Pros and cons of OXID eShop 

What is OXID eShop?

OXID eShop Community Edition is a trusted and flexible open-source software with a wide range of functionalities. Thousands of customers around the world already operate online stores based on this technology. Thanks to its modular, modern and state-of-the-art architecture, it can be adapted and expanded to individual requirements with the greatest of ease. 

Although the Community edition is licensed as free software under GNU GPLv3, the Professional edition requires a commercial license. Otherwise, it offers the same set of features, supports the ERP / SOAP interface, and offers a variety of support options.  

Pros

OXID eShop is great for programming. Compared to using Magento or WooCommerce there are a variety of things you can do with a code. Creating hooks is not needed to call your code under certain circumstances or to enable hooks. All you have to do is make respective changes in the class extension system which is very comfortable. Thus, anyone who codes well in PHP should not be afraid of taking up a project on OXID. Concerning customers, OXID eSales allows the creation of great scalable projects within a brief time to market and provides many useful marketing tools, so I recommend choosing this platform for e-commerce solutions. 

The software has many advantages. First, object-oriented programming allows much flexibility. Of course, OXID does not have the flexibility of a framework, but some flexibility was probably intentionally sacrificed for the sake of the rapid realization of an e-commerce project. You could rapidly carry out an e-commerce project, which is highly valued on the market. In addition, many features are already available in the community version, so you can accomplish satisfying results and often exceed clients’ expectations. 

In addition, it is beneficial that you can create modules with the help of separate composer packets. In most cases you will need the same basic modules for many projects. With a composer, you simply write a list of modules you need which will be installed automatically as soon as you roll out the new project. 

The community organizes events to share knowledge and resolve issues that our clients have attended (the events are mostly organized in Germany). 

OXID eShop Features

Features are displayed in alphabetical order.

• CRM

• Data Security

• Email Marketing

• Inventory Management

• Kitting

• Mobile Access

• Multi-Channel Marketing

• Multi-Store

• Promotions Management

• Returns Management

• Reviews Management

• SEO Management

• Templates

Cons

OXID eShop has poor documentation. There are no documented cases, with the help of which you can learn to resolve issues, and there are almost no explanations of basic notions. The solution may turn out to be simple, but you would have to search for a while, collecting tiny bits of information from various resources until you find what you were looking for. Also, important to know is that you’ll have to be fluent in the German language to learn OXID as all the resources about it are only available in German. However, as soon as you understand specific features of the system, you start to appreciate tons of benefits it provides. 

The OXID community is not very big and it is exclusively German-speaking. You cannot find any meaningful support in another language. 

If you want to build your own web shop or have questions relating to e-commerce development platforms or apps, read our blog posts for Shopify and Shopware. Our dedicated outsourcing team can be your collaborator in e-commerce.