Benchmark of e-commerce solutions

Benchmark of
e-Commerce solutions
by Philippe Humeau et Matthieu Jung
S y s t e m
2013 edition
“Measure what is measurable and
make measurable what is not so.”
Galileo Galilei

2
S y s t e m
NBS System
NBS System was born in 1999 and is now providing services to 3000+
websites, hosting them, securing them and answering their needs on a
daily basis. Based in France and in United Kingdom, our teams are made
of black belt admins and security experts, able to tackle the biggest chal-
lenges. As e-commerce provided us with a tremendous growth over the
last 5 years, we published that book to give a bit back to the community.
Consulting
The authors provide services if you
want to get more details. We can
provide training, webinars, private
consulting to help you choose your
solution and conferences.
Just take contact with us to study
the possibilities for your business :
contact@nbs-system.com
E-Commerce Hosting
NBS System offers high quality ma-
naged hosting services, with a par-
ticular highlight on performances,
security and high availability. As
you will discover in this book, we
are not only here to “reboot the
server” but we very knowledgeable
about the solutions themselves.
Our support team provides ad-
vanced cares & services to make
your site successful :
contact@nbs-system.com
http://is.gd/e_commerce
Link to the full study
NBS System Offers
About NBS System
https://is.gd/g2FDSz
Register to receive the upcoming 2016 version

3

Introduction page 4

1 - WebSphere Commerce page 9
2 - ATG Oracle page 12
3 - InterShop page 15
4 - Hybris page 18
5 - Magento page 21
6 - VirtueMart page 24
7 - RBS Change page 27
8 - Drupal Commerce page 30
9 - Oxid eShop page 33
10 - Prestashop page 36
11 - Opencart page 39
12 - Zencart page 42

Conclusion page 45

Contents

4
Foreword about this book
This book aims to provide a reliable and impartial source of information to e-Merchants. The
goal of this book is to help decision makers, technical and business one, to find the proper
e-Commerce solutions for their needs.
Content stripped but available in the full version (180 pages) here :
Introduction
A quick look back
Market segmentation
The graphic ahead must be looked at, it gives key basis to
understand the book.

5
E-Commerce brought a tremendous growth to our managed hosting activity over
the last years. We now have the opportunity to give back a bit of what E-commerce
brought us to the community and we are very glad to share this success, sincerely.
But, to trust that our opinion is independent, we think you may want to know all our
motivations for spending more than 6 months of work on such a book, given for free,
where our line of work is absolutely not the edition business.
The answer is simple: we are a managed hosting company, dedicated and spe-
cialized in E-commerce and we are willing to show that we are not only around to
reboot servers or restore a backup for our customers. (We also still have a very small
hope that someone will feel like sponsoring us with beers)
We have been assisted by the editors to test & review their solutions, we were able
to interview them all, both on a technical and a strategic side. Still, apart from the
direct quotes that you can identify by the double quotes enclosing them and in italic
format along with their author, the writings, findings, analysis and points of views are
the author’s one and none others. We are not sponsored, influenced or working for
a team more than another.
• Methodology stripped but available in the full version
(http://is.gd/e_commerce)
The benchmark of E-commerce solution v2
• Pages stripped but available in the full version (http://is.gd/e_commerce) :
Trends & stakes of 2013, analysis per Tier, Java or PHP ?
Introduction
Our philosophy & goals

6
The benchmark of E-commerce solution v2
• Pages stripped but available in the full version (http://is.gd/e_commerce) :
Trends & stakes of 2013, analysis per Tier, Java or PHP ?
Introduction

7
(*) Budget includes licenses (when needed) and developments/integration.
(**) Budget includes License/maintenance fees, site evolutions, hosting.
The arrow length & positioning have been carefully thought but this is an average.
Some customers may do 20 M$ with OpenCart and some 1 M€ with Hybris, but this
is not the “usual” case.
Introduction
“Comfort zone” per solution

8
This graphic represent the “weight” of each solutions per segment. We here divided
the market in 6 tiers instead or our usual 4 to give a better precision. The dot size
represents the strength of the solution in a given segment. The bigger, the better.
When two dots are of same size, this means the market shares figures are very
comparable (i.e., ATG and Websphere commerce both are leading in number of very
big sites, with 49 sites vs. 45 detected in the Top 10 000 sites of the web). When a
dot is smaller from a magnitude, it means the number of sites are significantly less in
number than for the one having a bigger one.
Introduction
Measured territorial occupation per solution

9
Belongs to IBM
Number of employees (worldwide) 434 000
Revenues in 2011 $104 billions
Version (at the time of study) WSC V7 (Feature Pack 6)
Licence Proprietary & subscription
First release 1996
Origin United States
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) 100-200 k€ / 500 K€ / > 500 K€
More KPI & indicators in the full version http://is.gd/e_commerce
After nearly 3 billion dollars invested in several acquisitions (Sterling commerce,
DMODigital Analytics and Tealeaf) the consolidation cycle in WCS took two years.
With references like Staples (15 Md$ made online), Canon, Ikea, Sony and many
other alike, IBM could look like a Tier 1 “only” player. In reality, the strategy of the
corporation is also to dig deeper in the Tier 2 & 3 markets.
WCS has a convenient Flash based back office
that makes the administration very convenient, al-
lowing for example drag & drops and giving a user
friendly interface to the shop manager. The back
office is responsive, clearly organized and functio-
nal.
The IBM applicative stack gives very good native
performances. The drawback of not being stan-
dard (and close source) is here compensated by a
full control over all the components, giving IBM a
very accurate vision of the technical needs for a specific project.
WebSphere Commerce
Express analysis
Tier 3Tier 4 Tier 2 Tier 1
Not targeted Marginal Co-leader Leader
“WCS features are
usually demonstrated
in an “Aurora” example
store, which is very
complete, some other
market specific stores
are available: B2C, B2B,
Mobile, language or
country located, etc.”
• Content stripped but available in the full version (http://is.gd/e_commerce)
Full review of pros & cons along with strategy and evolution: 12 pages.

