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Going Freelance: Cash Flow

Dave Child — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:43:46 +0100

As a new freelancer, your cash flow is everything. You can produce stellar work, on time and under budget, but if you run out of money then the game is over. Here are a few tips for minimising the risks.

A comment from Michael on my Going Freelance: First Impressions post raised a great (and common) question, and one that I reckon most freelancers ask themselves when starting out: what if somebody doesn't pay, or pays late?

What is Cash Flow?

Your business, like any other (and even if you are a freelancer without an official limited company) takes money in in return for work, and spends money out in expenses, wages and so on. The money that comes in is based on the work you have completed, but more often than not there is a delay between finishing the work and being paid for it.

If the money isn't in the business to pay expenses and wages, you may find yourself out of business - even if you have taken on as much work as you could handle. You can be profitable on paper, but out of cash and out of business, just because cash wasn't coming in quickly enough. Having enough cash to pay your bills is referred to as being "liquid".

Woohoo! You Got a Gig!

Well done! Convincing somebody that you are the right person to take on a paid job is the first step on the road to successful freelancing. Now, what does that mean in terms of cash flow?

Most people will look at a project, and will base their forecasts on something like this. We'll assume this job is estimated to take one month - a good sized job, and starts on January 1st. The job finishes on time on February 1st, and the invoice is sent immediately. The client pays in good time, and the money is received on March 1st. Based on this, a freelancer just starting out will only need to cope for two months with no income - achievable with minimal savings.

This would be lovely, but it's often not how things work in practice. Let's look at how cash flow can go wrong. To begin with, we'll assume this project runs long for some reason - although the bulk of the work was complete in one month, the client finishes their copy after two months, and once the copy is in they request a few changes. The job is eventually signed off in mid-March. With 30 day terms, the invoice is due in mid-April. And the client pays late - initially because they didn't receive the invoice, and then because they were just slow to pay. After a few weeks of chasing, money arrives in late May.

Four, nearly five, months, from the project being agreed to money being received. That means, assuming this was your first gig, and you had two months of income saved up at the start, you'd be looking at surviving over two extra months with no income. For most people, surviving with no income isn't an option. So you're left with two choices - take out a loan, or give up and take a salary at a company. Neither is a great start to your freelancing career!

How Many People Pay Late

I've been asked several times how many invoices are paid late, or how many clients pay late. Unfortunately, there's no right answer. Some people go for years with no late payments. Some have a particularly bad period where everybody pays late.

In my experience so far, around:

25% of clients pay invoices a week or more early (deposits especially)
50% pay in the few days before the invoice due date
20% pay within a couple of weeks after the due date
5% pay later than a couple of weeks after the due date

My latest payment was three months overdue when paid. The fastest payment was under an hour.

How to Keep Your Cash Flowing

There are three ways (other than reducing your business expenses) to keeping your cash flow from being a problem:

Make It Easy to Pay On Time

Paying other people money is not something people look forward to. There is a financial incentive to delaying payment as long as possible (interest earned), and it might be sensible to keep money within your company as long as possible, in case a more important bill suddenly needs paying. With that in mind, it makes sense to make it as easy as possible for people to pay on time.

Bill in stages for large projects so you're not left with a single large payment outstanding at the end. Billing at the end of each month for work completed during the month is a good way to manage long projects. And it gives smaller invoices for your client to cope with. Paying a set of small invoices over time is easier on their cash flow than paying one large invoice.

Once an invoice is sent, chase it up within a few days to make sure it has been received. It is not unknown for unscrupulous people to claim to have never received an invoice to avoid paying for another few weeks. Confirming receipt of the invoice gives one less excuse for a payment to be late.

Many people incentivise or reward quick payment. Some people give a percentage discount if payment is received within a set number of days, for example. People's experiences with this are varied, but this post by Astrid, a freelance translator matches what I have heard from other freelancers - it may work for you and your clients, but there are risks.

Make sure you accept as many payment options as is practical. If your client finds it easiest to pay by cheque, that's fine. It might not be your preferred method, but if it means they pay on time, then let them do it. By the same token, if someone offers to pay early, always accept. There's nothing stopping you charging more later if needed, or refunding money if the project is under budget, but always opt to take the money when it's offered.

Chase Late Payments

This video, from Mike Monteiro and San Francisco Creative Mornings, offers one (NSFW, language) perspective:

Chasing overdue payments can be time-consuming and stressful, but it is inevitable. Everybody handles it differently, and there is a lot to consider.

First, establish whether this is a client you want to do business with in future. Some businesses have cash flow problems themselves, but that doesn't mean they can't be a valuable client later. On the other hand, if the project has not been great for either party, you might not want to work with them again.

Some people advocate contact every day once a payment is late, ideally by phone. I tend to adopt a slightly less aggressive approach - I send a chasing email once a payment goes late, and then chase regularly every few days from there by email and phone. If I don't hear back, I will continue to keep contacting until I do. If I do hear back, then the next stages are dependent upon the client response. If not, and it's been a few weeks, I'll send recorded delivery post, and if necessary begin the paperwork for small claims court.

If the client is in contact, that's a good sign. You need to start worrying when they're avoiding you - the fact they're speaking to you indicates that they are likely to be willing to pay. Try to work out why the payment is late, if possible. If the client is having cash flow problems, you are probably not the only person chasing them, and you may find that offering a payment schedule is the best way to get the bill resolved. This kind of friendly approach may win you loyalty from your customer, and you might find that, once they are over this particular tough patch, they are a great client.

