Joomla is a content management system (CMS) to build different websites, publish content on the internet and enables you to build powerful and dynamic online applications. The best part of Joomla is that it is open source that is free to use for everyone. It provides extensive features and it is user-friendly so it has become the most popular CMS worldwide.
Joomla is coded in PHP and uses the latest database system called MySQL. Joomla is used for developing different type of websites such as e-commerce portals, corporate and business sector websites, government based websites and applications, community portals, online media and magazine portals etc.
Advantages of Joomla development
- You can add, edit or delete content on websites quickly and easily
- It allows simple and flexible coding support to developers based on MVC framework
- Plug in or add-on functionality for event handling is supported on advanced level
- Ensure highly secure and flexible system along with the ease of use
Virtuemart
Virtuemart is an open source e-commerce plug-in that supports Joomla CMS. It can be used as a shopping cart with Joomla. For using it with Joomla, you have to download and install Joomla framework and then you can install Virtuemart and configure it as required. Virtuemart offers superb facility to your website by providing you with unlimited number of products, categories, customers, orders etc. Furthermore, if you combine it with a free online tax calc, then Virtuemart can be set up to handle taxes too.
Both Joomla and Virtuemart are written in PHP and so they can be easily used in PHP and MySQL environment. Virtuemart provides complete and full shopping cart solution for your website which also includes different plug-in support such as Photo gallery, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), Guest books etc.
Virtuemart also provides excellent Catalog mode where you can view the entire website as a catalog of products and at that time the shopping cart features will be turned off. It also provides feature to add single product in the cart with multiple price support.
Virtuemart offers following features:
- Products which includes unlimited child products and variants, dimension and weights, product review and ratings etc.
- Shoppers which include customized form for registration, anonymous check out and shipment, address book etc.
- Inventory management which includes entire stock and warehouse management process, virtual stock system etc.
- Prices which include multiple price display based on specific group of shoppers, multiple currency support and update
- SEO which includes default integration of SEO features
- Dynamic calculator which includes tax calculation on basis of time, category, country etc.
- Complete order tracking and shipment process which is calculated based on weight, number of items, order amount, country etc.
redSHOP
redSHOP is also an ecommerce shopping cart plug-in or extension for using it with Joomla CMS. It provides fully featured and rich online shopping system. It has wide range of features as follows:
redSHOP features
- Support unlimited templates and design feature
- Support multiple currencies and multiple payment methods
- SEO and statistical calculation facility
- Display unlimited products range
- Allow to add images in various sizes
- Provide Price management system and multiple shipping mode management system
- Extensive search functionality to search for different products
- For marketing, it has different features such as Newsletters, action emails, Google based integration etc.
- It also has Stock management and order management system
- Customer support, service and user management system
- Complete Search Engine Optimization (SEO) support which includes SEO friendly URLs, metatags and keyword support, Google Analytics integration etc.
Comparison table of Virtuemart and redSHOP
| Virtuemart | redSHOP | |
| General features | ||
| Extensibility | Yes | Yes |
| Support | Yes | Yes |
| Preconfiguration | Yes | Partial |
| Products | ||
| Unlimited Products | Yes | Yes |
| Categorization and Tags | Yes | Yes |
| Inventory management | Yes | Yes |
| Pre order | No | Yes |
| Watermark | No | Yes |
| Subscriptions | Yes | Yes |
| Physical product | Yes | Yes |
| Multi Category and its mapping | Yes | Yes |
| Shipping | ||
| Shipping modules | Yes | Yes |
| Taxes | Yes | Yes |
| Payment system | ||
| PayPal | Yes | Yes |
| eCheck | Yes | No |
| Third party payment | Yes | In pro version |
| Promotion | ||
| Discount and gift vouchers | Yes | Yes |
| Discount coupons | Yes | In pro version |
| Templates | ||
| MVC Compliance | Yes | Yes |
| CSS | No | Yes |
| Media | ||
| Gallery | Yes | Yes with batch upload facility and built-in light box |
| Image with multiple sizes | Yes | Highly configurable |
| Video | No | Yes |
| Order calculation | ||
| Order Notification | No | Yes |
| Accounting software integration | Yes | In pro version |
Conclusion:
Looking at the features and above comparison of Virtuemart and redSHOP, we can say that redSHOP is growing and emerging Ecommerce shopping cart extension which has wide variety of features. But if you are looking to develop an ecommerce website with unlimited and dynamic features and functionality, Virtuemart is better option. Virtuemart has been used since many years and it has larger customer base and holds higher reputation in the Ecommerce market till today.