There Goes CandyPress - Company Sold

[nhdonny]

Email sent to users today

CandyPress eCommerce Software Company purchased

Shopping Tree, Inc., a privately held internet software company, announces it has purchased CandyPress company, publisher of CandyPress eCommerce software.

CandyPress software has been a leading e-commerce solution since its release in 2002. Shopping Tree, Inc. CEO Mike Chafin said there are no immediate plans to change the software, and current customers will see little or no change in support of the product. We purchased the company because we were impressed with the quality of the product, as well as the customer service and technical support offered. We intend to carry those strengths forward," said Chafin.

CandyPress creator and previous owner, Zivan van Zyl, said he created the software to be the most affordable and easy to use eCommerce solution on the market. The software, available in multiple languages, currently is being used on thousands of web sites worldwide.

According to van Zyl, "Shopping Tree, Inc. is a professional, well respected company with extensive experience and resources. With the change of ownership comes fresh, new ideas that will be of great benefit to CandyPress customers."

With a strong user community, CandyPress software is popular in the eCommerce world for its ease of use, versatility, and low cost. Additionally, several cottage businesses have created modules that expand the software's functionality.

For more information about CandyPress, go to www.candypress.com or email sales@candypress.com

Are these events ever good for the loyal users of a product?

Well, If they screw it up I can always go back to Comersus, the base that CandyPress is built on.

[dpyers]

Time to get your copy before the prices change. I think Brangwyn is an affiliate of theirs. He may have more info about pricing changes.

[mresell]

Usually..price goes up. If their like Symantec they will. Miva Merchant was 100 at one time now it can reach many hundreds even over thousands depending on additional dev stuff and licenses. Of course, that is an entirely diff animal in many ways(especially since it is binary now), but they drastically changed their approach which lost them many users. It is a great cart and nice lang, but not worth the headache or costs.

[soky]

Yep... I've been watching... double-checked my copy for updates because there is definitely change in the wind. They have also torqued their developer partners because they have started enforcing a clause in the copyright that prevents bundling mods with the main package. It's complicated but in brief... people who are making a living bundling their skins and mods with the cart software were told they can no longer do it... some are quite angry. I have to give cp credit though... they have handled themselves quite well.

[soky]

Originally Posted by nhdonny

Are these events ever good for the loyal users of a product?

Well, If they screw it up I can always go back to Comersus, the base that CandyPress is built on.

Indeed... I too have been exploring my options... too bad really... there was a good thing happening.

[Silverbug]

ah man that (potentially) sucks. If they change the price it will at least. However there are a bunch of mods that i could see as improving the system.

[Brangwyn]

Haven't heard or seen anything about price changes yet, apparently this was all announced a week back and there was a bit of a furore on their forums about it as it obviously came as a bit of a surprise to everyone (posts about it seem to have been deleted though)

[mresell]

Originally Posted by Brangwyn

Haven't heard or seen anything about price changes yet, apparently this was all announced a week back and there was a bit of a furore on their forums about it as it obviously came as a bit of a surprise to everyone (posts about it seem to have been deleted though)

If they are deleting posts...that's not usually good.

[soky]

Originally Posted by mresell

If they are deleting posts...that's not usually good.

That was my thought too.

I have used a number of packages and CandyPress was slick... a close look at the code does show a dependence on the comersus code which is offered for free... well mostly.

It seems inevitable however that whenever I get a project I have to modify the software to the point is barely recognizable. Case in point was StoreFront... I had to "fix" it so many times that I cannot apply patches or use their upgrades anymore... might be for the best.

It has me thinking the time to build my own application may have arrived. As if I didn't have enough to do already.

Sorry for the ramble.

[mresell]

The search for a decent and affordable shopping cart appears to be an ongoing one. Altho oscommerce and redhat Interchange seem fine and are affordable last I checked.
None are perfect.

[bubba]

What would be an equivalent of this cart for someone that host on a unix box with MySQL?