10
The mobile development is based on
Worklight which provides HTML5, Hybrid
& Native capabilities, including private app
server and a REST API. IBM speaks about
the “Omnishopper” concept and the
cross channel strategy starts here, at the
confluence of the mobile capabilities and
the OMS product.
As many players, IBM adopted the “kickstart” approach, with a SaaS model and
adaptable demostores, allowing customers to build web shops quickly and without
the complexity of a full “from scratch” project.
As Oracle and Intershop, IBM will have to review its plan due to the ac-
quisition of Hybris by SAP. IBM offer is extremely complete but they are now
three big firms to be able to provide an extensive catalog of software and
services to large customers. Globally, WCS is very good on most KPI, but
everything comes at a price.
WebSphere Commerce
“The “Precision Marketing Tool”
is a fantastic tool and WCS is
the only solution providing such
an advanced tool combined
with an interface that intuitive.”

Avril 2012
11
(The more stars, the best. One star is the minimal rating. On every KPI at least one
solution scores 5 stars, hence this is a comparison between solutions.)
Websphere synthetic report
General
information WCS
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution >
$
5M
($2M
in
SaaS)
Current
market
settlement Tier
1
-‐
2
Editor
direction Tier
1
-‐
3
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,R,B2B,P
Opensource No,
Java
Editor
emphasis Marketing
tools
Editor
emphasis Cross
Commerce
Editor
emphasis Personnalization
We
are
impressed
by Marketing
tools
&
cache
We
are
sceptical
about Proprietary
stack,
costs
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 300
K€
/
150
K€
General
KPI WCS
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) 
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) /
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) 
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
(faceted/multi-‐stores/multilingual/etc.) 
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI WCS
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
complicated) 
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
capabilities 
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
Logistic) 
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI WCS
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
capabilities 
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
capabilities 
WebSphere Commerce

Avril 2012
12
Belongs to Oracle
Number of employees (worldwide) ~115 000
Revenues in 2012 $37.1 Billion
Version (at the time of study) 10.2
Licence Proprietary & subscription
First release 1998 (ATG belong to Oracle since January
2011)
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) 100-200 K€ / 500 K€ / >500 K€
ATG, a company that survived to the dot-come bubble burst, was acquired by Oracle
for $1 billion in 2010. It is now part of a full environment and competes in the Tier
1 sector with the other Java based frameworks such as Intershop, Hybris & Webs-
phere Commerce.
ATG’s focuses are Customer ex-
perience, Customer behavior and
providing tools to be competi-
tive. The vision of the company is
that managing a retail business is
made of three main activities: buy,
merchandise, sell. The next step is just ahead: Price & Promote since having the best
prices (not always the lowest) are a key to better sales & margins.
Acquiring Endeca was a chess master move from Oracle and after two years of
work, Endeca is now totally fusion with ATG, in a nice, borderless, integration since
ATG bet a lot on the personalization of the website to the incoming customer.
Express analysis
“As IBM, Oracle acquired other lea-
ding and high potential companies,
in order to strengthen its offer, namely
RightNow, Fatwire, Retek and the
famous Endeca. ”
atg Oracle
Not targeted Not targeted Co-leader Very strong
Full review of pros & cons along with strategy and evolution : 12 pages.

Avril 2012
13
Another axis where Oracles work and pro-
vides solutions is the “silo” organization.
Oracle assures that these silos, these boun-
daries, only exist on an internal organiza-
tional level but totally misfit the customer
behavior.
The back office Console organization is not really revolutionary in terms of tech-
nology but the concepts are very interesting as the fact that the console is always
contextual and pleasant to use. The visual page editor is totally WYSIWYG, the va-
rious blocs composing a page are moveable using drag & drop and the contents are
editable directly in the context. The global suite is very complete and feature packed,
clearly competing with IBM’s WCS.
The editors focus its efforts on the companies making at very least a couple of tenth
millions online, and only if they target an exponential growth. On the other hand, if
you are already above those figures, ATG is a solution you simply cannot ignore in a
call for proposal. Even if one of the most expansive e-commerce software package,
it is undoubtedly one of the most complete as well.
“Sephora and Louis Vuitton
even manage in-store sales
using the website on a tablet
in their physical shops.”
atg Oracle

Avril 2012
14
ATG Oracle synthetic report
atg Oracle
General
information ATG
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution >
$
10
/
20
million
Current
market
settlement Tier
1
Editor
direction Tier
1
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,R,B2B
Opensource No,
Java
Editor
emphasis Personnalization
Editor
emphasis Merchandising
Editor
emphasis Experience
in
Tier
1
We
are
impressed
by Navigation
&
backoffice
We
are
sceptical
about Project
timings,
costs
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 500
K€
/
250
K€
General
KPI ATG
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) 
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) /
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) 
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
(faceted/multi-‐stores/multilingual/etc.) 
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI ATG
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
complicated) 
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
Logistic) 
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI ATG
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
capabilities 

Avril 2012
15
Belongs to Intershop
Number of employees (worldwide) 530
Revenues in 2011 €50M
Version (at the time of study) Intershop 7.3 & Enfinity Suite 6.4
Licence Proprietary
First release 1992
Origin Germany
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) €100k / €500k – €800k / > €800k
Intershop targets companies that are in the Tier-1 and Tier-2 only, their main compe-
titors being Oracle ATG, IBM Websphere and Hybris.
Intershop is a solution that provides an
amazing scalability with its 3-tier architec-
ture, capable of handling millions of pro-
ducts and processing tens of thousands
of orders per day, designed for major e-
Commerce projects, having an internatio-
nal and multi-site strategy.
Intershop has a seriously different philosophy in terms of development compared
to most other solutions. The Eclipse-
based development environment is
the place where developers translate
all their logical process and workflows
in code through a graphical user inter-
face.
Express analysis
“With 20 years of experience,
Intershop is a multi-national
company with offices all around
the world representing a serious
force in the e-Commerce
landscape. ”
InterShop
Tier 4 Tier 3 Tier 2 Tier 1
Not targeted Outsider Strong Outsider
“The Multi-Touchpoint Application
is the cornerstone of Intershop’s
multi-channel strategy, allowing to
monitor and to interact on every
channel, in a centralized way.”

