Don't get me wrong, Software of any kind takes months if not years to create and deploy. Testing software and its use cases can be such a burden on a company that there are companies that just do testing for other companies... Over the past few decades a tidal wave of sorts washed over the software industry: Open Source. I love Open Source applications, I have worked on a few and use many every day. I feel that the Open Source movement was not only needed but beneficial in many areas that required a challenge - namely Operating Systems but also office productivity applications (in my opinion).

My company uses many Open Source solutions to not only create our software (Aptana) but also deploy and deliver our software for all our clients (LAMP). For me however, Open Source eCommerce poses a problem. I might really upset many with this post, and by no means do I want to create enemies - but I want to get my point across as clearly as possible...

Open Source eCommerce Solutions are more expensive than their commercial counterparts!
Open Source eCommerce Solutions are less secure than their commercial counterparts!

Okay, that's two points, so I have some explaining to do (if you haven't already closed your browser window).

First, Expense: When looking at an Open Source eCommerce Solution like osCommerce or Magento (there are many) you have to look at their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) compared to a managed or software as a service solution like Cularis | Store and others. I have spent days on end comparing TCO when coming up with our pricing structure, so I think I know a little bit about this, but let me show you what I came up with...

Example One: TCO of Magento vs. Commercial eCommerce Solution ($199 base monthly fee)

Don't always compare free to commercial by its base price alone.

What's really amazing isn't just the cost difference, but also the time it takes to find individual vendors for your hosting, setup, support, installation and more. The largest cost difference also comes by way of support. If you require more than Magento or an independent partner has limited you to, you pay more - a lot more: up to $400 per month according to Magento themselves. An easy comparison if you already have unlimited support included with your commercial product, but let's keep digging:

Example Two: Security, Bug Fixes, Patches and more... oh my.

If you have your own IT staff or strong Kung Fu in the command line you can stop reading this part... but if you are a business owner that just wants to get to work this is very important. A managed solution and / or a software as a service solution provides everything you need to keep selling. They are responsible for your software, infrastructure, hosting, upgrades, bug fixes, patches and more. Open Source software is developed by hundreds, if not thousands of developers and is either your responsibility or your IT staff's to keep up to date. Because Open Source eCommerce software is Open, its readable by anyone, anywhere, at anytime. Any talented coder can find exploits in any code, no matter how secure or what framework a system was built on and if that coder is nefarious, rather than report the bug or exploit to the community - they use it for financial gain. I have personally seen several Open Source eCommerce systems that we moved over to our solution that were not just patches behind, but full version releases - meaning there were several major exploits still in the code. In one particular case, an exploit was even compromised and the customer had exposed credit card information, unknown to him and his customers. Not good.

Now I am not saying Commercial Software is perfect, nor am I saying that is is not a target of the same nefarious individuals, but based on its track record alone you can see its worth its weight compared to the solutions I mention here. Don't believe me? There is an easy test:

Step 1) Pick your commerce software of choice that is available as open source.

Step 2) Download a copy.

Step 3) Open It. You now have all the code.

Step 4) Return to the software vendors web site and visit their support areas, paying special attention to available upgrades and patches.

Step 5) Compare your downloaded release with those patches (you should be current since you just downloaded it).

Step 6) Look at the date of the last major patch.

If you did this test correctly, you will see that if you were a user of this software, and didn't upgrade it since the last release patch that was major - you could of had problems. If you pay someone an hour here and there to do your upgrades for you, please refer to Example One above.

In Closing...

Don't always compare free to commercial by its base price alone. You should always weigh your Total Cost of Ownership for any software you buy and make sure its as accurate as possible before making a decision. You should also include your time in that calculation, as you know how valuable that can be. If you chose an Open Source solution, make sure you have the abilities (or the staff) to stay on top of the updates that will always be required to keep it in shape.