I’ve been looking at opensource e-commerce solutions for a while and none have been able to meet my requirements yet. I was made aware of Magento for the first time today, so I’d like to pose you a question if I may to see if your solution will be able to meet my needs.
I’m basically looking for a solution that enables me to handle multiple vendors from the same platform and database. Specifically I want to have a single install/codebase which enables me to create online shopping sites on the fly as required (probably as subdomains) for clients, each subsite presenting it’s own front end (design/templates, shopping cart, taxes, products etc.) to consumers and backend (admin GUI, catalog, configuration items etc.) to vendors. I see the role of a central site as an aggregator (acting as a shopping mall if you will for each subsite), but it’s important to me (and the clients) that they are also accessible as individual shops in their own right. The idea of the single codebase/install is that it cuts down dramatically on support effort, and therefore costs. It also means I could get a dedicated server for all subdomains and just do the whole hosting thing simply, instead of having to setup seperate hosting contracts for each client that comes along.
Central to this working effectively is the database/security aspects (to seperate the data per shop/client) and the ability to present unique front ends for each shop as well as enabling each client to administer their own shop at the backend (but not having the capability to change anything site wide). Each vendor will be able to choose from a selction of given designs/templates so setup is a fast process.
I also need multi-lingual, multi-currency and all the usual trimmings that go with an e-commerce solution but I can see from the blurb on your site that Magento has all that, but the question is can you also do multi-vendor as described above?
Is Magento a fit for this? Will it enable me to create this solution using Magento as the base?
I’ve just realised that perhaps I need to clarify this requirement a bit further to explain it…
I’m looking for a product which enables have multiple vendors/sellers who have the ability to manage their own stores via the same install/codebase. This implies the ability for seperate product catalogs and seperate frontend themes/designs etc.
The most obvious example I can think of is a shopping mall (virtual if you will). One front store represents the entire mall and all tennants/sellers. Each seller has their own website as well. Sellers/vendors can maintain their own catalog etc. and sell their own stuff. The main store acts as an aggregator of the sub-sites.
The advantage is that having one core install which seperates the data via database structures for each vendor means I don’t have to maintain seperate sites, hosting accounts and installs per vendor/seller… which is a pain in the ass when it comes to updates and upgrades and also a serious amount of work in doing the shop/shipping maintenance.
@Ajazza - It’s not against the license. What is against the license is for a company to develop such functionality and not make it publicly available. In other words, the OSL license treats such functionality as a distribution (over a network in this case), and thus requires publicly available access to the code.
I’m also intrested in such a functionality. Is it possible or require complex core modifications?
I need 2000-3000 small and simple stores (each for specific vendor) and as I can see magento intended and provides some small number of full-functional complete stroes.
Can someone of officials(or magento team) answer?
Out of the box Magento doesn’t support at such functionality in full.
You can mange multi stores from the admin, but you cannot limit Admin users to be able to see information about specific store.
You will have to modify Admin Users permissions module to be able to limit each user to a specific Store Information
I pushed on through the forest, and suddenly before me, basking in the sunlit meadow was the elusive “Multi-Vendor option"…
I’ve run across some conflicting messages about this feature myself - glad to have stumbled across this thread! If I may pose a summary of my understanding of the issue and a couple of follow up questions:
My understanding is:
1. Having a single-install, multiple store setup (for wholly different “clients") is not against the license per se.
2. Complete separation of permission/data is not currently implemented in Magento
Follow up questions:
1. Which aspects exactly can be separated on a per store/website basis? (categories, products, customers, orders, cms pages?)
2. Which aspects cannot be separated - and which are visible/modifyable by any admin going into the unified backend? (i.e. what’s holding back such a feature from being implimented?)
3. Is such a multi-vendor feature in the works? This thread seemed to imply that it was to be included in 1.0 http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/669/ but perhaps I misunderstood.
Thanks for any feedback. I think this is the one “killer feature” that Magento could use (though it’s already head-and-shoulders above its competition). Ideally, you’d have a setup where a different DB could be specified for the separate stores in the config and go from there…
Thanks magento Team for the hard work that you spent on this project.
I’m working in a web developing company in Berlin and I can’t even guess…
This post somehow seems to me like naming the comparative advantage of
Magento to other e-commerce platforms.
You created a stunning design and an amazing system, but this multi-vendor feature
would be the icing on the cake!
I am really searching for this feature, but I don’t want to miss Magento…
Could you please post, if there is an effort to build such feature in the next six months?
Out of the box Magento doesn’t support at such functionality in full.
You can mange multi stores from the admin, but you cannot limit Admin users to be able to see information about specific store.
You will have to modify Admin Users permissions module to be able to limit each user to a specific Store Information
I agree with Lior Pinelis that we can manage multi stores with admin. We can also create admin users who manage Acl features provided by admin.
Now we have to customize few of module through which we can distinguish list of products through their created admin users,
List of orders which is related to specific admin users inserted products and so on.
As i new with magento, i face so many difficulties to build simple custom modules. So can you please help me to build local custom module? So that i can contribute few of my ideas to build Multi Vendor support options.
Anyone has an update on this since there is a new dropship plugin with multi vendor support.
Recently saw a post in magento connect where unirgy created a plugin. Anyone has any update if Varien plans to come up with their own ?
I’m very interested in making a purchase on that plugin, so some update will be nice .
Obviously this wouldn’t be in the free section, but it’s not in the commercial section either… If a plugin was developed and re-sold that worked properly I would expect the price could be much lower…