Avril 2012
16
InterShop
The B2B model is the historical activity of the solution thus Intershop provides an
amazing list of features for this activity, actually the most complete set of all solutions
we analyzed so far.
Intershop is a mature and complete
solution that provides features for high
technical and international projects in
Tier-2 and definitely a natural leader in
B2B area.
Now Intershop is facing a new chal-
lenge, keeping its place in the landscape
when IBM and Oracle are back to business and Hybris is pushed forward by its new
godfather, SAP. On top, Intershop is more and more perceived as sleepy while its
potential is impressive. Is Intershop now a potential target for eBay to buy?
“HP, one of the biggest clients
of Intershop, has to manage 17
languages and more than 40
currencies through a complex
and unique B2B model built with
Intershop.”

Avril 2012
17
Intershop synthetic report
InterShop
General
information Intershop
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution >
$
5
million
Current
market
settlement Tier
1
-‐
2
Editor
direction Tier
1
-‐
2
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,D,R,B2B,Pv
Opensource No,
Java
Editor
emphasis Experience
Editor
emphasis Scalability
Editor
emphasis B2B
We
are
impressed
by The
code
generator
We
are
sceptical
about Lack
of
market
awareness
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 400
K€
General
KPI Intershop
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) 
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) 
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) n/a
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI Intershop
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
complicated) 
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI Intershop
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B

Avril 2012
18
Oracle ATG, Websphere Commerce and Intershop, were leading the Tier-1 & Tier-
2 and competition was almost organized until a Swiss team gently blown up this
quiet landscape. Nowadays, whatever criteria you examine Hybris under; you will
probably find it very successful, as their investors that recently injected $ 30 million.
In June 2013, Hybris was acquired SAP, similar
culture, language and mindset (Hybris is a Suisse
based solution) made Hybris and SAP naturally
compatible. SAP will reinforce Hybris positions by
providing key entry points to the major accounts
and providing a cornerstone: their ERP system.
Different strategy, different philosophy, experi-
mented managers, serious product, Hybris caught
the major player rather unprepared and accelerated very quickly. Initially known for its
Product Content Management (PCM), the team quickly integrated an Order Manage-
ment System (OMS) and a multi-channel strategy, becoming a very complete actor.
Hybris
A major actor is back
Belongs to SAP
Number of employees (worldwide) approx. 58 000 people (estimated)
Revenues in 2011 ~ $21 billion
Licence Proprietary
First release June 2002 (belongs to SAP since june 2013)
Origin Swiss
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) €100-200k / €500k / > €500k
Express analysis
“The company founded
in 1997 in Munich has
experienced growth for
years, until it caught the
e-Commerce wave and
started to soar a couple
of years ago.”
Not targeted Trying Leader Breaching

Avril 2012
19
Hybris
The global vision of Hybris is now all about Multi channel. The firm wants to provide
answers to all the needs of an eMerchant from the online sale to the in-store physical
delivery or pick up, up to the printed catalogs. To cover all those channels, one need
a centralized data system, called Master Data Management (MDM) in Hybris.
Another great strength of Hybris is its ability to provide applications either on-de-
mand, on-premise or in a hybrid way. This flexibility in the license billing enables the
clients to try specific features of the solution and then to move to a more integrated
solution later on.
In Hybris language, an accelerator is a demons-
tration store, already fully functional, with a dedi-
cated purpose like B2B or telecom. An eMer-
chant can choose to go with those pre-setup
stores, enabling shorter timings before the go
live.
About the progression margins, Hybris needs to
grow its ecosystem, to acquire some native per-
sonalization tool like FredHopper or Fact finder
to enhance its functional coverage and rival with IBM and Oracle. Allowing import of
XML format could be a nice enhancement, along with dropping the outdated Jalo
library that manage the session of the visitors (among other things) and is not sup-
ported anymore.
Hybris is clearly strong, when not leader, on
some KPI and needs to progress on features
such as merchandising and advanced marke-
ting.
“There are several “acce-
lerators” available in B2B
and B2C depending on
your market focus: elec-
tronic store in B2B, retail
store in B2C, department
store, telecom, luxury,
non-material seller, etc.”
“Hybris is a very balanced
solution, able to adapt
quickly to changes and
already mature enough to
cover most needs. ”

Avril 2012
20
Hybris synthetic report
General
information Hybris
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution >
$
5
million
Current
market
settlement Tier
2
Editor
direction Tier
1
-‐
3
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,D,R,B2B
Opensource No,
Java
Editor
emphasis PIM
Editor
emphasis Cross
canal
Editor
emphasis Accelerators
We
are
impressed
by The
momentum
We
are
sceptical
about Jalo
lib
&
XML
import
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 250
K€
/
100
K€
General
KPI Hybris
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) 
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) /
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) 
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI Hybris
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
Logistic) 
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI Hybris
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
Hybris

Avril 2012
21
Belongs to eBay Inc.
Number of employees (worldwide) 400 (estimated)
Revenues in 2011 50 M$ (estimated)
Version (at the time of study) Community: 1.8, Enterprise: 1.13
Licence Opensource, OSL v3
First release 2008
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) 15 / 40 / 150 K€
Magento’s success is one of the most impressive ever in the field of e-Commerce,
ever. Magento is the leader in terms of market shares (without merchant size consi-
derations). In the Tier 3 & 4 market, it is dominating the place and even found growth
in the Tier 2, only Tier 1 still eludes the Californians.
Magento “1” conquered the heart of near-
ly 150 000 e-Merchants and a couple of
thousands decided to buy an Enterprise
license from the editor but Magento 2
is still very expected for several reasons
including the deep refactoring of a some
components.
Magento acted a bit as a sleeping beauty (technically speaking) over the last year.
The reorganization of the Ukraine team and production sites by eBay also took its toll
of skilled people and the Magento 2 focus almost all attention.
Express analysis
“Back in 2007, Roy Rubin and
Yoav Kutner created the first
bases of Magento, when the
market was desperately looking
for an alternative to the dying
osCommerce.”
Magento
Key actor Leader Breaching Trying

