What is the best way to write a modern online store?

Question

Online shopping

This question has been asked more than once, I read all the previous answers, but still I have a different situation.

Prior to this, online stores never wrote. Now there is a task to develop a small MI with basic functionality.
The requirements are common for any normal application - adaptability, good speed on any device (aka everything is ok in PageSpeed), a good search for products with filters, a simple admin panel for filling content and accepting orders.

I see several options:
- To write from scratch, for example, in laravel + react + mongo (I have experience), it attracts by the fact that you can write exactly what is required, there is no huge extra code base, everything will be beautiful, fast, adaptive and fashionable. SPA for the store is cool, there are no constant reboots. Mongo is perfect for products with a bunch of different fields, you can use elastic for search. No costs other than hosting. Minus - writing from scratch is a lot of work, there is a vague feeling that you are writing a bicycle, something that has already been implemented a billion times.

- Take shopify, ecwid or a similar service that has already solved all issues, including hosting. In fact, make a store on the constructor, poke buttons and that's it. Cons - complete dependence on the platform, most likely not SPA, everything is paid.

- Magento/prestashop or similar, i.e. something in between. It is possible to configure well, write code, but a lot is already ready + again, there are no costs, except for hosting. Of the minuses - a huge code base of these projects, most of which will most likely never be needed.

- bitrix. I have never worked with this, to put it mildly, I feel a fierce disgust from everything connected with 1C (personal opinion), but I still consider this option. maybe it will be more convenient for an enterprise / business?

What can you advise from this, or maybe there is another way? I would be glad to hear your recommendations. Since there is no legacy code, you can immediately make it fashionable and modern. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

As others have already said above, without TK, it is obviously difficult to advise something relevant. Nevertheless, I will try, based on the Laravel you mentioned and the wish expressed:

Since there is no legacy code, you can immediately make it fashionable and modern.

There is such a CMS as October . This is a very austere CMS built on top of the Laravel Framework. She has her own well-documented API , while, because. under the hood is a full-fledged Laravel, you can use its giant ecosystem for your needs, if the API of the CMS itself is suddenly not enough.
The austerity lies in the fact that this CMS is the exact opposite of everything you know. Basically, CMS are combines, on which features are still "screwed" on top. October doesn't even have a user system, navigation controls, and so on out of the box. All this you put, if necessary, with separate plugins. Therefore, you will not have an overloaded admin panel, at least. The philosophy of the platform fits well with the philosophy of Unix, which in a simplified form sounds like "Do one thing, but do it well."
Due to its relative youth (a little over 6 years), you will not find legacy under the hood. There is an important nuance, October does not jump on every minor version of Laravel, but is based on LTS releases. Right now there is active work on moving to the "six". With t.z. business is the right decision, because Laravel does not adhere to SemVer.
A little about the achievements over the 6 years of existence:

• as the best Flat-file CMS 2018 according to CMS Critic;
  
• the second most popular PHP CMS on GitHub;
  
• the most popular Laravel-based CMS with 9700+ stars on Github as of April 2020.
  

And now about e-commerce. Based on this CMS, the Shopaholic ecosystem is built , which fully follows the philosophy of October. The basic Shopaholic plugin of the same name is just a powerful directory. If you need a shopping cart, the Orders plugin is installed, you need online payment, the OmniPay plugin is installed , you need complex filtering - the Filter plugin , and so on. This is an OpenCore platform, i.e. there is a free base core that is extended with both free and paid add-ons. Smashing Magazine has a "fresh" article on how to develop a Shopaholic store using only free plugins.
Plugins do not contain "views", because The philosophy of the platform is that each store is unique. Therefore, the design and layout will be custom. If you need a typical solution, you can use one of the ready-made themes . If you need a SPA/PWA, you can extend October with one of the appropriate API building plugins .
The Shopaholic ecosystem is not that big yet, the project is only two years old. But it has already become the most popular e-commerce for October with 9000+ installs as of April 2020. But this temporary shortcoming is compensated by the amazing DX of the October CMS itself, which is fully consistent with Shopaholic. For example, any business logic can be extendedusing standard methods. That. Thus, what is missing is implemented by direct hands without the need for "crutching" in the CMS core or plugins and without the forced need to freeze their updates.
I will not describe the advantages of October CMS + Shopaholic over other platforms. I propose to look at the code of open plugins and draw conclusions about the quality of the architecture yourself. The main disadvantage of Shopaholic as an e-commerce platform at the moment is its youth and, as a result, the size of the ecosystem and community. Therefore, not every case has a ready-made plugin or a suitable design theme. I propose to go to the community chat and ask the participants what Shopaholic hooked them on. Many have moved there from a variety of solutions, from OpenCart to Bitrix.

Answer 2

Write on what you know how, by the way, Bitrix can do almost everything out of the box.
And so TK and again TK, after you can say

Answer 3

As Vladimir Korotenko already correctly noted , you need to build on the terms of reference and write on what you know best.
Now the choice is quite large, there are many ready-made solutions, it is conditionally possible to divide all implementation options into the following:

• Boxed solution
  
• cloud solution
  
• Framework solution
  

Each of them has its pros and cons, to be honest, in my opinion, boxed solutions now almost never meet modern requirements out of the box , but again, it all depends on the requirements individually for each project.
I do not agree that cloud solutions are tied to the platform (or rather, that it is a minus), if only because using Bitrix you are tied to Bitrix, and using a framework, you are limited by the solution that you implemented and the framework you use. In any case, as a rule, you can always transfer a cloud solution to a boxed solution, and a boxed solution to a framework, but this of course will require costs.
In your case, it is difficult to advise something. there is not enough data on technical specifications, but I can definitely say that there is nothing better than Shopify from cloud solutions at the moment (at least until getOpen.Store is launched), but there is a question of compliance with 152-FZ if you plan to work in the Russian Federation .
Bitrix, despite the large technical debt and outdated architecture, is very popular and, in fact, in some cases it is not a bad solution, but if we consider heavyweights, you can also look towards UMI, I really haven’t come across it, so I only suggest as an option to consider.
OpenCart and CS-Cart are also not bad solutions.
I strongly do not recommend PrestaShop, it looks nice on the outside, but under the hood there is no better than WP, for the same reasonI don’t recommend WP (WordPress + WooCommerce), even in my wildest fantasies I can’t understand how you can choose this option for implementing an online store, it defies logic and is absolutely beyond my understanding.

Answer 4

Name, sister, name!

"small" ?
"modern" ?
"with basic" functionality?
but in reality, the choice of CMS is influenced by the functionality and budget
if you "fit" into Bitrix with a ready-made solution - why do you need something else?