation is extremely poor. Fields are described similarly to how the Joomla API auto documentation works, e.g. the setting to make a user field required simply states "sets this field as required or not" without telling you if it's required for registration, checkout, or both. I can tell you from experience, it's not the second or third option, which causes problems.

Help requests in the forums are handled one of three ways, in order of occurrence:
1. Completely ignored.
2. Answered by a user with an useless but honest attempt to help, e.g. "is it plugged in?"
3. A suggestion to read the source, which would be fine if it wasn't such a poorly formatted, undocumented disaster.

The "API" is nearly the worst documented one I have encountered in almost twenty years as a professional developer.

The template system is atrocious, and it is nearly impossible to modify the simplest of layout items without doing core hacking of virtuemart. Once you find the appropriate file, you'll soon learn that the slightest modification of the code results in a cascade effect of destruction throughout the cart.

For example, adjusting the width of the div holding the registration information affects both the signup/register AND the checkout pages, even though they have entirely different layouts.

I'm not certain why it has such a high rating, but I suspect it's because people who are simply using it as a cart, with none of the advanced features, on a basic Joomla site, haven't seen any or many of these problems.

The truth is, for a site that will be even slightly customized beyond having a new template, virtuemart is a horrible choice. You will regret it every day you are forced to use it.

So, don't. Find another solution, or build one.

I have been using VM since Joomla 1.0.x and found it catered for all my e-commerce needs. However, over time I have found it has become too complex and it feels bloated.

I started building a new site about a week ago and installed VM as normal but it just felt like a chore to get it all configured and populate it with products going from screen to screen. So I thought I would look around for something else. I tried REDshop and a couple of the other Joomla ones but I got the same feeling.

So I looked around for a standalone version. I then stumbled upon Opencart. What a breathe of fresh air! Simple to use, configuration and product population was easy - but for me it got over my major gripe of VM - the speed - Opencart is lightning quick.

So, in a nutshell, if you need to use Joomla then VM will do what you need. If you are a novice with VM then I would take a lot of time to look at all the options it has - and take time to see how the templates in VM work.

If you don't need Joomla then take a look at Opencart it really is good.

Unbelievable for the price-- love it!

Yes, you have to work a little, but not too much.

I see why it is the editors choice.
I spent a week trying to configure Tienda, with no documentation and no support. I finally gave up and installed Virtual Mart - one day and I was up and running!
This free shopping cart was all I needed for my small Ecommerce site, but if one of my customers has need of a more extensive shopping cart, I would still most likely use this one.
I guess intuitiveness is an individual call, but I did not encounter any problems setting this cart up. My thanks to the developers for continuing to improve it.

Maybe it's good for newbies, who don't know php/html/css, and just want to make some shitty shop for themselves. One definetly shouldn't use it for custom shop. The extension is a real mess, with hardcoded templates, poor html. Tried it - and will have to finish it for one shop, but NEVER AGAIN!

Last update on Oct 16, 2009... this has long been the problem with VM. They rarely update, and never drastically update their extension.

VM is still a decent component offering more features than most competitors, and the community is still active enough that questions are getting answered.

But their promises of an upgrade are becoming a joke.

So here I review the 'latest' release of VM:

Configuration: Not as bad as people suggest. It takes some time, and some youtube tutorial videos.

The problem lies in trying to make any changes once it's live. You can very easily 'break' it. So if you are setting this up to be managed by someone else, make sure they know what not to touch, unless you want to be looking up default settings on the forum.

Management: A breeze. People who imply adding/changing items, taking and changing order statuses, and accepting payments isn't easy are full of it.

UI: Not terrible, but leaves much to be desired. The short answer - it isn't very intuitive. Nothing seems to be where one might expect to find it. Also, many of the settings (configuration issue as well) seem to be poorly labeled - and it's not clear what certain things are for, so you try to leave much of it alone.

Features: Probably more features than any other Joomla eCom Component. The Shipping Modules are fantastic (again - youtube tutorials on the set up), and the attributes (ex: +$20 for XXXL) is great. There are a ton I don't use though. It's well rounded for almost any type of eCom Site.

A bitter-sweet aspect is third party developer extensions. For the most part, I love the stuff people are out there producing, but for things like SEF!... this should have been built in as an option from the beginning of 1.5 native.

Look: Templates and other setting allow much flexibility in the look. I have found and reported some bugs which didn't seem to gain much attention. Oh, well.

The total of this bring me to 4 stars, but with its dwindling community, invisible development team, and the rise of valid competition, it could easily fall to a 3 star rating.

On the flip side, if they release a completely retooled version in the very near future with a slue of new options, easier configuration and a generally improved User Interface, I could give it a 5 star rating.

I'm going to get booed for suggesting this, but I'd be alright with VM going commercial (for a very reasonable price, of course) IF they ever get their shtuff straight!

I can not imagine anyone having any issues with this program. It works as advertised usually with a minimal of fuss. Yes the configuration can be a b it confusing for a noob, but most of the configuration is mere common sense. I highly recommend this to anyone.

I'll leave it at this I personally have used it over fifty times.

We have developed commercial shopping cart sites for many large clients.

Virtuemart is highly configurable and powerful.We have had it running 12,000 products over 766 categories with ease. You can stock the system via CSV in minutes and export data into all major accounting packages. We have had it configured to recieve realtime stock information from shop floor POS systems.

The real beauty of this extension is the amount of people developing for it. Including us. Search google and you will find pretty much anything you need. Clients love the administration as once configured it is a breeze for them to use.

Do not under estimate virtuemart. We still do not understand why this software is free but glad it it is.

I have recently installed and setup VirtueMart on two websites for my clients, both wanted a simple catalogue setup for their businesses and this component provided just that.

1. Easy and simple setup
2. One module to handle
a) login
b) product listing
c) product search
3. Easy to use in the backend

you may visit te sites under development on the following url's

http://sitsemo.com/index.php
and
http://globalmedicalsz.com

I would recommend anyone intending to setup an online catalogue and or shop to consider this Open Source solution before they opt for expensive options.

Great job

If you want a real store I would suggest Opencart or Magento. We have tested this application multiple times over the last few years to see if anything has improved.

The bottom line is that this application doesn't work properly. It is almost impossible to configure. You will spend days trying to configure it and will only end up in dissapointment. Do yourself a favour and stay away.

Just want to start with saying, even though it may sound harsh, but... Anyone who states this is not a good extension for Joomla is simply a noob and should probably not work in the Joomla CMS alone, and comment on programming you hardly can comprehend how came about. You probably need professional help with creating your own website.

This extension makes a lot of extensions look like kids games, and it is free. sure it needs you to understand how computers work to be able to operate it, well that is why you are here in the first place, because you think you are the top notch programmer who have useful stuff to share with the community and would like to use some great and almost complete functions that other programmers/developers has been so kind as to share with you so that you don't have to invent the wheel all over again.

This extension beats them all.

I am just saying. be happy when the functionalities are free and share some useful stuff with us.

If you need a free shopping cart for joomla this is a good choice. Otherwise I suggest magento or oscommece.

Love this great free shopping cart extension. I was able to create a shopping cart in a few minutes with it. Thanks to developer.

Virtuemart is just not as good as it is cracked up to be.
Use it only for small business and never professionel! The forum is slow and without much help from anyone and the manual is a joke.

If I had the choice I would have choosen some other system 1½ year ago when I started my Virtuemart journey....