Avril 2012
22
Magento
The Enterprise version made progress and is now one of the most stable products
around meanwhile the CE version made no real progresses and its users felt a bit
“lonely”. The CE is quite “stalled”, but we had the chance to test an early version of
Magento EE 1.13 and the performances have improved sharply.
Magento has a very large community, tied together by a dynamic editor and com-
mon interests. This is one of the main successes of Magento: bringing an ecosystem
together, that is fruitful, and beneficial to everyone.
The version 2 will bring substantial
changes to the Core, to the feature list
and the global efficiency with Restful
webservices, support for other data-
bases (like MS SQL, Oracle, NoSQL,
etc.), a better documentation and
more CMS capabilities. (Among other
points)
Extensible, flexible, widely adopted and widely supported, the solution can cover
a very wide range of needs, if not directly with its gigantic feature list, by one of its
numerous extensions. Magento is still a complicated product to code and not eve-
ryone is able to handle it properly.
Not much is to be expected in terms of new features before Q1 2014 but the 1.13
version of the EE is bringing a big performance increase and more stability, to an
already version clean product.
Still, some of the big firms, namely WCS and Hybris have views on the Tier 2 market.
Change will soon release its very impressive and expected version 4 while Drupal
Commerce expects to play a serious role in the Tier 3 market. Even if in a dominant
position and backed by a giant, Magento is still reachable by its competitor, at least
in their home Tier 3 segment.
“Magento was far more advanced
than the competitors, even with the
recent technical pause and eBay
was able to stay on its position for
a while, but now the emerging
players are lurking.”

Avril 2012
23
Magento synthetic report
Magento
General
information Magento
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution >
$
500
K

Current
market
settlement Tier
2
-‐
3
-‐
4
Editor
direction Tier
2
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,S,R,P
Opensource CE
Yes
/
EE
No
Editor
emphasis Versatility
Editor
emphasis Community
Editor
emphasis Costs
We
are
impressed
by Ecosystem
We
are
sceptical
about Cross
Commerce
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 25
K€
General
KPI Magento
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) 
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) 
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) n/a
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
(faceted/multi-‐stores/multilingual/etc.) 
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI Magento
(CE/EE)
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
complicated) 
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)
/
Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)
/
Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
capabilities 
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
Logistic) 
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) /
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI Magento
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
capabilities 
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
capabilities 
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
capabilities 

Avril 2012
24
Belongs to Virtuemart
Revenues in 2012 N/C
Version (at the time of study) 2.0.20b
Licence GPL
First release 1997
Origin Germany
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) 5 K€ / 5-10 K€ / 15 K€
VirtueMart is an open-source free PHP
e-Commerce framework based on
Joomla!, one of the most famous CMS
in the world.
VirtueMart is the second most repre-
sented e-Commerce solution on the
web, used in production by a large number of e-Merchants even if the live stores
seem to be smaller e-Commerce projects. Still, we found that Virtuemart lost a bit
more than 8% of its installed base in 8 months, a weak performance if you consider
that e-commerce was globally growing of more than 10% over the same period.
VirtueMart provides the basic features of an e-Commerce solution: reviews, ratings,
one page checkout, coupon handling, VAT management and all others features that
need an e-Merchant to run a store in an efficient way, with large CMS capabilities
provided by one of the best CMS: Joomla!.
Express analysis
“After the fork of Mambo, phpS-
hop changed its name as Vir-
tueMart, officially supporting the
newly created CMS: Joomla.”
VirtueMart
Visible Declining Not targeted Not targeted

Avril 2012
25
“Drupal has nothing to
envy to Joomla regarding
CMS capabilities, its e-
Commerce extension is
modern and efficient, on
the rise and financed. The
challenge is tough.”
VirtueMart
One concern with Joomla is the security and it is said that find vulnerability in Joomla
or one of its extensions is fairly easy, which can lead to critical issues for unwary e-
commerce sites owner.
The competition made by the Drupal & Drupal commerce duet to the Virtuemart /
Joomla’s one is obviously a hard one.
Not the most complete in class, not the worst
either, VirtueMart targets pure players that want
their store to be setup quickly, with an almost
free customization thanks to the extension mar-
ket and the many templates available.

Avril 2012
26
VirtueMart synthetis report
VirtueMart
General
information Virtuemart
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution From
0+

Current
market
settlement Tier
4
Editor
direction Tier
3
-‐
4
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,P
Opensource Yes
Editor
emphasis CMS
Editor
emphasis Simplicity
Editor
emphasis Community
We
are
impressed
by Templating
system
We
are
sceptical
about Evolution
pace
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 10
K€
General
KPI Virtuemart
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) n/a
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) 
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) n/a
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
(faceted/multi-‐stores/multilingual/etc.) 
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI Virtuemart
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
complicated) 
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
capabilities 
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
Logistic) 
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI Virtuemart
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
capabilities 
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
capabilities 

Avril 2012
27
Belongs to RBS
Number of employees (worldwide) ~160 (RBS + Change)
Revenues in 2012 Unknown (but under 10 M€ for Change
Licenses)
Licence Opensource – Affero GPL v3
First release 1997
Origin France
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) €15k / €20-45k / €80k
Actually one of the most surprising actors
of the market, Change is now a contender
to be considered in the Tier 3 arena, with
projects having a budget ranging from 50
to 100 K€.
Change is a platform storing contents,
embedding a very smart and powerful
workflow system and providing amazing
performances. The solution position itself
as an e-commerce CMS with a very strong accent on B2B and cross channel. Some
complementary side features are included, like a Forum, a blog, a photo gallery and
a very convenient form builder.
Express analysis
“The solution, originally a
CMS, evolved over nearly 10
years and started to include
some e-Commerce features
and became quickly a global
platform, totally open sourced
since 2010.”
RBS Change
Not targeted Rising Contender Trying