Some companies will tell you they have "45 day payment terms" or "60 day payment terms". You should have your payment terms clearly outlined in your proposals, your contracts and your invoices - and the terms they would like to pay on are irrelevant - the terms agreed in proposals and invoices are what matters. If they pay late, by the terms agreed, you can chase payment and, if appropriate, invoke penalty charges or clauses. If you didn't agree payment terms before starting, you're pretty much stuck with their standard policy.

If the client is refusing to pay, and you have delivered what was agreed, your position is tougher. At this point, you first need to establish whether it is worth chasing payment at all. There is no sense wasting days of time if there is only a small amount owed.

If you have tried to resolve the issue and got nowhere, look at your legal options. In the UK, for amounts under £10k, you can use the small claims court, which is a great, cheap option (no lawyer required) (there's a great guide to using the small claims court here). As long as you can demonstrate you have delivered what was agreed, and that you have tried to resolve the issue without resorting to court, you will likely find the court siding with you.

Unfortunately, that isn't the end of the story. The judge may not award you the full amount you have asked for. The client may still be unable to pay. And the client may still refuse to pay, at which point you will need to obtain a warrant of execution to recover goods to the value of the money owed. Between this, the initial court fees, and the time involved in chasing, you can easily end up out of pocket even if you win.

Reducing the Impact of Late or Non Payers

Some people won't pay. Some people will pay late. Some will delay for months over trivial amounts of money. Some will attempt to find excuses not to pay. These are unavoidable, but there is plenty you can do to ensure that any damage caused by late payments is kept to a minimum.

Consider getting a credit report on clients before starting work. Many people do this as standard, and pay a flat fee for the ability to do so. It's not something I've done so far, but I would do it for a client where a failed payment meant the end of my business.

Make sure you have enough cash reserves to cope with a few months of waiting. Expect people to pay late and prepare for it. If you only have enough cash reserves to cope with one payment being a week or two late, you don't have enough cash reserves. Make it a priority to build up enough of a cushion to cope with as much as you are comfortable with. Enough money to cope with at least three months with no income would be sensible.

Always ask for a deposit before starting work. I usually ask for 30%-50% in advance, except for small projects or overseas projects, where I ask for full payment in advance. This weeds out the time-wasters pretty quickly. You will find that sometimes there is a lot of pressure to start a job before the deposit is paid, and it is up to you to decide whether to do so. I have done, for time-sensitive projects, but try not to unless unavoidable. If the deposit invoice goes overdue, you may have a serious problem - I won't continue a project until that deposit is paid, and would happily insist on a further deposit also being paid in that situation. And if the client ultimately doesn't pay their final invoice on time, or at all, then you are not left having earned nothing for the work.

Add a provision for penalty charges for late payments to your estimates, contracts and invoices. Even if you never actually charge it, it is a good bargaining tool once a payment is late. The penalty charge should include a percentage fee charged on a regular basis, so that the longer the money is owed, the more the penalty. Charging a single, fixed-price penalty is only of limited use, as once it is applied there is nothing to stop the payment being delayed even further.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you can spread your risk by taking smaller jobs with more clients. If you have just one client, you're at much greater risk if they have trouble. If you have several, you should be able to cope better with one or two paying late (or not at all).

My approach to this last point is to differentiate between projects (work which is more than 2 days) from small jobs and maintenance work. I book in project work based on a three day week (so a 15 day project is delivered over 5 weeks). The other two days I can spend on the smaller pieces of work or my own projects. This means that even with a larger project I am still billing smaller jobs frequently. As a result of this I can also cope better with projects taking longer than expected, as I can have two projects on the go at the same time - something I couldn't do if I based projects on a five day week.

Back to Michael

Michael's comment was pretty typical of the fears most freelancers have about getting started. The beginning is stressful, and with no guarantees of rewards. But with some decent planning, a bit of hard work and some careful money management, it's all quite manageable. And while I can't speak for everyone, for me it's been worth it in every meaningful way - six months in I am happier, financially better off, working with interesting clients on interesting projects, and able to spend more time with my family, all at the same time.

Poker Cheat Sheet

Dave Child — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:23:00 +0100

A cheat sheet for poker, including how to play the three most common variants, hand ranks, and basic positional play.

Overview

The Poker cheat sheet is a one-page reference sheet for beginner poker players, including how to play the three most common variants, hand ranks, and basic positional play.

Downloads

This cheat sheet is available for free at Cheatography!

• HTML (online version)
• PDF (for printing)

Dave's Second Law of Development

Dave Child — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:24:00 +0000

If you ever utter the words "It's definitely not that.", it's 100% certainly, without a shadow of doubt, exactly that.

Freelancing with a Newborn - A Survivor's Guide

Dave Child — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:57:00 +0100

On Tuesday 5th February I was lucky enough to become a father for the first time. As a new freelancer, this posed some challenges! Here are some of the tips and tricks that worked for me, and some of the ones that didn't.

Having a little gremlin that insists on being fed after midnight added to the mix when you're freelancing brings along a whole new set of challenges. Having only been working for myself for six months, perhaps this meant it was easier for me to adjust - fewer routines to break. Perhaps not, as I still have plenty of inefficiency in my working processes. Either way, these are a few of the things that have made my life as a work-from-home developer a bit easier.

This is inevitably going to be focused on male developers, because this is all from my own experience. Also, some of these tips and thoughts relate to being a new dad in general and aren't specific to being a freelancer.

