I've been working on it daily since October. Compared to osCommerce, Zen Cart and Volusion, Magento is slow and extremely flexible, mostly due to its EAV archit

I've been working on it daily since October. Compared to osCommerce, Zen Cart and Volusion, Magento is slow and extremely flexible, mostly due to its EAV architecture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-attribute-value_model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-attribute-value_model. You can bend it to meet various business models (inventory vs drop ship, physical vs downloadable, etc.). Its most unique strength is running multiple sites from the same db (though again, performance becomes an issue). Interface-wise, Magento is years ahead of the rest. Just visit a demo site. It does run on the Zend Framework, so studying that (and OO PHP in general) is a requisite for writing modules. The ZF brings sophisticated inheritance logic, both in terms of object overloading and template inheritance. Thus, extending Magento is a breeze compared to other software. Magento's downsides stem from being young and free. The documentation is hit-or-miss, and the forum is full of FUD from inexperienced users who are attracted to the price tag. The Magento team has a habit of scrambling a maintenance patch right after a release, which probably means bad QA. If a new release comes out, it's best to wait a couple weeks and watch for x.0.1. Having a dedicated server with a solid control panel and shell access will be a lifesaver. Crontab control is a must. I'm amazed how many people try to jam this thing on GoDaddy.