Avril 2012
28
RBS Change
The global conception of Change is very ele-
gant, light and flexible. The product offers spe-
cific strengths like a very complete and well-
structured workflow system or exceptional
performances in terms of scalability and page
load time.
Change needs to acquire its autonomy from
RBS in order to have its own life, strategy, alliances and to raise funds. 2013 will be
a transition year for Change, with this main step to achieve along with the release of
its promising version 4.
The integration of AngularJS, Twitter bootstrap, Elastic Search, Twig, SQLite, the
tidying of the code, the support of RESTful webservices and the integration of Zend
Framework 2 will make the 4th version of the solution a must have or at least a “must
look at”.
“The CMS of Change is the
pivotal point of the solution,
once you understood its
features and organization,
all is become very simple.”

Avril 2012
29
RBS Change synthetic report
General
information Change
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution >
$
1
million
Current
market
settlement Tier
3
Editor
direction Tier
2
-‐
3
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,D,R,P,Pv
Opensource Yes
Editor
emphasis Cross
Commerce
Editor
emphasis CMS
Editor
emphasis Workflows
We
are
impressed
by Architecture
We
are
sceptical
about Autonomy
from
RBS
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 50
K€
General
KPI Change
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) 
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) 
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) n/a
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI Change
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI Change
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
capabilities 
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
capabilities 
RBS Change

Avril 2012
30
Belongs to Commerce Guys
Revenues in 2011 NC
Version (at the time of study) Drupal Commerce 1.5
Licence GPL
First release 2011
Origin France/United States
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) 20K€ / 30-70K€ / several millions€ (accor-
ding to editor)
It brings product & catalog manage-
ment, tax system, checkout process,
order management, etc. to Drupal.
Even if the official figures announced by
the editor seem exaggerated, the suc-
cess of Drupal Commerce grows and
Commerce Guys (editor of D-C) raised 5 million dollars. Counting now 55 employees
and technically led by a Drupal figure (Ryan Szrama), D-C brought a very fresh and
well-engineered e-commerce solution to the Drupal world.
Relying totally on Drupal brings pros and a cons. Pros since it profits from the criti-
cally acclaimed CMS capabilities and architecture of Drupal and has access to some
of the 16,000 modules. Cons because D-C have few autonomy regarding its road-
map and of the deep technical choices, which are led by Drupal.
Express analysis
“Drupal Commerce (D-C) is an
opensource e-Commerce solution
based on the very famous CMS
Drupal, first released in 2011.”
Drupal Commerce
Rising Rising Trying Not targeted

Avril 2012
31
The feature list of Drupal Commerce is not yet rivaling with long timer like Magento
or Prestashop but the version 2, coming soon to support Drupal 8, will bring (among
others): Restful Webservices, lighter pricing update system, faster checkout, better
mobile support.
D-C also evolves more and more toward a PaaS
philosophy, with an already existing environment
where developers can make tests, manage several
teams, create workflows. The next step to create
and host client sites is probably a matter of months.
D-C business model is based on consulting trai-
nings & support.
The solution Backoffice is totally customizable and
the global philosophy is to be a Framework more
than a solution to integration.
“Not really good at
interfacing physical
Point of Sales or in B2B,
Drupal commerce
instead excels if you
need dynamic mana-
gement of your brand
image online or if you
are a pure player.”
Drupal Commerce

Avril 2012
32
Drupal Commerce synthetic report
General
information Drupal
Com
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution >
$
500
K
Current
market
settlement Tier
3
Editor
direction Tier
2
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,P
Opensource Yes
Editor
emphasis CMS
Editor
emphasis Community
Editor
emphasis Modularity
We
are
impressed
by CMS
We
are
sceptical
about The
figures
announced
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 20
K€
General
KPI Drupal
Com
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) n/a
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) 
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) 
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
(faceted/multi-‐stores/multilingual/etc.) 
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI Drupal
Com
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
complicated) 
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
Logistic) 
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI Drupal
Com
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
capabilities 
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
capabilities 
Drupal Commerce

Avril 2012
33
Belongs to Oxid
Number of employees (worldwide) 60 employees
Revenues in 2012 Unknown
Licence GPL V3
First release 2003 (outsourced since 2008)
Origin Germany
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) 3 K€ / 10-50 K€ / 100 K€
Oxid is very renown in Germany, where
it fights toe to toe with Magento regar-
ding market shares, but it lacks definitely
some international visibility and strategy.
Oxid sits in the Tier 3 market with its
freemium offers but aims to reach larger
customers and the Editor has already
some meaningful and prestigious cus-
tomers like Carrera, Intersport, Zeiss, or the spare part shop of Mercedes Benz.
The Oxid community is very strong and composed of partners, clients, contributors
and the editor. Its yearly get together event (Oxid Commons) and forum show how
vivid and healthy is the ecosystem in Germany.
Express analysis
“With solid references such as
Neckermann (German Galeries
Lafayette) or Medimops, making
thousands of daily transaction
online, OXID eShop is a mature,
solid, production grade solution.”
Oxid eShop
Very strong Breaching Not targeted Not targeted

Avril 2012
34
We can find the “German touch” of quality & control in Oxid’s codebase, as an
example, unit tests are covering now more than 93% of Oxid’s code! The solution
also offers a very clean and simple upgrade system. Oxid allows for very fast inte-
grations and has no problem handling meaningful volumes (visitors, transactions &
SKU).
Coming in three flavors (Community, Professional and Enterprise editions), the editor
provides different level of licenses, features and services. The Oxid eFire service,
available only in Germany yet, is a very inno-
vative and interesting approach to interface
external SaaS services easily.
Providing some fair Cross Channel capabili-
ties, good B2C coverage, rock solid stability
and a clean codebase, Oxid is not yet really
ready for B2B and lacks some international
vision (even if the solution was fully transla-
ted to English and French).
“The solution is a bit weak
regarding Webservices but
the team work on upgrading
this point, the default search
engine can be replaced by
Solr, Fact Finder or Celebros.”
Oxid eShop

