VirtueMart team, you might need to look into this

[kevincop]

Hello guys,

I bumped into an amazing shopping cart that's now Beta - ecwid.com

I really think you should look at the thing and try to port some features over to your cart. It's SO much easier to work with and the administration menu actually makes sense (I am still looking up what I need to find in your help files...after 2 years of using your cart).

The only problem is that it runs on Google Gears so iPhones and other mobile devices have to use a reduced html version of that store which looks like a wap website. Anyhow, it is still a great step forward in shopping carts and you should know about it.

Regards,
Kev

[jenkinhill]

Ecwid is a hosted cart system, like quite a few offerings on the web and of course are commercially developed and not open source. Although free at the moment, while still in beta, and they state that there will always be a free system, they also say "Of course, Ecwid is a business platform and we will announce paid subscriptions at a later date".

It does have a "clean" backend, but is less flexible and lacks a lot of facilities compared to VirtueMart. Worth keeping an eye on to see different ways of doing things.