Before we get started, let me introduce you to the newest member of the Added Bytes family. He screams, he poops, he smiles with his whole head and he's awesome. He's Henry:

1. Write Down Everything

As a developer, you probably (hopefully) have a pretty good memory and are used to keeping lots of threads on the go at once. When a baby arrives, that's going to change, at least to begin with. By my reckoning, I lost a third of my memory to sleep deprivation, and a third which was instead occupied by baby-related thought.

The solution for me was to write down everything. Everything. No matter how mundane. Took some paracetamol? Write down the time. Going to the shop to pick up a loaf of bread, and nothing else - write a very short shopping list. Client phoned up for a simple, easy-to-remember change? Write it down. Making notes now? Make a note to remind yourself to do it.

2. Take Time Off

My main responsibility right at the start was to look after my significant other. Dishes, laundry, fetching her water or juice, making food, making more food, making something to eat, buying food, cooking ... all of these things were my world. Clients, at the very start at least, have to take a back seat. The more stressed the mother gets, the more stressed baby is likely to get, especially if she is feeding the baby. A stressed baby makes for a stressed mother, and you'll quickly get yourself into a vicious cycle.

I've been able to grab a few minutes a day to reply to emails, just to say I'm not really around but I received the message, with a very broad idea of when I'll be back to work. I also planned ahead and booked in a minimal amount of work around the due date. That means I've not had to worry about client management or hitting billing targets.

3. Sleep When You Can

Remember how I said it's your job to look after the new mother? That also means it's important she gets plenty of sleep. You might have to man up for a while and do without sleep, but don't worry, your turn will come. That also makes it important, at the start, to grab sleep when you have the opportunity, even if it's in the middle of the day. Make a bedroom into a dark-all-day room that you can both crash in when you have a moment.

4. Have Awesome Clients

This may be out of your hands a little, but life becomes very unpredictable with a newborn, so having clients that are understanding is very handy. Phone calls with screaming in the background, late starts after bad nights and even a few short-notice cancellations of meetings are all to be expected, after all, and most clients will be fine with this, especially if you prepare them well in advance. By the same token, they aren't going to be too happy if you agree to deliver a critical project in a short timeframe around the due date and are then unable to do so - after all, you did know disruption was very likely.

5. Be Flexible

It's been a few weeks now, and I've found a routine that is working for me. I start early (6am usually), and work till 8 or 10 at night. I take Henry for an hour or so in the morning, spend an extended lunchtime with my other half and son, and take a couple of long breaks at other points in the day. Inevitably Henry has some times when he needs to be heard, so I usually down tools for a while and help with him then as well. So for a 14-16 hour start-to-finish workday, I actually work for anything from 8-12 of those hours. It's a good balance - the breaks help keep me fresh, I get to spend time with my family (which, after all, is the whole point), and I get enough good working time to keep on top of work.

I tried a few other approaches, but they all led to either not spending enough time working, or being unable to be any use when actually needed to help with Henry. Flexibility was the key, although the downside is that it's difficult to feel like you're ever not working if you're working so much! This will improve, with any luck, as Henry develops his own routines.

Not So Good

I heard and had a few ideas that I tried and that didn't work so well. Working with Henry in my office has been a mixed bag. He has a little bouncy chair he sits in, but he gets agitated after a while and needs attention. It's great having him with me for a short period, but not more than half an hour at a time.

I also tried keeping strict office hours. That was great for preventing work spilling over into the evenings, but meant that I missed out on anything interesting happening in the day. I found that approach just too inflexible (and keeping hours that suit my working patterns was one of the benefits of going freelance).

One of the biggest mistakes we made early on was trying to do too much in a day. Visiting too many people, or taking him out too long, or playing music with him for too long, all resulted in an unsettled baby for the rest of the day, and often the following night.

What Next?

As Henry grows, his needs and the challenges of working from home will change. Once he can walk, and open my office door, it's a whole different ball game.

A few people have suggested renting out an office or a desk somewhere. The idea is tempting but not something I want to do yet. If working from home becomes unproductive (and it might well do as Henry gets older, or is joined by another bundle) then an office space makes a lot of sense. It's probably inevitable at some point. For now, I'm loving being at home and involved.

For now, though, freelancing and working from home with a newborn is a great experience, and one I'd recommend to anyone starting a family.

Settlers of Catan Cheat Sheet

Dave Child — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 09:53:28 +0000

A cheat sheet for the awesome board game Settlers of Catan, including lots of potential alternative (house) rules.

Overview

The Settlers of Catan cheat sheet is a one-page reference sheet for board game fans, including a basic rules reference and a suggested set of alternative rules.

Downloads

This cheat sheet is available for free at Cheatography!

• HTML (online version)
• PDF (for printing)

Freelancer Rate Calculator

Dave Child — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 07:33:00 +0000

Setting your rate as a freelancer isn't easy. This freelancer rate calculator has been built to help you convert a daily rate into an annual salary, taking into account holidays, tax and expenses.

One of the first things many new freelancers, myself included, struggle with is setting their rates. Should you aim high, and maximise your earnings per hour, or aim low to fill up all of your time? Should you compete on price with off-shore teams? Should you charge per hour, per day, per week or per project?

One important step in working out what your rates should be (or even if you can afford to go freelance) is working out what you need to charge just to break even. For many people considering going freelance, they want to know what they need to charge to earn at least the same as they make in their current job.