Avril 2012
35
Oxid eShop synthetic report
Oxid eShop
General
information Oxid
eShop
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution >
$
500
K
Current
market
settlement Tier
3
-‐
4
Editor
direction Tier
2
-‐
3
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,P,R
Opensource Yes
Editor
emphasis Performance
Editor
emphasis Scalability
Editor
emphasis Easy
upgrade
We
are
impressed
by Upgrade
system
We
are
sceptical
about Ambition
of
the
solution
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 50
K€
General
KPI Oxid
eShop
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) 
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) 
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) n/a
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI Oxid
eShop
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
complicated) 
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
Logistic) 
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI Oxid
eShop
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
capabilities 
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
capabilities 
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
capabilities 

Avril 2012
36
Belongs to PrestaShop SA
Number of employees (worldwide) 70 employees
Revenues in 2012 6.1 M€
Version (at the time of study) 1.5.4
Licence OSL v3.0 & AFL v3.0
First release Feb 20th, 2008
Origin France
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) 0 / 10 K€ / 35 K€
PrestaShop is a French, PHP and Open
Source, e-Commerce solution, widely
spread in the world of e-Commerce with
a verified 135 000 active eShops. It had to
face a very bad storm in 2012 and many
people thought the solution was dying.
Lots of people were fired and the 1.5 first
releases were unpolished and buggy while the incomes were still shaky and the
business model clumsy.
Rough decisions saved the company from a darker future and even if the stress test
was harder than for most competitors, PrestaShop stood its ground and is back to
business. With two third of its revenues coming from the Prestabox marketplace, the
solution has now a business model that seems to be back to profitability.
Express analysis
“Prestashop is the easiest solu-
tion to develop among the one
reviewed in this book and this
fact alone can already explain
its wide adoption worldwide.”
PrestaShop
Very strong Breaching Not targeted Not targeted

Avril 2012
37
The 1.5 version was corrected and is now made to target bigger accounts, bringing
almost all the features that start with «multi» (shop, view, currency, taxes, etc.). It also
embeds a very efficient Mobile application.
With 8.6% of market shares and 130.000 active eShops in the world, the SaaS
model would be the logical next step for this solution and we might see a fierce com-
petition arise in Tier 4 if Prestashop choose to do so.
Very efficient and well thought Templates
are available, along with a lot of modules
and the integrators is often left with a light
work load, consisting in a simple integra-
tion.
The web service is one of the most ad-
vanced in the market, the mobile applica-
tion is very up to date and the B2C feature list is impressive. The BackOffice is in
basic HTML (no Xul or Flash) but it is clear.
PrestaShop
“For larger pure players willing
to dodge the complexity of
some other actors, PrestaShop
can also be a real alternative
(but it is not designed to cover
the physical store needs).”

Avril 2012
38
PrestaShop synthetic report
PrestaShop
General
information Prestashop
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution From
0+
Current
market
settlement Tier
4
Editor
direction Tier
3
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,P
Opensource Yes
Editor
emphasis Simplicity
Editor
emphasis Cost
Editor
emphasis Community
We
are
impressed
by Time
to
market
We
are
sceptical
about Soaring
someday
?
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 10
K€
General
KPI Prestashop
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) n/a
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) 
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) n/a
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
(faceted/multi-‐stores/multilingual/etc.) 
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI Prestashop
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
complicated) 
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
Logistic) 
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI Prestashop
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
capabilities 
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
capabilities 
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
capabilities 

Avril 2012
39
Opencart was created in 2009 and the solution
shows already serious results. Wappalyzer ranks
OpenCart in fourth position and Tom Robertshaw’s
study in sixth position among e-commerce fra-
meworks.
Its community is still “small” but already very inter-
national and active. As an example, it is possible
to find extensions to translate a website in no less
than 17 different languages! OpenCart gained in-
tegration partners in 26 countries, including eleven in United-States and seven in
United-Kingdom.
OpenCart is a developer friendly solution, the inheritance system, XML configuration
and the global use of design patterns makes it comfortable to develop with. The
solution also offers a wide range of documentation (how to install, set-up, manage
the eShop, etc.) on its website, making it easy for newcomers to try OpenCart.
Belongs to OpenCart
Number of employees (worldwide) N/C
Revenues in 2012 N/C
Version (at the time of study) 1.5.5.1
Licence GPLv3
First release 2009
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) 5 K€ / 10 K€ / >10 K€
Express analysis
“The adoption rate
of Opencart shows an
impressive growth of
nearly 40% in just six
months, this solution is
clearly acquiring
momentum.”
OpenCart
Breaching Strong Not targeted Not targeted

Avril 2012
40
The solution covers the basic needs of eMerchants with features such as multi-
store, coupons, gift vouchers, multiple tax rates and so on. If a feature is not yet
available, you may have a chance to find it in OpenCart’s huge extension directory
(8,000 extensions). One can really build a very complete site by stacking them, even
if reviewing extensions, comparing them, check if they meet the security standards
to finally install and test them can also be a long and technical process.
Even if Opencart’s strategy is not really rea-
dable yet, it can become a future star and
some may want to consider an investment
opportunity, since other frameworks like
Magento started their massive success with
very comparable ingredients.
“The solution is globally
technical and developer
oriented and may not be
accessible to e-Merchants
without serious integrator or
a strong internal developer
team.”
OpenCart

Avril 2012
41
OpenCart synthetic report
OpenCart
General
information Opencart
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution From
0+
Current
market
settlement Tier
4

