Merchello - the answer to your Umbraco eCommerce needs?
Merchello is the newest eCommerce solution for the Umbraco CMS, and at last check the only one built for version 7 of the CMS. What’s interesting about Merchello, is it’s open source, and community driven. That’s right, open source (sounds like free to me) and they want and encourage developers to grab the code and help build something amazing.
The first version boasts some eCommerce basics:
- Products with options and variants
- Flat rate shipping provider (by weight or price) for a single warehouse that can be adjusted by country and region
- Cash payment provider (for cash, check, cod, pay by phone, etc.)
- Both invoicing and orders, created with each purchase
- Multiple currencies
- Product Picker datatype for Umbraco that lets you connect your Merchello product with your Umbraco content.
They’ve also integrated into Umbraco 7 nicely. It’s clean, light and intuitive, i.e., doesn’t burn your retinas.
It's early though promising days...
As Merchello is still in its infancy, I see this as a great start.
Developers can find documentation on the API. I did notice the documentation is still being written. You can see evidence of this on the Services list. Again, the project is still new, however, I’ve run into many projects out there where the documentation just never keeps up with releases. Even the Umbraco CMS suffers from this, though they have lately put in more of an effort on documentation. I’m hoping this is just growing pains and they’ll soon catch up.
I’m keen to see how this project progresses over the year. They have had a great start so far, with some really good feedback. If they stay on track, this could be the next must have add on package for the Umbraco CMS.
For more details on how it helps you, API documentation, download links, demo, etc… head over to the Merchello documentation site.
