Does everything, knows everything

What are the best aspects of this product?

I like their simple code structure, enriched with useful modules and a great community of users. They're releasing 2.0 now, and I guess that the new development hooks are going to be even better. Tweaking and custom templating is where OpenCart becomes most useful, especially if you're running a small business and you want to display a variety of small, simple to use products. What is really simple is to continue from where somebody stops, if you're a software developer you will understand what I'm saying.

What aspects are problematic or could work better?

Don't expect to push every good idea through, because they are using their own dev approach (Daniel's). While transfering from 1.5 to 2.0, you might experience incompatibility with some old modules. In fact, the entire vQmod and OCMod environment may become a bit messy and difficult to navigate. A good example of it is you trying to change some core files, and losing their upgrades just because you have to rewrite the entire code. Then, if you run a bigger shop, get ready to invest more energy (we run a 40K business, for instance, and it requires a lot of work).

What specific problems in your company were solved by this product?

The devil is in the details, and one really experiences the power of this quote when working with OpenCart. This apparently simple tool delivers amazing results, and turns basic few-product webshops into online giants, it happened to us approximatelty 20 times so far. We customize the themes and write our own solutions for bigger projects (100K SKUs and so on), which is also quite easy with a good developer by our side. If nothing else, try it to learn MVC, there is no better way to do it.

Are you a current user of this product?

Yes