Ubercart is dead: Roundtable with Shawn McCabe recap

Shawn McCabe, Acro Commerce’s CTO, recently made waves when he proclaimed through our blog that Ubercart is dead. We received both praise and criticism from the Drupal community for saying it, but the truth of the matter is that Ubercart, once the primary module businesses relied on for adding ecommerce functionality into the Drupal CMS, has yet to have a stable Drupal 8 release (even though Drupal 8 was released in November 2015). It’s currently stuck in “alpha” and overall usage has been steadily declining for years. Read the initial post for more information.

We put out that post as an attempt to inform businesses that are currently using Ubercart that they should be planning their migration to something else ASAP before Drupal 7 reaches end-of-life. Our suggestion for these businesses is to move to the Drupal Commerce module for Drupal 8. Drupal Commerce is the successor to Ubercart and was founded by one of the Ubercart creators. It’s the natural choice for these businesses and overall it’s a much better platform in every way.

Of course, when you tell a business that they need to replatform because their ecommerce software is “dying,” that’s not an easy thing for business owners to hear. Many flat-out ignore it to be honest, but those who understand the warning want to know more about how it will affect their business. From the reaction we received to the initial post, we understood that more needed to be said. Businesses using Ubercart now have questions that need to be answered. Because of this, we held an “Ubercart is Dead Roundtable” webinar-style discussion where we put Shawn in the spotlight to answer the questions that have come in. The goal of this discussion was to be both informative and demystifying, a general discussion instead of a sales pitch.

So without further ado, here is the roundtable recap video. A list of timestamped discussion topics is shown below the video. If you have any other questions not mentioned here, send us a message. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Watch the roundtable

Host: Jace Anderson
Specialist: Shawn McCabe, CTO

00:00 - Introduction
00:45 - Who is Shawn McCabe
01:55 - Why do you [Shawn] think Ubercart is Dead?
03:07 - Why is Drupal Commerce the next platform of choice?
04:02 - Why should I move off of Ubercart when our business is currently operating fine?
05:58 - Is there a performance difference between Ubercart and Drupal Commerce?
08:06 - Is it possible to move off of Ubercart but stay on Drupal 7?
09:29 - How do we know Drupal Commerce won’t see the same fate as Ubercart?
11:00 - Is there a big difference in the features from Ubercart to Drupal Commerce? Is Drupal Commerce more robust?
13:35 - Is there a big learning curve for the backend administrators when using Drupal Commerce?
15:21 - How big of an undertaking is the migration from Ubercart to Drupal Commerce? Can an IT team of 5 complete it?
16:44 - What website components add to the complexity of a migration?
18:00 - Would a migration interrupt my business? Will it affect the customer experience?
18:54 - How would a migration impact my internal operations?
20:25 - How do we know Drupal Commerce won’t see the same fate as Ubercart (second part)?
21:26 - Currently we use multi-currency. Does Drupal commerce support this too?
22:41 - We use MailChimp for abandoned cart recovery. Can it still be used with Drupal Commerce?
23:10 - Are there other alternatives to Drupal Commerce? Is it the only option to continue using Drupal?
24:04 - How does Drupal Commerce perform on mobile?
25:02 - From your original post, it seems like there are companies using Ubercart on Drupal 8. What would prompt this?
25:57 - Can Drupal Commerce be used for custom customer experiences?
27:20 - Based on my research, Drupal Commerce is defined as having a difficult user interface. How can we ensure our team will be able to manage the backend?
28:28 - Can I manage my orders from my mobile device?
29:19 - What does Drupal Commerce offer for legacy software integration?
30:51 - What are the key specifications in a migration that attribute to an increased cost when doing a migration?
32:31 - Is my data migrated automatically? Can I also move order history, receipts and customer data?
33:40 - For a migration, where does one find support?
34:52 - What process is involved in managing coupons and promotions?
37:01 - How does bundling differ from Ubercart to Drupal Commerce?
38:00 - Does Drupal Commerce have subscription payment functionality?
40:05 - Is Drupal Commerce catalogue taxonomy based?
41:10 - Shawn’s final words to those still on Ubercart who are not planning their move away from it yet.