Fan of Vendr

New Umbraco e-commerce platform

We have been using Umbraco as a content management system (CMS) for years to build websites to our full satisfaction. Umbraco is known for its simplicity, flexibility, security and user-friendliness. This is agreed by our developers, but certainly also by many of our customers. Although Umbraco has more than proven itself as a CMS for creating websites, creating web shops with Umbraco has often proven to be a difficult job. Our enthusiasm was great when Vendr was launched at the beginning of this year: the e-commerce solution for Umbraco. Our developers took a closer look at the new platform.

The ambition that Vendr expresses with principles such as simplicity, flexibility, standard Umbraco techniques and the extensive list of features is obvious. With a one-time cost of €1,500 for the license, Vendr is certainly not free, but if it delivers on its promises, it will be more than worth the investment. To get a good idea of how Vendr works and what the possibilities are, we conducted an internal test. We included the following points in our test case:

• setting up and setting up Umbraco environment with Vendr
• webshop and extensive content website in one
• create, fill and adjust shopping cart
• add discount codes to shopping cart
• create your own custom discount rule
• setting up payment service provider

After the test, we still have a very positive impression of the simplicity and possibilities of Vendr. In particular, the ability to overwrite and/or supplement almost all functionalities makes the system very flexible.

Conclusion: promising

Even though Vendr is still in its infancy, the platform is ready to use. We have a positive first impression and will certainly work on it!

Plus points

• all CMS options from Umbraco are available
• uses standard Umbraco techniques
• easy to customize and/or extend using .NET MVC
• frontend is much easier and more decent to add than with many other e-commerce systems
• more than sufficient functionalities available
• a Vendr webshop is cheaper than Magento

Of course, every system also has its disadvantages. Most of Vendr's negatives are a result of its newness. It is expected that these will naturally decrease over time.

Negatives

• It is undoubtedly still buggy as it is in its early stages
• the documentation is not (yet) complete
• There is little information available online about problems
• unknown to other parties such as e-fulfilment companies

Vendr is promising!