Author Topic: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?  (Read 19527 times)

Offline nexxterra

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Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« on: October 05, 2020, 01:09:47 PM »
I have watched Abantecart for some time, I like it, enough so, that I want to replace opencart as the basis of a "shopify" alternative that we offer.
However, ALL emails to the admin have gone unanswered over a period of months and the forum is not very active...
As you might well imagine the length of issues we might have later when we need to change hundreds of clients websites back to opencart, we need to make this move from an educated view.
We want to support this project, however, when our clients look for a solution, we need to be able to assist them, even with advanced issues.
What are your opinions? what would you do in our situation?
Paul

Offline Nuno Neff

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #1 on: October 09, 2020, 07:20:19 AM »
I mooved from opencart to Abantecart along time ago, its true that open cart has much more extensions and themes but nothing compares to Abantecart iregarding simplicity in admin and surf friendly in storefront, things have improved a lot, and dont be affraid of changing...only that way we will get better if people come and support those that make new addons and new themes.

Offline nexxterra

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #2 on: October 10, 2020, 04:22:33 PM »
The vast number of plugins and themes can sometimes create confusion in the end users mind, these are great for the designer or freelancer working for the end user, however, we are looking to compete in the DIY market, so simplicity is key, yet customers will have support needs, as we are offering this product, it is us they will contact, most questions will be routine, but the few that are not are the ones that we may need to reach out to Abantecart or the community for answers, but we will need to do this in a very timely manner.
I have no issue paying for support, but it is nice if the one that wishes to be paid for support actually answers the pre sales emails sent to them.
In short, I am looking to build a long term relationship with something that seems disinterested in that relationship...

Offline maxter

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2020, 07:36:26 AM »
I would not say Abantecart is dying. Developers are prety active and my extensions are moving on the marketplace.
We work with both opencart and AbanteCart for the clients. Yes, opencart has more extensions but, there are many that are junk.
I prefer Abantecart over opencart because of interface and more sofisticated core and extension API.

Abantecart team is working on version 2.0 that suppose to be very powefull. I checked it some time ago and it looked promising.


Offline abantecart

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #4 on: October 12, 2020, 07:45:54 AM »
We are OK and emerging. Version 2.0 is moving and we will try to accelerate its arrival. 
There was a temporary slowdown with v2.0 due to increased custom requests, Marketplace updates and new version 1.2.17

Also, we get lots of positive direct feedback and good reviews on third party websites.

Please  rate your experience or leave your review
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Offline Basara

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2020, 09:23:43 AM »
I do not see any slow down. In opposite, we have a spike of activity.

nexxterra, where did you send your requests? We cover most of the questions in this forum. If you sent a support request to our email, we reply as well, but so you know, there is no free support via emails.

Offline nexxterra

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2020, 04:26:32 PM »
Mine was not a support request, it was a presales email sent to the correct place re the link for partners/requests on the website
I am not looking for anything free, I just need to know that our team can get answers in a timely manner from Abantecart when needed. Most of our team are advanced level, either full server admins, programmers or just a lot of ecommerce experience with a number of platforms, they will answer the typical, mundane questions for the clients, however, the odd time something come up that they can not figure out, it is nice to know they have a place to turn...and I see many posts here very dated with no replies, we have no issue in forking over some cash when needed.
Paul

Offline nexxterra

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #7 on: October 13, 2020, 04:28:13 PM »
We are OK and emerging. Version 2.0 is moving and we will try to accelerate its arrival. 
There was a temporary slowdown with v2.0 due to increased custom requests, Marketplace updates and new version 1.2.17

Also, we get lots of positive direct feedback and good reviews on third party websites.

Please tell me you are not going to do what opencart did and make 2.0 incompatible with all plugins and previous versions?

Offline abantecart

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #8 on: October 17, 2020, 09:28:59 PM »
It is a shame that we missed your email. Usually, we reply to all sales/partnership emails as we get them within 24 hours. If you could resend, will reply to you.

About version 2.0. The intention is to keep older extensions compatible, but sometimes it is a challenge.
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Offline nexxterra

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #9 on: October 19, 2020, 01:08:40 PM »
Of course it is a case by case basis with plugins, but OC changed their entire system so NO 2.X plugins worked. This left many plugin authors concentrating on wordpress plugins and the selection of plugins dropped off a lot.
I have never understood how improvement or updates could ever mean removing features or functionality...

Offline kellyma53

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #10 on: October 23, 2020, 12:10:12 AM »
I still have hope for abantecart

Offline abantecart

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #11 on: October 26, 2020, 01:29:29 PM »
We have many things in a pipeline and couple are very interesting.
Unfortunately this plans are moving slow, as our team is pilled into different directions to keep existing customer happy.

I am setting more priority on upcoming features that are inline with new marketing strategies.
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Offline llegrand

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #12 on: October 26, 2020, 10:37:42 PM »
Not to put too fine of a point on it,  but October 11, 2017, was the initial post of 2.0 starting post.  Third anniversary and still counting.

We are no longer sitting on the edge of our seats in anticipation.  For me it has moved to a feeling of dread as to what pitfalls we're going to experience in conversion from v1  to v2.  I sincerely hope for  what portents to be a major change will be better tested by MORE of us users and extension developers prior to launch so the prior shortcomings of version updates are not replicated.

After 7+ years using AbanteCart we are committed to AbanteCart and know that it has great merit even in spite of some major failures in some upgrades. 

Regards, with my fingers crossed for excellence
Lee  from the WHY2 support team

Offline Anon

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #13 on: February 02, 2021, 09:18:41 AM »
Coming back to check on the Abantecart, it's nice to see there's plan for updates still. Lets hope 2021 will see some updates and growth with 2.0 release.

Offline OneMore

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Re: Is Abantecart emerging or dying?
« Reply #14 on: December 04, 2023, 02:55:37 PM »
I snubbed AbanteCart for (too) long time, likely because some other carts are mentionned more on Internet, and because AbanteCart looses competition in stupid "Versus" comparisons like "how many themes", "how many extensions", and "which is the most powerful cart".

I am myself a developer with the experience of several shopping cart systems, but also as a merchant.
I have been using MaianPal (formerly MaianCart), CubeCart and others.

Recently I have been giving a try to Prestashop.
For sure, it is a powerful system, but I have found that basic tasks like adding categories and products were slow.
Prestashop database is to my opinion unnecessarily complex (two many tables, two many fields) because almost everything is stored in database. Simple customization may reveal complex in practice.
There are also good things with Prestashop, like its hooking system, but most of the time we don't need all this complexity.

In comparison, by looking at the database and the file hierarchy, AbanteCart appears to me as a better structured project, and I am almost sure I will be able to customize it more easily to match my needs.
So, yes, from what I have seen so far I like AbanteCart very much.

Very often, the size of a community makes more the success of a project that its intrinsic qualities.
Many excellent projects "died" because their communities were too small.
Think how many good CMS were "killed" by Joomla and then Wordpress. Those were/are not necessarily the best CMS but had/have huge number of users.

When developping a new major version "2.0", one risk --as with every fork-- is to split an already small community in two even smaller communities. This may kill a community.

As a developer, I perfectly understand that it is sometimes necessary to give a fresh breeze to a project, but onboarding users of version 1.x to the 2.x will be critically important to not kill the community.

 

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