Symfony2 ecommerce bundles feedback

Question

I'll shortly begin the development of an ecommerce site based on Symfony2. I'll use Symfony2 for those main reasons:

• I happen to know and like this framework
• The customer need is not a typical webstore, so webshops like Magento are probably not relevant - and from my experience I'll finally struggle with them
• The framework seems to have interesting ecommerce building blocks: Sylius bundles and Vespolina bundles

What I am looking for is some feedback about those bundles, preferably from people who run them in production:

• Is there one suite of bundles arguably better than the other (stability, features)?
• Can they be mixed easily? (I saw on a Sylius presentation that some Vespolina bundles could be used within)
• How does the community respond to bug reports, support requests and new features development?
• And anything that can contribute to a comparison between those bundles

And finally, are there some other Symfony2 ecommerce initiatives that I've missed?

Of course I've been doing my research, and I can not seem to find any interesting comparison between those bundles.

About the site:

• Virtual products (songs) are sold
• French site, so VAT rules for France
• Mobile friendly

Answer 1

TLDR

If you are going to develop an ecommerce website with symfony right now ( as of 2013-05-26 ) and you want to make use of existing bundles/implementations...

Go for Sylius!

Why?

Vespolina

Vespolina has received some attention when first announced as it claimed to be the first ecommerce solution for symfony2 but it's really more or less dead by now.

Even their demo page has only worked for me like 1/4 times. ( tried to add a product to the basket ... 404 )

There is no more active development and the documentation is horrbile. (last commit Sep 2012).

The repositories might still be a valuable source for inspiration in some cases though.

Sylius

Sylius has recently been aquired by KnpLabs. For those who don't know ... KnpLabs runs:

• knpbundles.com ( aka THE definite source for information about available bundles )
• the KnpUniversity ( aka the currently best Screencast provider for symfony2 ).

Ryan Weaver - symfony core member & Lead author of the official Symfony2 doc - is one of the Knp guys.

Those guys definitely know what they do. Their open source contributions are of outstanding quality and their bundles ( KnpMenuBundle, KnpPaginatorBundle, KnpGaufretteBundle ) are widely used throughout the community.

They are driving the Sylius project into the right direction. Development is quite active and there are already sites using Sylius in production. ( i.e. sommelier-prive.de was built with Sylius )

Answer 2

-- UPDATE 2016 --

This is an updated answer, for all 2016 readers.

Elcodi

Elcodi is a set of PHP Components that cover most of E-commerce needs, with their Bundles for Symfony, and a full-stack E-commerce project called Bamboo using these Bundles.

This project is meant to be a great option for pragmatic developers that need an E-commerce platform as fast as possible with the possibility of overriding every single part of the application as soon as they need it.

It has a good documentation (growing through releases and with new adopters) and offers a very specific philosophy of how a Symfony project should be seen and executed.

• Elcodi Website
• Elcodi Repository
• Bamboo Repository
• Elcodi Docs
• Elcodi Demo

The project was born in March of 2014 and is actually stable. It has as well a clear roadmap for the next months. It covers some topics like Plugins and Templates, and is based on a clean Event-Driven Architecture. It also has an active community in Gitter, so the project evolves day by day.

• Elcodi Community Room

The project is compatible with Symfony3.

Sylius

Sylius is a project with more than 4 years. Mature and with a great community. This project offers a set of PHP Components and Symfony Bundles, offering a lot of E-commerce related features.

The project itself offers a Bundle for a store and an admin panel using these features.

• Sylius Website
• Sylius Repository
• Sylius Docs
• Sylius Demo

The project was born in September of 2011 and is not stable. The project has a good community that meet in its Gitter channel.

• Sylius Community Room

The project is still not compatible with Symfony3.

Thelia2

Thelia2 is a Symfony-based full-stack project that covers some E-commerce related needs. The project is quite mature and is now on its second version.

As said, the project is full-stack, so doesn't really split between boundaries. Can be very useful for a monolithic projects (like have been covered until now projects like Prestashop or Magento).

• Thelia Website
• Thelia Repository
• Thelia Docs
• Thelia Demo

The project was born in October 2012. Thelia has not yet a Gitter community (or similar). The project is not compatible with Symfony3. Indeed is only compatible with Symfony 2.3.

Some other options, including smaller projects and non e-commerce focused projects:

• Sonata E-commerce
• ORO Commerce
• Aimeos
• WellCommerce

Non options, including non-maintained projects:

• Vespolina
• Leaphly

Answer 3

I vote for Sylius too. There are few more solutions btw https://gist.github.com/umpirsky/bfcc794c1de2d7e0c482.