With that in mind, I've built a very simple JavaScript-based tool (also available as a spreadsheet) to help work out what a daily rate translates to as an annual income. Just enter your daily rate, and your estimated costs, holidays, expenses and tax and it will give you a rough idea of what net income you can expect every year. Below the tool is a run-through of the fields with some suggested values.

Freelancer Rate Calculator

Item	Days	Income
Daily Rate		£
1 Year	+ 365	£36,500
Weekends	- 104	£26,100
Holidays	-	£24,100
Sickness	-	£23,600
Sales & Admin ( %)	- 46	£23,600
Unpaid Time ( %)	- 23	£23,600
Total Income (annual)		£23,600
Total Income (monthly)		£23,600
Expense	Amount	Income
Professional Services	- £	£23,600
Hardware	- £	£23,600
Software	- £	£23,600
Office	- £	£23,600
Sales	- £	£23,600
Insurance	- £	£23,600
Miscellaneous	- £	£23,600
Total (less expenses) (annual)		£23,600
Total (less expenses) (Monthly)		£23,600
Tax ( %)	- £23,600	£23,600
Net Income (annual)		£23,600
Net Income (monthly)		£23,600

Please Note: Many expenses will be deducted before tax, but some may not be - this tool provides an estimate for net income, but for an actual calculation you should always speak to an accountant.

The Fields

Daily Rate: The daily rate you charge to clients (£100 by default).

Holidays: How many days of holiday a year will you take? One of the most alluring advantages of being a freelancer is the opportunity to take more time off (30 days by default).

Sickness: How many days a year will you be unable to work? And for freelancers, a couple of days of sickness often translates into more lost time, as you try to catch up with delayed work (default 5 days).

Sales & Admin: What percentage of time needs to be spent on sales calls, meetings and administrative tasks (20% is the default here, but this is a low figure, especially for people just starting out).

Unpaid Time: As a percentage of total earnings, what is the amount each year likely to go unpaid (5% by default).

Professional Services: This includes accountants, lawyers and any other professional services you need to make use of.

Hardware: How much per year do you spend on hardware, including computers, phones, printers, paper and so on.

Software: Including licensed software like Photoshop and software as a service like FreeAgent.

Office: Including office rental, phone line, internet connection and any relevant taxes

Sales: Any cost of sales, including your own website, PPC, marketing materials, business cards and expenses for meetings.

Insurance: Including professional indemnity and office insurance.

Miscellaneous: Other expenses, including travel, bank fees and so on.

Tax: What percentage of your after-expense income will go on taxes (25% by default)?

Going Freelance - First Impressions

Dave Child — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:23:14 +0100

On September 10th, I started a new chapter of work as a full time freelance web developer. I'm a month in, and I've already learned some valuable lessons.

The Good

There are two reasons, I suspect, that most people set up shop for themselves. One is to build something they have a real stake in and something that, if successful, they share in the profits of. The other is to have a greater control of their work - their environment, which work they do, and how that work is valued.

The first of those is measurable, to start with, really only by income. And so far, I've invoiced more than my targets for my first month. So that's good! Ultimately the aim is to replace freelance income with residual recurring income from web apps like Cheatography and FeedbackFair, but for the time being my targets are all based on freelance income, and that's exactly at the level it should be.

The second of those motivations is why I'm enjoying this so much, so far. My working environment (on which a future post) is exactly the way I want it. When I'm in the office - standing desk, decent hardware, good light, open window, music, plenty of tea. If I'm out - laptop or netbook for remote work, invoicing, emails, estimates. My working hours are also just right for me - I start early (6-7 am), and the morning is usually then two stretches of wonderful uninterrupted productive time. The afternoon is fairly flexible, and I usually save admin work, estimates and so on for then. In the late afternoon or evening I have a third productive stretch, if needed. And that works brilliantly.

Historically, I've found organising myself tricky. It's all too easy to let work items sit in emails, on notes, or try to remember them. This is, of course, a crazy way to try and manage work. Fortunately, I've been building my own work management tool for ages (Envoy) and that's been working well for me so far to manage work items and track time, and I've been using the wiki as well fairly extensively.

I've been using the amazing FreeAgent to handle all of my accounting needs so far and am very impressed - it connects to both my business bank and Paypal accounts, handles all invoices with minimal fuss, logs expenses - and at the end of the year will do most of the legwork for my tax returns.

Remember The Milk is great, and runs on my mobile and desktops. I use it to manage sales tasks and as a general repository for ideas (for clients and for my own apps). The app collection is rounded out with GMail (email), Google Calender (meetings) and PassPack (for passwords).

The Bad

My nerves have taken a thorough pounding. Despite being busy, and lining work up for more than a month ahead, there's always that nagging thought at the back of your mind that the work could dry up in an instant. That might be because I'm just starting out, but I doubt it will ever fade completely. I think it's probably a good thing - I doubt that complacency is good for business!

Again, this is likely to be largely the result of just starting out, but I'm working far more hours than previous workplaces. Partly this is a result of having ownership of the company I'm working for, of course - much easier to justify working long hours when you're rewarded for it. But partly it is because the first months are about building relationships with new and prospective clients and contacts. This might change, but from talking to other freelancers I'm not expecting it to happen any time soon! Unfortunately, a side-effect of this is that my current Open University courses have been rather badly affected.

It's pretty easy to go for long periods of time without human contact when working as a freelancer. Apparently. For me, it's not been an issue so far - between taking on consultancy work and going to the Brighton Farm regularly, I'm spending more time with more people than ever before. I can see how easy it would be to skip a few networking events, though, when things are very busy, and that's when the cabin fever will start to set in.

