VirtueMart is the big player for ecommerce in the Joomla world and I like it; I just wish it included things like multi-currency transactions (being able to set item prices in a specific currency, then use some open source data to calculate totals based on current exchange rates, etc.

It gets a little frustrating at times when configuring authorize.net, but its is still worth the effort.

I'd like to see a lot more in the way of reporting and tools that are of more use to a larger ecommerce site. Processing orders is still a little cumbersome from the back end.

After looking at the ratings and considering this is an editor's pick, I figured it was a stable product waiting to be used. Another reviewer stated it best, "more bugs than a rain forest"! Really been a problem since I installed this for a client and the cost that they have incurred because of the time it has taken me to track down and fix the endless supply of bugs has been high. The support forum is disorganized and not very helpful. Many of the problems I encountered simply couldn't be fixed. My client is looking to use a stand alone cart or a commercial extension.
Just a few issues:
- Thumbnails and images don't upload correctly.
- The user sessions don't work well with the rest of Joomla.
- Various error and warning message may be encountered prior to patching both Joomla and VirtueMart core files.
- Very limited options for shipping

PHP and MySQL version seem to be a factor on some servers. Not sure how there is such a high rating for this component or positive reviews. Perhaps some users didn't fully configure and execute VM prior to rating the product.

If you weren't running a complex or large shopping cart, then this might work for you but I doubt it.

I have been trying to get this working for over a year now with Joomla, but I still get the same error in admin as others have seen.

Supposed to be fixed in this new version but its the same, I have to admit defeat and I am somewhat annoyed by this as it used to be (back to 1.12) very good but this one still no good.

Sorry all

I am so happy with the component.
I gives me the possibility to combine Joomla and my shop.
Everyone talks about magento but for me, virtuemart is the killer shop system.
For Gods sake there was the update. I already thought that the project sleeps although of thousands entries in the forum.
BEAUTIFUL!

I can't believe this product. I've been playing around in the open source software community for a number of years. But I can honestly say I've never found software that is so difficult and unstable to work with. The support form is a play on words. There is very little support offered. I see many of the posts ignored completely, and the few that do get replies, it's like the blind leading the blind. It certainly isn't ready for prime-time in my books.

I have used VM on and off now for some time with various sites and have to say overall for me anyway that it installs and runs without to many major problems. Reading the help doc explains pretty much everything and for msot people getting your store online should be a good experience. As pointed out postage seems to be a bit of a nightmare to sort.

But the biggest problem to me now seems to be that questions are not being answered on the forums by the developers. I realise it is open source and people dedicate time to it but it did seem to have so much promise. Not getting answers gives the impression at least that the project is not very active!

For me duplication of images is a major issue especially when you are talking 900 images. An ongoing issue that still is not resolved and one which could have a major impact on someones hosting account.

Customisation of certain areas is not always to straight forward either.

The product overall does the job but I do not feel I can't give to higher mark based on the points raised above.

I'd like to be the first one to thank for the new version(which has been delayed). It's (by far) the most feature rich shopping cart system for Joomla! and their support is good.

Thanks Soren! and other suys behind this project...

First of all I would like to thank the people behind this project.

I have been playing with Virtuemart for a few months and I have only recently gone live with my first shop.

With in a month I have managed to get a few sales and I am now busy working on traffic.

Only real issue I have had was getting some proper checkout templates. I ended up using templates from a template site that was modifiable to my taste.

Would be nice to see a add on what gives you the capability to work with multiple orders at once and to do shipment track.

But all and all I very,very happy with Virtuemart!!!

Really like the features. If worked well I would definitely buy it/donate. But keep getting Operation Aborted error in IE. Spent days trying to fix it - problem would go away in one place but appear in other, can't afford to waste more time and risk user experience. According to forums, this issue may be fixed in 1.1.4 release.

I mark this extension excellent. it extends joomla to the ultimate shop system. due to this the whole system is much better than oscommerce or xtcommerce. keep up this good work.

This component is excellent, but it has a disadvantage, there is no very much information in Spanish, on the part of his creator, since they can be demos or examples a better use is able to give him, but excellent this one and especially that this within reach of every munco Thank you for sharing your wisdom

Yes! There is always a BUT. This software is great and I'm using it to set up my online business. I have tried and search for other solutions, but I like Virtuemart the best! Especially because it runs on Joomla! Please continue developing this software to become the best on the markt. Make more possibilities to the software, good documentation and please listen to the people who are using it. In short: The product has a lot of nice features, but I guess I'm not the oly one missing a lot functions....

Thanks again for providing us with this beautifull piece of work!

I have uploaded all the images correctly but they don't show on the front page of the store (for the featured products below the categories) and inside the category, no images for products

I was breaking my head for 2 days now, trying to fix it.
I asked this question at the VirtueMart forum but did not get an answer...
I tried to contact the developer but the "contact us" form on VirtueMart site does not work..!?

