I am starting my first eCommerce project. I have used Vantage in the past on several projects. I see a note that you have both North and Vantage. My questions:
1. Which is better?
2. Is the developer interface similar? Would it be easy from using my Vantage experience on North?
3. Before I saw North I started the project on a test server with Vantage and paid for the Pro upgrade. Can I transfer the Pro upgrade to North?
4. I’m guessing you would use the WooCommerce plug in with either. Can you recommend an extension to interface with payment processors? Can you recommend a payment processor?
Thanks for your great themes and great support.
Bob
Hi Bob,
1. Personally, I prefer Vantage for a general purpose theme and North for a blogging theme and basic WooCommerce store. North has some custom functionality (the mini cart in the header for instance) for WooCommerce. For any other type of website or a complicated store I would prefer Vantage.
2. Right now, only kind of. Both have customizer functionality but North has the newer setting options we’ve created while Vantage doesn’t. In the next version, the interface will be exactly the same (as Vantage will be ported over to the new settings interface). You shouldn’t have a hard time switching to North if you’ve used the customizer before.
3. North is free Theme. A new product we’re releasing soon, SiteOrigin Premium, will have include enhancements for North but as you’ve purchased Vantage Premium, you’ll automatically get SiteOrigin Premium during the transition so you’ve basically already got North Premium – it just hasn’t been enabled yet.
4. Yes, there’s really nothing comparable in terms of functionality and support. I personally would use PayPal (cc, e-cheques, PayPal – will be off site unless PayPal Express is used) and Stripe (cc only, on site) as my payment processers. Both are free – the latter will require a plugin however which can be downloaded here.
Thank you for your response, Alex.
I have a current e-commerce project that I started with Vantage and either need to continue or move to North. So can you tell me what is available right now. North sounds like the better alternative. Can I use it and can I transfer money from my Vantage Pro to North Pro?
Hi Bob,
As mentioned briefly previously; There is no such thing as North Premium. There will be a premium service (that extends North) but that is currently unreleased and you will have that when released.
Outside of what I’ve already mentioned, North has more of a minimal design so it really depends on preference. There is nothing in North (and vice versa) that cannot be done in the other theme via theme settings / customizer or via plugins. With that said, North does come prepacked with a mini shopping cart in the header (which would require a plugin in Vantage) – see the demo here (add the product to the cart to get a better idea about the shopping cart).
Sadly deciding which theme to use is up to you. There, in my opinion, is no stand out reason to choice one over the other. It’s 100% personal preference.
It sounds like I better stick with Vantage for this project if the North premium service has not been released. I need to have the cart in the heading, though. How difficult would it be to transfer my content to the North theme once the premium service is announced? Any idea?
Thank you Alex.
Hi Bob,
Changing a theme will retain the contents of your website. The only things that won’t carry over are the previous theme settings In other words, it’ll be very easy but you’ll obviously need to adjust the theme settings to your liking.
Alex,
Thank you very much for your help. I will stay with Vantage for now. I will look forward to the North release.