The Ugly

The sales process is, at the moment, expensive. With a one-hour meeting a short distance away, and a typical estimate document, each project takes around half a day of sales time, at a minimum. If a sale results in one or two days of work, that's time becomes a very significant cost. The time to write an estimate will come down, and smart organisation of meetings - as well as developing a sense of when it is worth having the meeting at all - will help improve this.

I still am not quite used to asking for money from clients, especially when their payments are overdue. I find myself being almost apologetic about it. With any luck, I'll have plenty of practice and this and will get better in no time.

Being so busy means that writing blog posts is taking a back seat. I'd hoped (and planned) to write much more often, about web development and freelancing, and about web apps and building an income from my own products. I'm still planning to do that, but it's not been a good start!

The Future

By and large, it's been a great start. One month in and I'm going strong, with work lined up and more in the pipeline. I'm determined to improve my working environment even more, write more blog posts, and keep heading out to events and gatherings of other local freelancers.

Are you a freelancer? How were your first few months? Do you have any tips or advice for me (or other people just starting out)?

Open Source PHP E-Commerce Platforms Compared

Dave Child — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:17:00 +0100

Just a few short years ago, options for Open Source PHP ecommerce platforms were extremely limited, and often the only way to put together an ecommerce store online was to have a bespoke system built. Not any more, though - now there are plenty of options. We take a look at the top five contenders to see what each has to offer.

The Contenders

The first name down was the big dog in this particular park - Magento. In a relatively short space of time, it has achieved remarkable success, and its recent acquisition by eBay indicates little intent to slow down.

Second, showing great promise, is the wonderful OpenCart. OpenCart is known for being a speedy way to get an e-Commerce site online and for having an easy-to-work-with codebase. Not as full-featured or "entreprisey" as Magento, it is nevertheless an excellent platform.

Usually mentioned in the same breath as OpenCart as a worthy alternative to Magento, PrestaShop is a capable platform using the Smarty templating engine. The most common complaint? It's developerd primarily by a company in Paris, so unless your French is up to speed you may find the documentation a touch tricky.

The only entry in the list which isn't a specialist e-Commerce platform, Drupal is still an extremely popular choice, largely because of its large community and vast array of extensions. It has strengths in areas where the other contenders are lacking, primarily due to its primary function being as a CMS rather than an e-Commerce system. The Commerce plugin (as one of several options) adds e-Commerce functionality to the system.

And finally, bringing up the rear, is the oldest of the lot - osCommerce. Despite a history of poor security, difficult maintenance and spaghetti code, it remains one of the most used platforms and has a huge community behind it. Development has slowed recently, prompting rumours that the project may be heading for the graveyard.

With the exception of Drupal, where an extension is required to add basic e-Commerce functionality, this comparison will not include functionality added through extensions - I am comparing the products out of the box.

Installation

Magento was simple to download, with older versions of the software available in tabs, although, system requirements were hidden away on the downloads page. Installation instructions were provided during the download process, and the installation guide was excellent. Installation was slow, though, largely because of the size of the software. It could have done with more explanatory text - osCommerce did this well - and any cleanup was handled automatically, which was excellent.

OpenCart has a reassuringly professional feel to its installation procedure. Downloads were easy to find, including earlier versions, although no installation guidance was provided when downloading. Requirements checking was simple and clear, and your stage in the process well indicated. It also lacked explanatory text and there was no option to clean up automatically after itself and set sensible permissions.

PrestaShop downloads were easy to find and grab, though system requirements were rather better hidden, with a link near the bottom of the download page. The download screen links to installation guides on the main PrestaShop site, which are excellent and include videos - but these are not linked to from the installation procedure, which is a real shame. System requirements checking was simple enough, with clear instruction on what to do to correct any issues. Cleanup is not automated, but is enforced (good idea) - you can't log in until you've renamed your administration folder and deleted the install folder. Finally, each of the two installations run during the writing of this article resulted in errors in either the admin area or the shop itself.

Drupal downloads were easy enough to find, and installation instructions and system requirements were both linked obviously from the downloads page. Indications of where you are in the installation process are simple, and requirements checking during the process was good, with clear instructions on how to address any issues. Unfortunately, it is the only of the systems to require you to manually create a configuration file, and this seemed rather unnecessary. As with most of the other platforms, there was little help text along the way. Drupal did clean up after itself though, with the installer being disabled after it has been run.

osCommerce was less smooth than the others to download - it's not obvious where to go to download the software from the homepage, although the downloads page is very simple. Requirements were specified on the download page, but no installation instructions. It was simple to install, with a guided process that confirmed requirements were met, gave good feedback and included plenty of help text. It might have been nice if it had given the option to run a cleanup script once complete, to wipe the install directory and set sensible permissions.

Theming

Magento has an excellent theming engine, with the ability to inherit elements from one theme to another, making theme variants easy and quick to produce. The sheer volume of folders and nesting can be daunting to someone new to the platform. There are some excellent themes to download as well, which can often provide a good starting point. Unfortunately, Magento is also extremely heavy, loading large amounts of CSS and JavaScript by default. Themes often end up being extremely large, making ongoing management sometimes more painful than with other systems.

OpenCart uses PHP files for its templates, which is something I am a fan of (why introduce a new variable and control syntax, processed by PHP, when it already has these things?) and as a result the templates are simple to write and maintain. Themes are held in folders, so many can be installed to a site at once. There are plenty of themes available as well, both free and paid.

