Hunting for better configurator....
 

Hi all,

So I am on the hunt for a better configurator. After spending many, many hours working to try to get the one that comes with X-Cart (I'm running 4.4.2 right now, working to get onto 4.4.5), I've reached the point where I'm realizing it just doesn't do what I want to do. We are a computer company looking to allow customers to custom-configure servers on the site. If you've ever ordered a computer from Dell, you get the gist of what we need. But it needs to be easy to use, both from an admin side and from a customer side.

I happen to really like the configurator this site uses (and yes, I know it is not running X-Cart, but a competitor's cart software):

http://www.mosaicom.co.uk/micro-tower-atom?options=cart

Anyone know of a 3rd party solution that exists, or willing to give me a cost for developing?

TIA,

-Mark

Re: Hunting for better configurator....
 

That site appears to use normal options all on one page, rather than a configurator, which you could do in X-Cart.

Re: Hunting for better configurator....
 

Yes, you are correct. I guess I should do a better job of describing what exactly I'm looking for:

• An interactive configurator, where if they choose option X, it will disallow option Y and/or require option Z. For example, if they choose a certain processor, it will require them to choose a particular power supply, or if they choose a certain drive cage it will only allow them to choose drives that will work in that cage. And ideally the number of pages to build a configuration is no more than 2 - one page for the required options and then a second where they pick options.
• On the admin side, a better way to build the relationships that make up the configurable product - we have 56k products on our site in 720 different categories (yeah, I know). So the current drop-down system where you have to pick the category and then find the product based on the description (many of which may be basically the same) is inefficient and annoying. We'd be looking for something where those relationships/options can be built either through an import process or a better routine where you can at least search for a product by SKU.
• Once the customer has built their configuration, the resulting order should be for a configured product (your custom server is X dollars) rather than a list of all the parts broken down by price per line.

I would think there would be a market for such an add-on. If I am off-base with regards to the X-Configurator, please let me know - maybe I've just grossly misunderstood how it is utilized.

Re: Hunting for better configurator....
 

Configurator does most of what you describe in the first point. You might want to take another look at the manual. I'm not clear on the second point as you can search for products by sku but building configurable products is very complicated and takes a while to wrap your head around.

Configurator is very complex already and what you are describing takes it to another level. A super custom configurator that includes keeping the customer all on one page. I don't know of an add-on that does this so you'll most likely need to have it custom-built. We have customized Configurator so the products appear on the step page but it was very time consuming to just do that. In your case it might be best to start from scratch using Configurator as a model. I would start very simple then add more capabilities later.