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ProductivePC
VP-CART New User

USA
199 Posts

Posted - April 01 2004 :  21:07:20  Show Profile  Visit ProductivePC's Homepage  Reply with Quote


Hey Stan,

When utilizing the
[ url] [ /url] tags you have to include the http:// otherwise your website will not work within these forums... just a helpful thought. However; seeing as you are not trying to make your link look like this World Famous Gift Baskets all you really need to do is to type out www.worldfamousgiftbaskets.net without the [ url] [/url] tags.



hope it helps

Wayne
www.WorldFamousGiftBaskets.net
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pixuk
Starting Member

United Kingdom
2 Posts

Posted - April 07 2004 :  03:27:44  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Just been through the process of evaluating both Comersus & VP-ASP free versions, so can offer a couple of objective points;

I should note that the project this relates to is for a community site that would be unlikely to be able to afford the full commercial versions of either; and their goal is just to shift 1 or 2 bits of merchandise to cover the £10-per-month hosting fees for their site, so whilst some of the comments are addressed in the paid-versions of both applications - this wouldn't apply in this case.

Comersus: Strong Points

  • Appears to have more features in their free version, notably PayPal checkout

  • Very easy to integrate into existing ASP site



VP-ASP: Strong Points

  • Better code structure

  • Better shop interface



Comersus: Weak Points

  • Shop looks too database-backed; poor display formatting

  • Weak management tools; workflow is cumbersome even for only a few products

  • Some bugs which are only fixed by searching through their support forum



VP-ASP: Weak Points

  • Took me longer to get going, since my headers & footers included ASP, I had to figure out how to change the .htm includes to .asp

  • Option Explicit - great for standalone structured code, but a pain to integrate into real-world sloppy code

  • Obviously comphrensive, but ultimately confusing set of admin options. Most features not applicable to the lite version



At the final cut, I've had to go for Comersus since the requirement is for PayPal (if they could afford credit card merchant services, they would be able to afford the paid versions of either app). I note, however, that VP-ASP does support PayPal, but I made the assumption that it is not supported in the lite version. Please let me know if I'm wrong about this!

pixuk

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support
Administrator

4679 Posts

Posted - April 07 2004 :  04:46:49  Show Profile  Visit support's Homepage  Reply with Quote
All our gateways work for all versions. So Paypal works for Lite Version. We would have given you a 20% discount so total cost would have come down to $116 for Lite with Paypal.

ASP can be placed in shoppage_header.htm since it is included in an ASP file. There was no need to chnage anything. We provide examples with our mini cart and language statements.

Admin Menus are something you can turn off if unused. We supply two examples VPASP and ADMIN to show two userids with different options. So you can create very slimmed down admin menus in a minute or so

Your feedback was helpful

Howard Kadetz
VP-ASP

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pixuk
Starting Member

United Kingdom
2 Posts

Posted - April 07 2004 :  05:02:31  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Hi Howard,

Thanks for the responses. Would have preferred to have used VP-ASP, but even with discount the $116 is still $116 above the available budget. Comersus offer the PayPal gateway for free (although I should note their PayPal gateway script has two bugs in it, which I spotted this morning; a) they hard code the currency - USD, and b) they didn't write the Content-Type header on the IPN response - not exactly difficult to fix, but an indication of some of the issues with Comersus).

When playing with VP-ASP, I initially had Asp code in the .htm header/footer files and couldn't get it to work until I changed them to .asp (and then altered the calling routine to pick up on them). Is there a limited to the number of nested include files? This may be the reason, as my own header & footer made liberal use of the includes...

Thanks again,

pixuk

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advancedasia
Starting Member

34 Posts

Posted - April 29 2004 :  08:59:04  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
quote:

Would have preferred to have used VP-ASP, but even with discount the $116 is still $116 above the available budget.



pixuk :

I'm sure Howard is glad you went with Comersus.

You are a time-waster.

I'm sure Howard won't miss wasting "any more time" answering the questions of someone who never intends to buy the product.

Do you think Howard's running a charity here ??

VP-ASP is a value-for-money shopping cart, but it's not freeware. The free version is intended for demo and evaluation purposes only.

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Sfeher
Starting Member

USA
5 Posts

Posted - March 16 2005 :  12:15:33  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
We have installed numerous copies of VPASP over the years --- probably have no fewer than 10 stores operational today. Some of these licenses were from version 3.x and run through the current version 5.5.

A few months ago we located Comersus and thought we would try to install this for a new client rather than VPASP. Honestly we just wanted to see if we could find another cart just to compare and see how good VPASP really is.

Our evaluation of Comersus is that its a bit clunky, has a fairly non-helpful customer service team who never reply, and the GI is pretty poor in our estimation.
There were plenty of quirks in the programming that took a while to get around too.

In Short? VPASP is much better, and we'll not purchase another Comersus license again.

Thanks!


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Sharon
VP-CART Super User

357 Posts

Posted - March 17 2005 :  04:08:09  Show Profile  Visit Sharon's Homepage  Reply with Quote
I am a self-taught jack of all trades so lack programing experience. I can put a static site together OK but needed a shopping cart. I looked at Comersus, and I looked, and I looked and I never got very far.
I then found VP-ASP, support is superb especially for a numpty. I have managed to get a full site up OK, even though we do not use it for shopping, just selecting products & sending an enquiry in. I have had no major problems tweaking things & have been able to work out many things for myself thanks to the excellent documentation.

I had a meeting with the bosses yesterday & they are happy too.

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alindsey
Starting Member

14 Posts

Posted - March 18 2005 :  10:11:07  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I normally don't post to the forum since it generally reveals my ignorance, but given the discussion of VPASP support, I just had to throw this in:

VPASP has supported their product in every way I could have ever expected - beyond any other experience I have had with any other software - bar none. I've seen support responses from different folks at all times of the day and night - they must work 24 hours a day! Generally I get a response same day, many times within minutes!

This is no small thing to me, especially given the several difficulties we have had with the code as we pushed its boundaries pretty hard. Howard and Radek and the guys have helped us discover things that weren't even VPASP problems, just to make sure that we got them solved. In short, VPASP is worth the money, even the $400 or so it cost for the full up option package we employ. We had one product when we started and now we have over 350 - and we're about to add about 100 more. VPASP has scaled very well and we're happy with the code modularity and how it customizes easily (once you understand the flow).

Documentation is above average, all things considered, though I still find that things aren't explicit enough many times. One thing they could add is an overall flow diagram that shows what modules get called where, from shopping cart entry to shopping cart exit. Another very helpful addition would be an index to all VPASP files and routines to easily identify what file holds a particular function or subroutine

That said, a note of advice to help others make their support experience even more pleasant: You must explicitly describe your problem in such a way that it can't be easily confused with something else in the first few lines of your message. These guys deal with support stuff all day, and many times they read the first few lines and don't register the rest, thinking they've seen the same thing before and already know what the problem is. Then you get a response that makes you shake your head wondering where that answer came from. But it's a common problem with humans in general (I just did it to a colleague the other day!!) and, in my mind, is overshadowed by the VPASP support long-haul commitment, but something to keep in mind when you write a detailed message that outlines an entire history of troubleshooting you've done. Be creative in how you construct your problem description so that you optimize the probability that the crew in OZ will really see what you're saying.

In short, VPASP is everything you are creative enough to make it. And their support will be there to help you along the way.

regards to all, Alan Lindsey, www.endemeo.com


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