PrestaShop makes use of the well-known Smarty templating engine, and can handle multiple templates being installed at one time. The themes don't have the ability, like Magento, to inherit elements from each other, but they are easy to build and simple to maintain. There are plenty of themes available as well, both free and paid.

Theming Drupal is not considered terribly good fun. Designers and front end coders working with it for the first time have a distinctive haunted look, largely because the parts of each page can come from so many different places. On the plus side, multiple templates can exist side by side, and templates can include extra functionality when needed. There are also some excellent templates available to download, although most will require some work to make them fit the specifics of your site, depending upon the modules you have installed.

The default osCommerce theme is terribly outdated and a major let down. As with the other platforms, though, there are some stunning templates available. Unfortunately, there is no integrated templating engine, and as a result many templates require changing of core files for installation.

Extensibility

All of the contenders score well on extensibility, with both the type, range and ease of building of extentions (a.k.a. addons) taken into account. Drupal and Magento are pretty even - Drupal has a much larger collection of extensions, largely because they are quicker and cheaper to build, but Magento's are generally of a higher quality.

The rest are all fairly evenly matched, with extensions numbering in the thousands providing similar added functionality to all of the platforms. OpenCart has a slight edge over PrestaShop and osCommerce when it comes to extensions development though, thanks to better documentation than PrestaShop and better architecture than osCommerce.

The most commonly required extensions - for payment and shipping configuration - are all present on all platforms for most of the large providers.

Development

Most stores require at least some ongoing development, integrating with new services and adding new features over time. So how do these platforms compare when it comes to having some custom work done?

It is difficult to know how to score Magento when it comes to development. The system's architecture, inheritance setup, XML config system and use of the MVC pattern all make it usually excellent to work with. It provides plenty of API interfaces, reusable objects, and has intelligent use of namespacing to reduce the risk of conflicts between modules. The code is also clean and well documented throughout. On the other hand, it can be slow to write for - it is a monster, with hundreds of files in a nested structure that really takes some getting used to. The observer pattern used frequently in Magento can make debugging some problems deeply painful, as you need to find which of dozens of observers are causing a headache. Overall, it is the most technically advanced, and by some way, but that carries with it something of an overhead, making development for Magento often more expensive than comparable systems.

OpenCart is, for the most part, pretty simple to develop for. It's generally faster than Magento, thanks to a simpler structure and faster page times. It uses an MVC pattern, and has great documentation. It does suffer from an unfortunate folder structure, where a single simple custom module can have files in lots of different parts of the directory tree, but once you are familiar with the layout this is less of an issue. There is a lot of repetition in creating OpenCart modules as well - Magento's easy Grid/Edit/Form setup is much simpler and faster. Overriding core functionality is also a painful experience, relying on third party modules that search and replace within code, rather than hooks or class overrides. Despite these shortcomings, generally OpenCart's simplicity makes developing modules more of a pleasure than with some of the competition.

PrestaShop has a better module folder structure than OpenCart, similar to Magento's way of doing things, with every module in its own distinct folder. The development documentation has not been great in the past, though does seem to be improving. PrestaShop also provides a robust system for overriding core functionality as well as a variety of hooks and an API.

Drupal uses a simple and straightforward module system for development, meaning modules can often be added extremely quickly, each within its own folder. If the recommended development practices are followed, it's easy enough to avoid conflicts between modules. Where Drupal can be trickier is in overriding core functionality. Often the only way to do so is to copy a core module, alter it, and make the same changes whenever updating in future (this is not dissimilar to other platforms, of course). Drupal does separate themes from modules well, but does not go quite as far as an MVC pattern. Drupal uses a system of hooks to enable you to tap into or override normal functionality in your own modules, however this becomes problematic when wanting to modify or interact with third party modules, as these may not implement hooks in the same way, if at all.

osCommerce is extremely poor when it comes to development. Almost all development work involves modifying core files, and those are largely procedural code. There is no universal URL handler to tap into, no module system, no hooks. This does mean it is often extremely quick to make small changes to the site. It also means those changes can have far-reaching effects, upgrades are extremely painful, and security issues are easy to introduce.

Support

Drupal is well in the lead here, with extensive and varied support communities. They have forums, their own Stack Exchange site (in addition to a healthy amount of activity on the main Stack Overflow), and each module has its own mini-support system complete with bug tracking. All of which is lucky, because with Drupal you can spend a lot of time looking for help.

Magento is just a little behind Drupal. There is an active community on the main Stack Overflow site, and Magento have their own forums - although a large number of posts there seem to go unanswered. Magento also offer paid support options.

OpenCart, PrestaShop and osCommerce all score roughly evenly here. All have their own active forums (OpenCart, PrestaShop, osCommerce), and all have small communities on Stack Overflow (OpenCart, PrestaShop, osCommerce). PrestaShop offer a variety of paid support options as well.

Hosting and Performance

With Open Source systems a couple of the potential major costs usually associated with ecommece businesses are no longer an issue - building a system is unnecessary, and no need to pay for a license. However, there are still significant costs associated with hosting to be considered. Performance is a significant issue too, with slow sites converting customers at a lower rate than faster competitors.

Magento scores poorly here, requiring a beefier server than the other contenders to serve a comparable level of traffic, as well as needing PHP modules that are not always present on web servers by default. Performance can be very poor without tweaking of server configurations and addition of opcode caching modules. Even with plenty of server-side shenanigans, pages are heavy and difficult to trim to a healthy size. It redeems itself slightly with its ability to scale to multiple servers easily, but, for smaller online shops, this is an area where Magento has much room for improvement.

