The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

I have experience with Zencart, X cart, oscommerce


VM is by far the best I cart I have worked with. The biggest thing is its a component for joomla

After looking into this system, installing it several times.. Getting used to the back-end... I decided to use it for a production store for a client.

It's pretty intuitive. However you're basically screwed if you need to change some functionality. The programming is all procedural and the template files are inundated with includes, and requires, in place of the core template system. Rather than using objects, parameters are set and globalized, making it impossible - exempting a global site search - to change some of the core functionality.

And the back breaker was the in-ability to set fixed shipping cost's per item, or the ability to create an extension due to the lack of OO use.

I have been an advocate for VM for about one year now, and my client's insist on oscommerce or ecommerce or a variety of zen cart. Not only is the joomla platform perfect for melding an online shop with an elligant design, but also Vm's capability when combined with CSV Improved is unstoppable!

I recently purchased the googlecheckout plugin through power sellers unite, and I am stoked about giving my newest client the full joomla treatment with banners, adverts, video and audio playback with product scroller...you get the picture.

Overall Virtuemart is my Number one choice for online shopping carts!

VM cart is looks great at first glance. It seems to provide all the features a shopping cart needs. If you want to plan a major store VM has a whole bunch of problems you need to worry about.

On top of my list is performance,

1: It makes too many database calls for simply content display, when I say too many I mean about 200 odd database calls, which apparent no one has noticed in these reviews, if your website has major traffic on the site VM Site will slow down and eventually crash. (Major)

2: There is a feature called Manufacturers however it does not behave like manufacturers it’s merely for display purpose. (Minor)

3: Product attributes are totally useless. (Minor)

4: there is no use for vendors (Minor)

5: the most important component in a shopping cart is its ability to communicate with its users, VM has that capability however there is no easy way of customizing the emails it sends out. (Major)

6. It lacks the ability to import users.

7. User registration system could be better, as a lot of shopping carts are b2b and they require prior user approvals before they can be allowed access to the system,

There are several other issues which can be catered by custom programming but there is a real need to improve VM performance and communication system.

If VM can improve upon these in their future versions, I without a doubt think it can be a candidate for the best system in the world.

Virtuemart is the BEST! They really help you get off the ground too, A+!

This was a great online e-commerce much better than others and useful for all types of businesses

Virtuemart is the only Free Shopping cart which provides all the features that you require to maintain a online shop.It is very powerful and Excellent Modules are available.

Virtuemart is and excellent extension that would cost $$$ anywhere else. I have installed and setup clients several times with this shopping cart and compared to Zend or Oscommerce it is a nice inclusion to Joomla. Many of my clients are very happy with this shopping cart.
Now there are some whiners that virtuemart doesn't custom itself to the way that suites individual needs and you must be a php/css programmer to modify it to look and feel as you wish.
That is true because it would make the file too large and take extra effort away from increasing functionality of the product. I guess that is why you pay someone like me to customize it beyond what the basis framework of virtuemart.
It is said that if something is free then you will get more negative feedback than if you charge a lot of money. Remember the days when someone charge $1,000 to $100 USD for a shopping cart that didn't work this well and had limited features? I do.
Good Work Virtuemart and I will be giving a donation.

This new version 1.1 is not user friendly at all. The shop display is not easy to configure, all the position is messed up, and alot of unnecessary fields that are abandoned.

ActuallY we would just be happy with version

I am amazed by some reviews that were completely misguided and dangerously can lead users to have misperception about Virtuemart. For example when I read a review that said she had installed VM on several sites for several weeks and what she got was a blank site both frontend and backend. When I contemplated this review, I asked to myself how could this extension ever exist for so long (even before Joomla was born) if all I got was a blank site in the first place. Completely doesn't make any sense to me.

Another example would be a review that said why the backend interface is much more nice than the frontend. My best guess would be because there are thousands of great looking templates for the frontend whilst none for the backend. Although in my opinion, nothing special on the backend admin interface, it's just the same like Joomla's and others' extensions. I have no idea what made him said so.

Last example would be a review that said VM doesn't work with Paypal. I did some research by looking at hundreds of VM sites. Interestingly I found that majority of them are using Paypal! Some are combined with 2CO or other local payment processors as well. So my conclusion is VM does work with Paypal. My other logic thinking said since Paypal is the most common payment processor in the world, why on earth would VM ever want to have no interest in supporting Paypal in the first place (as what the review said)? What's the advantage of doing so? I'm not seeing any except all the disadvantages, instead.

I guess these kind of unweighted reviews must be reviewed first by the moderator before it was posted whether it's truly a review or just a junk note.

VM is not the easiest component to work with, but everything else makes up for it. My site/ store was up and running within 3 weeks.

After installing VM, I can tell that these guys put a lot of work into their creation. Sure I had to do some research, but that comes with the territory. Thanks to the team that contributed their time and energy into VM only to provide this great service for FREE!!!

Muchas gracias! :)

I was a newbie not only with Joomla but any sort of ecommerce when I discovered VM, and yes, I did have quite a few problems in setting it up esp where shipping costs were involved, but doing multiple searches on their forum and seeing how others had tried to fix similar issues, along with a lot of trial and error, I eventually overcame them - admittedly probably not correctly (e.g. I've had to stick in a ridiculous weight of 1 kg for a handmade card in order to provoke the correct shipping options) but they work and the system works and I've certainly had no problems with it.

I like the frontend which is fine for a small site like mine and in particular loved how easy it was to get it set up with payment options.

I have another site on another platform which doesn't support VM and am having to try to use the much heavier OsCommerce which I can tell you is a TON tougher to set up and work with. And there's almost as little support for it sometimes too, and I agree - nothing more frustrating than not getting an answer at all to a problem, let alone it taking days to do so.

