There will always be hosted, closed-source systems. They have their place, pros, and cons. The cons – that’s where open source systems come in. Right now Magento is eCommerce. That’s been proven. Generally, the platform doesn’t matter. As a programmers and business people, we take many options into consideration when reviewing a client’s existing systems. Are they running an ERP? Are they a .NET shop? Custom? It all goes into the mix. Most of the time, you can’t make a hosted solution bend. For instance, if they have no support for WorldShip, you have two options: 1) Don’t use the hosted solution -or- 2) Don’t use WorldShip. That’s not a big deal for new companies; you can explain for hours on end different systems, pricing, pros / cons. The situation that calls for something different than a hosted solution is an existing company. There are business processes in place, and you can’t walk into a company who has been doing business a certain way for 20 years and completely interrupt their process. That looks bad for your company and it makes your client feel bad, and feelings are important. If you’re a business that’s a year old, you can’t waltz into an established corporation telling them they’re wrong.

That’s where open source systems come in – particularly in eCommerce.

Until Magento, there really weren’t any impressive open source eCommerce systems. I wouldn’t punish the devil himself with osCommerce, I think he would cry. ZenCart is really just osCommerce in better clothes. Seriously now – if they are any good then why has development pretty much stopped since the introduction of Magento? (I’d love to hear from the developers on that one.) There are a few other open source (and partially open source) systems, but none are particularly powerful or fast. If they’re PHP, there’s definitely some encrypted code that relies on ionCube Loader and if it’s a .NET system there’s compiled DLLs that you’ll pay thousands of dollars for the source on top of Windows licensing. Oh yeah – and I forgot Java; if you’re not a bank, school, or confused government agency then you probably have no use for Java.

So take a system like Magento – well thought out, clean code, and built on top of a framework by a company who’s founders contributed much of the core of PHP. The toughest part with a system as complete as Magento is to find something it can’t do or integrate with. Customers don’t need to ask, “Can Magento do _____?” but rather, “I need features a, b, c, x, y, and z. What’s our timeframe?”.

I’m not a Magento fanboy. You have to take it for face value. Does it work out of the box? Yes. But really it’s the best eCommerce framework around right now. If something better came along tomorrow, would I push that? Yes. If it’s RoR, it’s RoR. If it’s .NET, it’s .NET. It really doesn’t matter because as long as I can make it bend, an open source eCommerce system will always fill the gap of hosted, closed source solutions.