OpenCart and PrestaShop are evenly matched, with comparable load times out of the box and similar hosting requirements. They are not as demanding or as expensive to host as Magento, and both will work on the majority of PHP hosts.

Drupal will run on most PHP hosts, but will usually be pushing the limits of standard virtual hosts. It runs well on VPSes and up, but also suffers from slow load times. As with the other sites, speed can be vastly improved with opcode caching and some of the community modules.

osCommerce is not terribly fast when it comes to page loads out of the box, though there are plenty of optimisations you can perform to bring it up to spec. Where it does score well, however, it ubiquity of hosting. It has been around since early version of PHP and runs fine on a standard virtual server, so can be one of the cheapest and easiest system to host.

Management

Management of a store, including product pricing, inventory and data, categorisation, order statuses and so on is important to any e-Commerce venture. A management system should be intuitive and quick enough that customer service staff can use it without extensive training, and should allow restriction of access to different parts of the system for different users. Functionality like the ability to manage multiple stores from a single interface, handle multiple languages, or customise designs for specific pages or sections, while not universally required, is becoming more and more important.

Magento scores well in most ways, although their management area is not particularly intuitive (especially when it comes to order statuses, invoicing and shipping). Access control is excellent, and the system allows almost every aspect of products to be controlled through their EAV model. Products can be of various types (attribute sets and configurable products both work very well), special offers are powerful (although no 3 for 2 support is still a serious omission), and rule-based product relationships are very useful. Magento also offers multi-website and multi-store functionality, although this can have a significant negative effect on performance.

OpenCart is more intuitive than Magento, handles multiple stores well, and has a basic but functional permissions management system. Editing of products, categories and orders is simple and quick. Especially nice is its support of multiple languages. However, special offer support is weak, automated relating of products is missing, and stock control for configurable products is limited to one criteria (so if you sell tshirts, you can't specify stock for each combination of colour and size you have available).

PrestaShop supports configurable products well and has good granular permissions management. Unfortunately, it is not particularly intuitive, and does not support multiple stores from a single installation (although this feature is currently in testing, so should be available soon). Unfortunately, like OpenCart, it also has weak special offer management facilities and no support for automated relating of products. I do like that management of an item, that on other systems is spread over several pages, is often on one page in PrestaShop - a small point, but much appreciated.

Drupal scores badly here, largely as a result of e-Commerce being an addon, rather than native functionality. As a result, categories, products and related products are traumatic to set up. Access control and multiple store support are both good, but the kinds of refinements expected of a modern e-Commerce platform are lacking - most things are possible, but slow and usually in a way that makes introduction of errors almost inevitable. Finally, and possibly most seriously, it is badly let down by its counter-intuitive administration area.

osCommerce is simple to use, though not intuitive. Unfortunately, that is largely where the positives end - it cannot support multiple stores, configurable products, related products or users with different levels of permissions. Many of these features are available by way of community modules, however. It does have basic support for special offers, and a simple to manage system for categories.

CMS

This is an area where Drupal shines, and where Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop and osCommerce are well behind the curve. A modern CMS allows granular control of access to edit content, versioning of documents, publishing dates, commenting on posts and so on. At the minimum, an e-Commerce platform should be able to offer basic blog functionality. Only Drupal is up to the task here, being first and foremost a CMS.

Security

Only osCommerce presents a serious concern out of the box, with a terrible reputation for, and history of, insecurity. Efforts to improve it are ongoing, but once a product has a reputation for poor security it is tough to change it.

Drupal fares a bit better, although the reliance on modules means that sometimes, even though the main platform itself might be secure, exploitable weaknesses are introduced (this is true of all of the platforms to some extent, but Drupal has greater reliance on extensions if run as an e-Commerce platform). Generally security of the Drupal platform has been good, and it's been well tested, running high profile sites like Whitehouse.gov without incident.

Magento, OpenCart and PrestaShop are all fairly even here. Exploits of the core platforms are comparable in number and severity. Magento offers an Enterprise version of their software (for a fee) and this claims to be fully PCI compliant - if this were to be brought to the Community edition as well, it would have an advantage in future.

Consumers

Finally, how easy is each for a consumer to use, and how good is each platform at bringing in customers and marketing specific products? This is almost entirely dependant upon the theme chosen, the quality of development and hosting, and a thousand other factors. However, out of the box, ...

Magento is excellent for consumers, despite a few recurring issues. Filterable categories are excellent, and Magento handles complex products extremely well, making the shopping process very straightforward. Integrations with third parties for payments are also mature and well tested, meaning few surprises for shoppers. Sometimes let down by bizarre behaviour (categories showing as empty and the search returning no results being common issues), it is still comfortably ahead of the competition. Search engine optimisation is excellent, and the ability to run promotions from the CMS at various points in the site is also very welcome.

OpenCart, PrestaShop and osCommerce are very evenly matched here. All provide a friendly browsing experience, and both suffer from the serious ommision of category filters; however all also have an excellent shopping and checkout processes. OpenCart and PrestaShop both include product comparison, while of the three only OpenCart includes wishlist functionality. OpenCart and PrestaShop have excellent SEO capabilities, and both provide support for promotions on the site.

With a little patience, Drupal is capable of providing a simple and easy to use shopping experience. It lacks some of the options and more advanced refinements of the dedicated e-Commerce offerings, but with Drupal anything is possible - given enough time. It also has good SEO support and the ability to run promotions through the site.