But overall, I would have to agree with others here who've commended the module as I truly feel it's worth the hard work and effort to get it up and running. And given how I've got next to no PHP knowledge or understanding I wouldn't agree that you need to have much - a very basic appreciation of where your modules are stored and how to tweak some basic code lines is about all you might need, if even.

I have been trying to use this on several sites for weeks now and everytime I manual install or automatic all's I get after installing everything is a blankwebsite and the backend the component is blank as well.

I'm not sure how it made Editors Pick. If you check out the forum they never answer anyone's support question.

When you see the admin tool, you'll be blown away by it's design and maturity. Unfortunately, the admin tools are so much more advanced than the front end ... the part the user sees. The display of products on the site has so much to be desired. Why put so much effort into the admin tools and so much less effort into the product display and shopping cart functionality. This is still a good shopping cart, but be prepared to hack the code to make it look at least semi-professional to the site visitor.

I felt a strong need to create an account here just to rate this component.

I've used Virtuemart in the past with PayPal (something used by a few of you out there I'm sure) and I've always been inclined to appreciate such a robust e-commerce extension for Joomla. It's worked for me before, but in working with the latest version it has been problem after problem after problem. When I finally find a fix or a rough work around for one problem another one is encountered.

Don't use this if you're simply going to use PayPal there are too many flaws and very little relevant support in the forums. Other payment methods may be the same, but I assume that there's less interest in supporting PayPal since it is free and often viewed as a less than serious payment processor.

In any case, even if you get it to work there will be annoying little bugs to live with such as compiling all products as one during checkout or listing products separately but not transferring shipping costs. The biggest problem is failure to notify properly a confirmation of successful payment. This is the latest version and I never had this much trouble getting previous versions to work!

Great component! It's been over 2 years ago since when we started our online shop. VM helped us to have a nice basis. Sure we modified it and tweaked it allot in order to suit our needs, but the component is very stable and has no noticable issues.
This is one of the real Joomla components, that really helped the Joomla Community to develop and to expand it's range.
Many thanks to the developers!

At first glance this shopping cart system seems great, however, there are many flaws in its design that makes it pretty-much WORTHLESS ... thank god its free.

1. This shopping cart system is Category Driven ONLY! ... there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY of filtering the products! They have created additional features like product TYPES and ATTRIBUTES to enhance the products ordering system, but if you want your customers to sort the products by any other means other than by Name, Category and a few things like Price ... then just FORGET IT!

2. Manufactures are worthless in this system. You can't do anything with them.

2. Vendors are worthless in this system. You can't do anything with them. Admittingly this feature is Beat.

3. No REAL support in the forums ... there are very few real developers working on this thing, and forget about Feature Requests ... out of the hundred or so, only 1 was fulfilled!

4. There are reasons why this thing is free ... is you want a BASIC shopping cart then this thing will work fine, beyond that go somewhere else.

I can understand the last few reviews, at first glance this can seem very daunting, however I have found if I stick to a tried and tested install approach it works fine. Install Joomla, install Virtuemart, install sh404sef (if needed), now do all your set up and make sure it all works. Be aware that there is a direct relationship between the Joomla global settings and the VM settings, and to get postage to work you need to make sure it is active in the path to purchase, these being the two most common issues. It also helps if you install the demo data as this will illustrate the settings very well. Having set it all up, back it up! Then you can add in all the other eye candy etc that you want on your site safe in the knowledge that if you mess up your install you can roll back to a good version.
My thanks to the developers and others in the community for their help in the past.

I have installed VirtueMart four times. And got it working on two sites. but only for a while.

Two major cautions need to be given to anyone that wants to use VirtueMart.

1. You MUST NOT be a Joomla newbie
2. You MUST know php

VirtueMart has so many capabilities it is compelling to download and install. But, if you plan a major store, you will need to know php.

If you are considering VirtueMart because it is free, its not. It will cost you many hours and days. Their forum is filled with posts from many people pleading for help. Many receive "me to" replies and many with zero replies that are months old.

If you want VirtueMart, hire a consultant that has at least 10 stores in their portfolio (and go visit them first). It won't be free, but you will improve your probability of success. For me, I'm bagging VM - its too expensive.

I have been implementing VirtueMart for a client for well over two months now. Yes it was my first implementation and initially was fairly impressed with the product. Still, fairly impressed but now that we are down to the wire issues are coming up that I believe most users will have trouble with.

1. There is no way to have multiple taxes configured, even though they have a multiple tax option. You can't have taxes based on shipping address for different cities. You can globally assign one tax rate to a state and not charge other states, but if you have to charge different tax rates within a state based on the shippers city, it is not possible.

2. Non-taxable items. They claim to be able to do this, which it can be done, but for some reason they have tied "non-taxable items" to the item weight. So if you don't want to charge tax on something then you don't put an item weight in the configuration. But then if the customer only orders that item that is non-taxable and has no weight, then the shipping module doesn't bring up the shipping options (like their UPS Shipping Module). Why would you tie "non-taxable items" to a shipping weight.

3. Customizable emails are virtually non-existent - unless you are a php guru. There are no templates for emails that are easy to manipulate. The initial email that a consumer receives on the order looks great. Subsequent emails are a simple text email that looks very elementary and as of the date of this review...the forums, the developers have provided no answers.

4. Before you use this extension, go register and get into the forums and look at the questions and see how many responses there are from actual developers vs. forum members.

There are other little things to that are annoyances, but are fairly easy to overcome. However, the items I have described are big, not just for me but for a lot of users. The tax thing is huge.

If you need a simple, out of the box (so to speak) solution with no complications for tax implications, no need for custom emails to your buyers, and just want to sell all items with one flat tax, then I would agree, this product is pretty easy to use.

I have lots of good things to say also. I am just being candid about the issues.