Editor
direction Tier
3
-‐
4

Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) B,P
Opensource Yes
Editor
emphasis Extensions
Editor
emphasis Community
Editor
emphasis Cost
We
are
impressed
by Number
of
extensions
We
are
sceptical
about For
good
developpers
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 10
K€
General
KPI Opencart
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) n/a
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) 
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) n/a
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
(faceted/multi-‐stores/multilingual/etc.) 
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI Opencart
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
capabilities 
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
Logistic) 
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI Opencart
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
capabilities 
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
capabilities 
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
capabilities 

Avril 2012
42
Belongs to Zen Ventures, LLC
Number of employees (worldwide) NC
Revenues in 2012 NC
Version (at the time of study) v.1.5.1
Licence GPLv3
First release 2003
Budget to create a website (low/middle/high) 5 K€ / 10 K€ / >10 K€
The solution seems to have lost a very
meaningful amount of its market shares
in just one year and a large part of its user
base is already migrating. Nevertheless,
the figures are still impressive with more
than 6 million downloads claimed to date
and 100 000+ users registered in their
forum.
Few major releases of Zen Cart have been released over ten years and the demo
store looks outdated. The design and the user experience are old fashioned and
some basic features, now available in almost all concurrent frameworks, are missing
in the core product.
Express analysis
Zen Cart
Strong Marginal Not targeted Not targeted
“Zen Cart’s code is originally
based on Oscommerce and is
by far its most popular fork. The
solution is still very widespread,
with developers and aficionados
all around the world. ”

Avril 2012
43
With product options system, gift certificates, multi lingual, multi currencies, multi
tax rate and a decent promotion engine, the solution could have “naturally” evolved
toward excellence but the demostore is outdated and the administration modules
were far too complicated. There is still a possibility to find plugins that will cover some
of the needs, with the very helpful community of zenners.
The team takes its time and prefers doing small updates in order to improve the solu-
tion, step by step the team is working hard to release the v2 of the solution.
Zen Cart is an old solution that seems
to be outdated when we compare it to
competitors. It could have compete with
these newcomers by raising funds and
hire a complete developer’s team in or-
der to provide regular updates but it did
not and the solution seems now to be in
a difficult position.
Zen Cart
“In version 1.6 the demostore will
be totally overhauled with HTML 5
& CSS3 support, along with res-
ponsive design for mobiles and
jQuery, but is it not too late?”

Avril 2012
44
Zen Cart synthetic report
Zen Cart
General
information Zen
cart
Turnover
to
consider
the
solution From
0+
Current
market
settlement Tier
4
Editor
direction Tier
4
Profile
(B:Brand,
R:Retailer,
P:Pure
player,
D:Department
store,
Pv:Private
sales,
B2B) P
Opensource Yes
Editor
emphasis Community
Editor
emphasis Features
Editor
emphasis Cost
We
are
impressed
by not
much
We
are
sceptical
about their
futur
Min
budget
to
create
site
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
example
shop) 5
K€
General
KPI Zen
cart
Cost
of
the
solution
(license,
integration,
hosting)


Flexibility
of
licensing
costs
(peak,
pay
as
you
grow,
on
demand,
on
premise
…) n/a
Time
to
market
(developping
from
scratch
/
customizing
an
existing
example
store) 
Variety/Quality
of
demo
shops
to
adapt
to
a
specific
use
(apart
from
std
demostore) n/a
Marketing
capabilities
(promotion
engine,
coupon,
gift
card,
etc.) 
Level
of
navigation
&
catalog
presentation
(faceted/multi-‐stores/multilingual/etc.) 
Eco-‐system
(community,
partners,
integrators,
forums,
etc.)

Backoffice
friendliness
&
ease
of
use 
Technical
KPI Zen
cart
Development
technical
complexity
(more
stars
=>
less
Number
of
third
party
softwares
/
extensions
/
services
available

Number
of
complementary
product
/
services
from
the
Editor 
Speed
of
the
Front
Office
(customer
web
page
rendering)

Front
Office
scalability
(capacity
&
cost
to
serve
more
customers
with
less
servers)

Speed
of
the
Back
Office
&
scalability
(number
of
simultaneous
users) 
Native
CMS
capabilities 
Native
Webservice
capabilities
(Interfacing
with
third
systems,
e.g.
ERP
or
Logistic) 
B2C
Feature
list
(default,
without
add-‐ons
or
side
programs) 
Mobile
(Native
App,
Hybrid
App,
Responsive
design)

Advanced
features
KPI Zen
cart
Advanced
searchandising
&
user
personnalization
capabilities 
Multi
/
cross
/
Omni
channel
capabilities 
Advanced
catalog
management
(PIM,
multi
catalog,
attributes,
bundles,
etc.) 
Integrated
or
natively
interfaced
OMS
(order
management
system) 
Advanced
marketing
tools
(adaptive
marketing,
dynamic
navigation
tunnels,
etc.) 
Native
B2B
capabilities 

45
Conclusion
Content stripped but available in the full version (180 pages) here :
In a world where almost all businesses have now a strong competition, the solution
editors have emphasized different strategies to equip their customers for the battles
to come. Yes, the global e-Commerce market is indeed growing worldwide, still this
is no Eldorado where one should head unprepared.
The competition is tough and the margins are often small. To make things even more
difficult, the advertisement systems, the retargeters, marketplaces and other web-
marketing providers are also trying to eat on these skinny profits.
The e-commerce world as divided in two groups nowadays: those who are Amazon
and those who are not. It is forecasted by some serious analysts that Amazon may
weigh up to 20% of global e-Commerce by 2017…
Renowned brands and retailers have their natural place online and have a consumer
group recognizing and valuing their products or services. Those players have no real
competition from giants like Amazon (eventually from another brand rather).
But all the others have no “natural” space online and who will have to fight their way
online. Even very large sites and classical mortar business have sometimes hard time
to compete with Amazon so, most likely, if you are not a brand, you do not want to
step in this game.
The solutions we studied will bring you various assets and strengths to cope with
your own objectives :
• In Tier 1, IBM and Oracle now have to adapt their strategy to the rise of
Hybris, backed by SAP. Intershop starts to be more and more isolated (except
in B2B world), even in Tier 2, and the company could be acquired soon by
players like eBay to bring them back to the top level competition. SAP could go
on buying technologies like Celebros, Fred Hopper or Fact Finder to reinforce
its e-Commerce offer.
• In Tier 2, some players like Magento are trying to ascend, meanwhile Hybris
and Websphere commerce are searching to grow their potential customer pool
by invading this segment.
• In Tier 3, the battle is already raging between excellent PHP products like
Magento, Change, Drupal Commerce and, in some way, Prestashop or Oxid if
you are based in Germany.
Conclusion