My impression is: very poor coding and no support.

First off, I'd like to say I've been using this for several years now. It's definitely the best Shopping cart system I've found that integrates with Joomla.
Before this, I was using OSCommerce and Zen Cart, which are great shopping carts, but aren't designed for Joomla.

That being said, there are a few bugs in it that seem to me the developers didn't thoroughly test everything they updated. Most notably, there is an error in the code that essentially breaks the ability to add a shipper. There is a fix for this on their forums, but the last update for VirtueMart was 8 over months ago.

I was here giving a review and felt I couldn't log off and never right a reqview about VM. Great and easy product. Thank you co much!

Hi,

I have no idea how to do all these things but I must say that after my friend set them up I can at least do the basics. You who made this program did a very nice job. Keep up the good work and I will donate some money for it. Thank you for making it easy for the rest of us.

Let me first qualify this review. I'm not super technical - my forte is design. Recognizing this limitation when I wanted to install VM for my client (2nd time to use VM - first time went well but limited item store) I went to Joomlancers and hired someone with VM background to take care of it. They came highly rated but VMart has been a problem since day one on this install, uninstall, reinstall.

Getting shipping set up works only if you use a major carrier. Canada Post isn't an option.

Log in problems - yup we have those too. Clients log in to their accounts/create accounts and have to log in several times to try to buy their items many just give up. Some will call the client or email to get their order.

Forums - no one answers.

I think this product has so much potential. It's a darn shame the developers haven't paid more attention to feed back. Once a product with a great reputation now questionable.

I have been using virtuemart for a long time and I felt that given that it is by far the most utilised shopping cart for Joomla I should share some of my experiences.

Virtuemart is an extremely powerful shopping system, you will find lots of positive things about it all over the place so I am going to focus on the bits you may not find elsewhere. Virtumart is far from perfect, there are a number of weird bugs (such as adding a shipper, select lists accepting empty values when marked compulsory and breaking when you add items to them, the width on custom fields not being respected on the front end the list goes on). If you are working with a picky client be prepared for a lot of bugfixing on stuff you would expect to work straight up. It is also very complex to hack as pointed out by others below. Sometimes you will have to follow 5 or 6 files to find one bit of echoed HTML.

There are also some glaring ommissions such as insufficient options for handling Australian GST (hack available buried in the forums for this) the inability to set shipping rates per product (once again there is a 3rd party module that I found buried in the forums away that does this see http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=58784.0

This brings me to another issue which is the fact that the forums are used for extensions much more than the actual extensions area so you have to trowl through the forums and if you are lucky you will find hacks and extensions buried in there with very little quality control and an unsuitable structure for handling extensions. The forums are also loaded with people who have had exactly the same problems as you but whos posts have had hundreds of views but no responses.

I will continue using virtuemart of course and I think now I have probably worked out the majority of the bugs but I wanted to post this so others are aware of it and hopfully the developer will respond.

I've been using Virtueumart for two years I like I'm sure many others was attracted to it for two reasons. One, it's free and two it integrates into Joomla. The problem as the saying goes "you get what you pay for".

The idea of virtuemart is very nice but the actual use of the system is far from "polished". Those that are interested in running anything serious will quickly find out they will end up having to pay for some custom programming or spend long hours customizing the functions yourself.

Support for the program has been in decline since I started to use the program and is now non existent. However, visiting the forum and asking for help you are sure to find programmers eager to do custom work for you for a price.

There also seems not to be much forward momentum in keeping the product up to date with whats available on the market. By the time you're done paying for custom modules, programming, or templates you may as well buy a commercial product.

I have spent about three months getting a Virtuemart site up from stratch. I knew nothing about it before that so there is a learning curve. My site is almost ready to go up so I feel now qualified to make some comment.

The first is that Joomla and Virtuemart are a wonderful and powerful combination. It is possible to make them work essentially seemlessly together and this overcomes many of the limitations of the other systems. There seems to be no limits of extensions available, so it would seem to be able to do whatever you have a mind to do.

On top of this, Virtuemart has more than enough optons and configeration possiblites (I would think)to handle most shop needs. They have in planning a Virtuemart 2.0 but I do not know the specifications for this and I wonder what more it could offer, given that Virtumart 1.1.3 seems to do all I need.

So Joomla Virtuemart is my pick - except for one thing. The current version of Virtuemart is essentially inoperable. Having been extensively in the forums, what they do not tell you on their front page is this.

1. They acknowledge that the current version is buggy. I alone have run into several; I get the feeling that the issue is quality control, not the capactity of the development team.

To counter this, they are planning a new update called RC 1.1.4 and this has been promised for a number of months but we are still waiting the release.

2. One of the major bugs (acknowledged by Virtuemart) is that it works poorly on Internet Explorer Version