eCommerce in 2025

[spinfold]

I am trying my best to support an old client (I have now largely moved away from web dev for individual companies, and now focus on specific areas for one company). Their website is an e-commerce website running the Calguys suite of Orders, Cart, Products, etc - supported by FEU, SelfReg, etc, and some custom modules I created at the time to deal with their very specific charging structure of delivery/shipping costs.

I have recently upgraded the core CMS and server PHP version, which was a very painful process. During the upgrade, various modules seem to have gotten stuck and only partially upgraded. I suspect this is because the many modules which require other modules are so old, that they're not compatible with the newer versions of the modules which are still around and being actively developed.

As a second attempt this week, I created a subdomain, did a completely fresh install of CMSMS core, and then tried adding on all the old modules. This installation process was relatively smooth, however some of the modules just result in errors when trying to use them. I eventually came to the conclusion that the code is just too old now. Most of the modules haven't had a release since mid 2019.

So, is there any recommended eCommerce solution for CMSMS on 2025 or am I going to have to tell this client to move over to Shopify/Woo/etc?

[DIGI3]

There's currently no supported eCommerce suite available for CMSMS. There are apparently a couple of devs working on them but nothing released yet. For my own projects I tend to use a dedicated eCommerce platform (like Shopify etc) then embed widgets into the cmsms site or use the API to integrate it. It's obviously not as convenient as having it all on one site but does remove the reliance on a single developer.

[spinfold]

Thanks for the quick reply. Shame there is nothing available and working currently.

[russellbeckwith]

As things stand, it seems that CMSMS is no longer a viable option for eCommerce in 2025. As DIGI3 suggested, moving to a dedicated platform like Shopify/WooCommerce combined with APIs may be a more stable solution, especially when the legacy module system is outdated.

If the client wants to retain some specific features, you can consider integrating with CMSMS piecemeal via API, hiring a developer to rewrite important modules using a modern framework, or using headless commerce (e.g.color block jam level 426 Commerce.js) combined with a custom frontend
P/S: Have you tried contacting the maintainers of the legacy modules directly for support? Sometimes they still have unofficial patches.