Magento founder Roy Rubin is forging ahead and has announced a Magento solution for shopping clubs due for the middle of April (via Kassenzone, German blog):
"Magento, our enterprise open source eCommerce platform, will natively support private sales in the enterprise edition (availability announced mid-April).
This will bring private sales via our multi-store-retailing functionality to online merchants at a very low, competative price point.
I expect proliferation of private sale sites as a result"
Portero, an online marketplace for luxury goods (see Techcrunch), is planning its up-and-coming shopping club on the Magento solution.
This announcement makes Magento the first shopping system which is, in our opinion, delivering future-proof shopping solutions and also supports innovative new business models.
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
Yet more Magento hype to back up the bloated carcass that is their software. You heard it right, it is crap. Start with the 9-page spread detailing the database and then continue onto the Varien framework-within-a-framework hell they call their code. It's unfortunate but after spending endless hours trying to handle the monster I conceded defeat. The final straw was the inflexible, overcomplicated templating solution and the piss-poor performance. This software is improving, but that's like saying you've almost got your sunken ship to the surface. The problems stem not from a lack of resources on the part of Varien, the problems stem from the fact that the developers are not allowed to inject their strengths into the software, to fix the problem and mistakes, to control the bleeding, as it were. The hype of Magento is enormous and unchecked. If they could take just a fraction of their marketing strength and reinvest the time and effort they put into that side of it back into fixing the insanity that is their software, they might actually have a fighting chance of taking some market share. As of right now, they have an enterprise-level behemoth that requires maximum server resources and way too much in terms of operational resources to keep the beast sedated and functional. I cringe to think what it costs companies to run and maintain the software, let alone what they are doing to their customer's shopping experience with the god-awful performance. Big and Bulky is out guys, the other 80% of the market is the small biz developer and company and they have not the time nor resources to keep the Magento barge on course. Ever wonder why only large clients are profiled in the Magento client list? Because they are the only ones who can afford to manage it! What ticks me off is the amount of hype and press surrounding this craptacular commerce package. It's costing too many small developers revenue and clients. Please, put a damn warning sign on the package, stop selling $50 freaking "Meet Magento" tickets and start cleaning up your software, and apologize for not giving a crap about your "community" which consists of thousands and thousands of desperate, frustrated developers who weren't advised that Magento is what it is. How irresponsible, Varien.
Posted by: A concerned developer | 04/12/2009 at 08:15 AM
A very energetic comment. I'd be interested to hear what other developers think.
Posted by: Jason Soo | 04/12/2009 at 08:45 AM