How to choose a replacement for the current cms and do I need a replacement?

Question

CMS

Hello everyone, the agony of choice does not let me go, I don’t know where to ask, and articles from search engines are 90% advertising bullshit. The topic is such that a serious update of the interface in the online store is planned, a new design, new features and all that. Now the site uses cms from one relatively well-known company that made the site in 2008-9. At the same time, relations with them did not work out very well, but cms met the requirements and they left it, it was finished by many different people, many each, and only in the last year one person puts his hands on it, adding new features and cleaning bugs that multiply non-stop. A lot has been added to the original functionality, but even more is needed. But there is no documentation, the process of innovation is complex and not very fast, there are many errors, all this is depressing.

Therefore, there are thoughts, why not try something new, some popular solution, where for some tasks there will be solutions out of the box and there will be no difficulties with specialists who understand how the engine works? One thing is not clear which way to look and whether there is any sense in it, you still have to add functionality that does not go, and most likely not a little. I tried test sites on Bitrix and OpenCart, out of habit everything is very inconvenient and incomprehensible and it seems that half of the necessary features are missing. In favor of Bitrix, good integration with warehouse accounting 1s and Bitrix CRM also speaks (now there is no crm, but the need is felt and we look towards retailcrm), but the popular rumor about the quality of the product is walking. The base of goods for several tens of thousands of offers, the goods are different and the cards require different design.

Who has come across various cms and crm systems, especially in retail, what can you advise? In which direction can you look, and what should you not get involved in? Or is replacing an old, but working and almost completely satisfying system not worth it?

Answer 1

Of the more or less serious ones, I know only Bitrix and CS-Cart.
Should it be replaced or not, the authorities will tell you when they find out the cost of development and porting.

Answer 2

Too much general information, which is difficult to say something. Everyday experience suggests "if it works - don't touch it", but in essence the problem is divided into two parts: a) is it really necessary to rewrite the site? b) if you still need it, then on what?
On the first question, you need to understand whether this is really a business need, and not a programmer's wishlist :) In fact, you yourself write that the system works and almost completely satisfies everyone, and all the listed disadvantages are "inconvenience for the developer", that is, bugs and lack of documentation. You need to understand that transferring an online store to a new system is not a transfer - this is writing a new online store. (And you will definitely write documentation? Right?) A business need, for example: support for the current framework or cms has ceased, which means that security risks appear. Or it becomes too expensive to maintain an existing system (for example, you used Amazon, but you want to switch to something else).
On the second question: we draw a plate with all the requirements, rank them in order of importance, write down all the options that we liked and fill them in sequentially. So you can, plus or minus, understand exactly what it will be faster / more convenient to rewrite on, everyone has different requirements.
I wrote several more or less complex online stores on Drupal Commerce, Wordpress (Woocommerce) and Bitrix. For the convenience of development and support, Woocommerce came most of all at one time, but it all depends on the requirements.

Answer 3

CMS, in my understanding, is some kind of website plus a convenient admin to it ... If you need a lot of non-standard functionality, then you need to look towards open solutions. For example Laravel or nodejs as a server application, plus a client web application in vue, react or angular. With such an architecture, there are no standard limitations that are usually found in "cool" CMS, everything can be done if there are specialists.