How to integrate a Commerce framework with a separate WCMS [closed]

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I'd like to build a highly scalable, highly transactional web platform to run multiple websites. Product information will come from an external PIM, search will be provided by an external service and it will also need to integrate with an ERP system for order processing.

The two functional areas I have left to decide upon are the web CMS and the commerce framework. I have been looking at Sitecore, EpiServer, Magento and MS Commerce.

Whilst Episerver and Sitecore have great WCMS capabilities, they seem to lack on the commerce side and conversely, whilst Magento and MS commerce have great commerce capability, they lack on the WCMS side.

Does anyone have any experience in integrating a WCMS with a separate Commerce framework?

If so, are there any combinations you would recommend? Eg Sitecore with Magento, EpiServer with MS Commerce etc

Are the benefits of having two separate systems (great in their specific area, decoupled architecture etc) outweighed by the disadvantages (complex interfaces, less out-of-the-box functionality etc)?

Thanks in advance!

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EPiServer has a Commerce-packaging since about a year... In it they have integrated with a e-commerce framework from a U.S. company, Mediachase. So to combine EPiServer with a complete commerce product that's probably the smoothest way forward if you decide for EPiServer.

I've attended a course in EPiServer Commerce and it did seem powerful but in my opinion not very pleasant to work with, neither as a developer or a webmaster. I would rather integrate on my own and fetch "commerce" objects into EPiServer pages. Then build shopping cart functionality, order flow and other integration as needed.

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The most popular ecommerce package of the moment is Magento and you can do multi-store, multi-currency.

Personally I think it is better to use the full functionality of Magento including the order processing and backend tools for editing the product pages. However, there are many companies that choose not to do this, updating the product data from a backend system (or even an accounts package) and having everything else handled by other packages.

If you want to use a 3rd party CMS with Magento then it is easy if your customers don't have a 'single sign on' - you can relegate the Magento install to /store and customise the CSS to look like your main site.

Alternatively you can go with a Wordpress integration that will let customers add comments to blog posts etc.

Drupal is another package that has been integrated into a Magento build in such a way that customer information is shared between the two packages.

Scaling Magento is not easy but it is designed to scale and there are examples in the wild where lots of servers work together to serve the pages. Master/Slave databases can be used and CDN integration for serving images is out of the box.

I would advise against pulling data through from an offline-database for creating product pages. This is because you cannot tailor pages to have custom options that easily when taking the programmatic approach.

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I have previously done a bespoke integration of nopCommerce into an EPiServer site and through the use of an EPiServer Page Provider I was able to create a really tight, clean integration.

I'm currently working with EPiServer Commerce and all this is done for you, though the product URLs don't live within the clean URL structure of the CMS.

For example, a category page might be at

/products/cars/

and the product it's self would be at

/ford-focus.aspx

The aspx URLs are still virtual files (they don't exist on disk) but I'm not a massive fan of the different URL structure.

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I understand this is an old post, but if you are looking into sitecore then Insite software have a powerful ecommerce module for it. We are going through a similar CMS/ecom review at the moment.