46
Conclusion
• The Tier 4 is more and more dominated by SaaS offers and Prestashop also
have all the qualities to own this market, while Open Cart is also taking momen-
tum and could bring some surprises. Virtumart is losing ground, but not as fast
as Zen Cart which seems to suffer from a clear slowdown.
Thanks you for reading us, for taking time to listen to our opinions and reading our
reviews, you, reader, are the persons we care about while we write. We are available
to help you cast your choice if you want some more details since only roughly 50%
of the collected data could be published, for readability reasons.
Philippe Humeau & Matthieu Jung, NBS System.

47
Brands, copyrights & trademarks
NBS, NBS system, No blue screen, Cerberhost, IBM, Websphere Commerce, Websphere, Oracle,
ATG, Intershop, Hybris, SAP, Magento, Ebay, Apple, Iphone, Ipad, Android, iOS, Virtuemart, Joomla,
Drupal, Drupal Commerce, RBS, RBS Change, Oxid eShop, Oxid eSales, Prestashop, Opencart,
Zen Cart, Os commerce, Demandware, Levis, Diesel, Amazon, Zend, PHP, Linux, Java, Zappos, Tag
Heuer, Pixmania, Price minister, Newegg, Galerie Lafayette, Macys, Vente privée, Brandalley, Rue la
la, Nike, H&M, DB2, DMODigital, Tealeaf, Staples, Canon, Ikea, Sony, Goodyear, Zara, Sterling, iCon-
go, SOLR, Apache, Celebros, Fredhopper, Aliznet, Technology Everywhere, Salmon, Micropole, CGI,
Sogeti, Infosys, HCL, Pixelixir, Ecocea, MIT, Peoplesoft, Retek, Footlocker, Wal-MArt, Sephora, Louis
Vuitton, eBusiness Suite, Siebel, Flex, Exadata, Exalogic, Fatwire, Prusdys, Fact Finder, T-mobile,
HP, Sun Microsystem, Smart, Tom Tom, Enfinity,Merck, Deutsche Telekom, GSI Commerce, MySQL,
Metro, Cosco, Samsung, MongoDB, Talend, PayPal, OroCRM, Akeneo, Magento Go, X.Commerce,
MS SQL, NO SQL, GIT, GITHUB, PHPtal, smarty, AS400, Cegid, Navision, Colombus, AngularJS,
Google, Twitter, Twitter bootstrap, SQLite, Twig, Ikea, MTV, DrupalCon, Alven Capital, ISAI, Skrill,
be2bill, Kiala, Jirafe, RoyalMail, Kenzo, McDonalds, Cartier, The Doors, Oxid Commons, Varien, Nec-
kermann, Medimops, Shoptimax, Polytouch, Mobilemojo, Oxid eFire, Ellapaul, PrestaBox, Forrester
And their respective logos are trademark and/or copyrights belonging to their res-
pective owner. If your brand or trademark is quoted in this book and you wish it to
be removed, you can contact the authors to notify them.
Copyrights
This book textual contents (citations excepted) and intellectual property belongs to
NBS System and his authors. No reproduction or quote is allowed without explicit
consent from the authors or from NBS System. An exception is made for education
facilities (not training one), like colleges, universities or equivalent as long as the
sources are named. This book cannot be offer to download in another place than
NBS System’s website.
The graphics created by the authors (not the one provided by the editors) are free to
be used as long as they are associated with NBS System’s logo and name.
NBS System is and remain the exclusive owner of this content. 2013, all rights reser-
ved to NBS System.
Conclusion

48
About the authors
This study was conducted over several months by Philippe Humeau, assisted by
Matthieu Jung.
Philippe Humeau,
CEO and co-founder of NBS System in 1999.
After graduating Engineer in Computer science at EPITA 1999,
Philippe became a security expert (pentester) and he is now in
charge of developing NBS System’s activity as CEO. He deve-
loped an expertise in E-Commerce as of 2006 with a main focus
on technical aspects of solutions, especially on the optimization of
websites performances.
Matthieu Jung,
Communication & Marketing manager.
Matthieu loves the Web industry and is always looking for brea-
king news in order to be up to date with the e-Commerce best
practices. He is in charge of the marketing and communication at
NBS System and assist Philippe Humeau for the organisation of
events. Matthieu also contributes to the blog Ecommerce-squad.
com.
Greetings
The authors would like to thank all the experts and e-commerce solutions publishers
who agreed to share information with us. A special thank is also issued to our ama-
zing translator Bénédicte Mutel (bmutel@hotmail.com) who helped us more than
once to translate our contents and to Amélie Hardy (hardy.amelie@gmail.com) who
made this graphic template and PDF. Vilya Ean, Julien Didier, Jean Claude Nogues
(DataSolution), Tim Robertshaw (MeanBee),
Mentions légales
Editor : NBS System, 140 bd Haussmann, 75008 Paris, France
Printing company : Com’Tools, Espace performance bât C1-C2, 35769 Saint Grégoire Cedex, France
Date of release : 14 of June 2013
Contact : +33.1.58.56.60.80, contact@nbs-system.com
Conclusion

S y s t e m
"Grow your business safely"
www.nbs-system.com
French Office
140 boulevard Haussmann - 75008 PARIS
contact@nbs-system.com +33 1 58 56 60 80
UK Office
133 Glasshouse Street - LONDON W1B 5DG
contact@nbs-system.co.uk 0845 527 6098

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