X-cart4 Vs X-cart5

By Lucid Softech IT Solutions | x-cart customization, x-cart development,  29 Jun 2016

X-cart4 & X-cart5 unique in their own way

X-cart is one of the fastest growing eCommerce solutions in the market. It has 2 versions X4 classic and X5. Both these solutions are developed by same company and using the same PHP MYSQL tool but still they are different. X4 uses procedural PHP while X5 uses OOP concept. X4 is developed using smarty framework and X5 uses flexi framework. But both offer almost same features and both are very high performance eCommerce solution.

So which X-Cart version is better?

Since X4 is old and being developed over a period of time so it is very well established. It has a very big community which can provide help. It also has lot of modules available which can be used to enhance the feature of your website. X5 even after 2.5 years of its launch is at a very early stage. It has small community currently but it is increasing very fast. It has less number of modules currently, as more and more developers will learn X5 the module will increase.

In Xcart5 version upgrades can be done automatically and add-ons can be added automatically but in X4 we have to add files manually where the changes need to be done. Since X5 is OOP based so writing code is much faster as compared to its old counterpart. So for upgrades and modification X-cart5 is way ahead of X4 and it’s quite understandable as its using new and advanced technology. But X-cart is developing both X5 and X4 simultaneously even after 2.5 years of start of X-cart5. Though X-cart plans to fully replace X4 by the new X5 in future but it looks like it will take time as the newer versions for X4 are still being developed

Below is the broad level comparison of X-cart5 and X-cart.

Technical aspect comparison X-cart 4 and X-cart 5. This is take from X-cart website.

Other aspect is that currently there are less developers working on X-cart5 as the system is new. When we actually started working on X5 in our company for the first time we faced issues that developers were used to the X-cart classic 4.x and they were little uncomfortable working on it initially. Normally people don’t want to come out of their comfort zone but understanding the need of the hour developers started working on X5 and they become comfortable as actually this new system is much easier to work with from developer point of view. The X5 being new is developing very fast and you have to keep upgrading much frequently if you really need to leverage all the new features of the system. X-cart developers also have to work hard to learn and keep moving fast as the system is changing quite frequently. But as the time goes by this will become stable. Since X-cart5 is in consolidation stage there will be upgrades needed frequently but at later stage it will be a state of art solution.

X-cart is very well structured and the style of coding they have used is so that the developers will have to raise their standard to work in line with X-cart coding standards so concern of poor structure in the back end of the site is also very well covered here.

What we can conclude now from this?

• If you want to develop a new website and you feel that the required features are not there in X5 then you can go for X4 as X4 is still here to stay for long time and has really good features.
• If you are developing a new site and all the features you need are available in X5 then there is no point going to go to a version whose successor is already in. So for go for X5.
• If you are developing a websites and both the versions don’t have features you need then go for X5 as in X5 you will be able to write the new features faster as it uses oop.