Comparison Table

	Magento	OpenCart	Prestashop	Drupal	osCommerce
/10 Installation	8	7	7	7	7
/10 Theming	7	8	7	5	3
/10 Extensibility	8	7	6	8	6
/10 Development	8	7	8	6	2
/10 Support	6	5	6	8	5
/10 Hosting	4	6	6	5	7
/10 Management	9	7	6	3	2
/10 CMS	4	3	3	8	2
/10 Security	8	8	8	7	4
/10 Consumers	8	7	6	5	5
/100 Totals	70	65	63	62	43

Winners and Losers

Magento, despite extremely rapid growth, easy installation and excellent extensions, is let down by a lacklustre CMS, expensive running and development costs, and a comparatively poor (unless you are prepared to pay) support setup. Third party extensions and community sites exist to cover most of these shortfalls though, and the quality of code and the power available to extensions make this a great choice for serious e-Commerce businesses.

If you're looking to keep your development costs down, both OpenCart and PrestaShop are fine choices, though for me OpenCart seems to have the edge at the moment. Both have a bit of a way to go to catch Magento, though, especially when it comes to addons and sales features.

If you're after content bells and whistles, you're going to find it tough to talk yourself out of Drupal. It isn't the easiest system to develop with, but there's not much out there that can compete with it on power.

osCommerce is, at the moment, just not competitive, and has not kept pace with the comparable alternatives. Best avoided, for now.

Honourable Mentions

Other Languages

You'll have noticed by now that the above are all PHP/MySQL-based platforms. There are plenty of languages out there and there are open source e-Commerce platforms available on almost all of them. If you're more comfortable with another language than PHP ... then very sorry, but you've been reading the wrong list.

MODX

Personally, my favourite CMS for content sites is MODX - it's easy to use, simple to develop for, and has a great community. Unfortunately, e-commerce support is weak, with most solutions available being third party integrations (e.g., FoxyCart) rather than native e-commerce. However, talk of new e-commerce options is rife, and I'm hopeful something will come along to fill this gap soon.

Wordpress

Much like MODX, Wordpress does not have native e-commerce functionality. However, again as with MODX, Wordpress has plenty of plugins that can add a store to a blog, such as WP e-Commerce. There's still a long way to go until either Wordpress or MODX is competitive when it comes to e-commerce, but the signs for both are encouraging.

Zen Cart

It was a tough choice whether to pick Zen Cart or osCommerce for the fifth contender in this rundown. When I revisit this later on, most likely it will be Zen Cart that makes the cut. osCommerce I chose for this first comparison because of its age and because of its prevalence - it is still widely used, even if well behind more modern options.

TL;DR

Drupal if you need a decent CMS. Otherwise, in order: Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop, osCommerce.

Going Freelance

Dave Child — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:57:00 +0100

From early September, I'm going to be leaving my former employment, where I've spent the last four years wrangling code deep in the bowels of the likes of Magento, MODX, Drupal and

From early September, I'm going to be leaving my former employment, where I've spent the last four years wrangling code deep in the bowels of the likes of Magento, MODX, Drupal and OpenCart. I want to build something for myself - and that means leaving the stability of full-time employment and venturing into the lesser-known realms of entrepreneurship and self-employment.

This will give me a great chance to spend more time with new technologies. Agency life often doesn't provide much time to get properly to grips with new languages or skills, unless they are already in use within the agency. I'm looking forward to spending more time with Python, node.js, SQLite and other technologies that, so far, I've really just dipped a toe into.

Even more exciting, this move offers the potential for me to spend more time working on my own projects. Cheatography and Envoy have been running for a while but lacking the attention they deserve. Newer projects, on which I'll write more shortly, have also suffered from a lack of available time. This decision should allow me to turn more of the ideas floating around my head into actual working websites, with a view to then becoming profitable ventures.

If you're reading this on the site, you might have spotted a few changes here as well - a new logo, new homepage and new portfolio being the most significant changes, all geared towards making a more prominent feature of my services and previous work.

To begin with, though, my focus is on making sure I have an income that can comfortably provide for myself and my growing family. So I'll be taking on freelance projects and focussing on the things I know best and that I've spent the last few years with - PHP development (especially Magento, MODX and Drupal).

I'm enthusiastic, capable and, in a few short weeks, available for your project!

Coming Soon

Dave Child — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 15:59:13 +0100

Exciting times ahead! The lovely Mrs Dave is growing a shiny new (much smaller) member of our family. In February, if everything goes to plan, we will become three.

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Going Freelance: Cash Flow

What is Cash Flow?

Woohoo! You Got a Gig!

How Many People Pay Late

How to Keep Your Cash Flowing

Make It Easy to Pay On Time

Chase Late Payments

Reducing the Impact of Late or Non Payers

Back to Michael

Poker Cheat Sheet

Overview

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Dave's Second Law of Development

Freelancing with a Newborn - A Survivor's Guide

Settlers of Catan Cheat Sheet

Overview

Downloads

Freelancer Rate Calculator

Freelancer Rate Calculator

The Fields

Going Freelance - First Impressions

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

The Future

Open Source PHP E-Commerce Platforms Compared

Contents

The Contenders

Installation

Theming

Extensibility

Development

Support

Hosting and Performance

Management

CMS

Security

Consumers

Comparison Table

Winners and Losers

Honourable Mentions

TL;DR

Going Freelance

Coming Soon