Price comparison scripts?

Hi all,
I’ve been following sitepoint and php master for a while now, but I just registered on the forums.

I’m doing research for a client and I wanted to ask if you could recommend any price comparison scripts/plugins for any open-source CMS.

  1. What programming language would you like the script to written in?
    PHP
  2. What operating system will the script reside on?
    LAMP
  3. What kind of budget do you have?
    Let’s say 3000 USD for a complete solution (a solution that would not require any major programming work on it)
  4. Does it have to be open source? Or can it be proprietary?
    Open source
  5. Can the source be encrypted?
    No, custom development will be in place when the MVP is asserted and running
  6. What features are you specifically looking for?
    The MVP is a price comparison website, that gets product feeds either from the sellers, or from a crawler service (already developed). It should allow:
  • multiple sellers per product
  • connecting the corresponding products across sellers (ie. when seller A and seller B both sell product C)
  • used products, or products in different conditions
  • seller ratigs
  • product ratings
  • catalogue browsing with filtering
  • new sellers can sign up and provide an own product feed (which is preferred over the crawler)
  • be open to major modifications, like converting the site to a marketplace where both companies and individuals can buy and sell
  1. Do you see any working examples of the script? Show us.
    pricerunner.co.uk
    ciao.co.uk
    google.com/shopping (google product search)

I’ve been through OpenCart, CS-Cart, Magento…
So far, uMarketplace for Magento seemed the best, because they offer both the price comparison and the marketplace.
I’ve also tried googling for Wordpress and Joomla addons, but nothing I found seemed like a professional solution. Most are built just around the big affiliate networks (CJ, Trade Doubler, Aff. Window…).

So, anyone got a recommendation? <snip/>

Thanks

Hi ByroRedux,

Developing a historical product price tracking comparison shopping engine is no easy task. Believe me, I’ve been working on comparison shopping engines for the past 7 years. You’ve touched on a few good points, but the problems you’ll face will become infinitely more complex. When you start working with billions of records of data on a $3000 budget, I’m sure you’ll start to understand where I’m coming from. I don’t see how you could possibly expect to develop any dynamic website without any custom programming and less than $3000. I mean, I can’t even buy a server to host a basic comparison engine for $3000, and you expect to get the whole package for that? I’ve been developing my own shopping engine for the past few years, and I’ve spent well over $150k on it.

Good Luck.

Hi sheepguru,
thank you for sharing your concerns re. the budget.
I also think it could be done if the niche is narrow (ie. smaller/specialized system), but when I mentioned this, the client was reluctant about it - they want everything.

Cheers

Hi ByroRedux,

Take a look at Magic Store Builder, it’s written in PHP and using mySQL as a database engine, not open source though. It comes with 50 free high quality templates and a complete token based system so you can establish your own price comparison store using HTML and tokens templates. Software uses Prosperent datafeed and their API, with support to big name merchants and over 50 millions products database.

A working example is armandostore.com and license costs less than $250 but there is an open license version at $2,000 I think if you contacted them on the website.

Regards,
Hossam

You can pay an exeprt PHP programmer to program a custom CMS for you with this budget.