what is the maximum number of products?

Hi there guys.

What is the maximum number of products Zen-cart can work with?
Is zen-cart efficient in the way its designed to work with 35 000 products?

Thanks, really appreciate your input.

In theory, there is no limit.

But there are technical considerations when dealing with large databases - particularly the capacity of your server to handle requests, parse information and store responses.

Your host may have restrictions on storage space, bandwidth, etc.

Strictly technically speaking, there is a limit. It's 2,147,483,647 ... which ... to use schoolboy's analogy, is almost like no limit for almost everybody.

Schoolboy's comments about practicality are correct.

The limit can be lifted, albeit with a few consequences and other changes required.

So my 3 billion product dropshipper site is a non-starter then? :(

I bought Easy Populate Advanced, and everything.

stevesh:

So my 3 billion product dropshipper site is a non-starter then? :(

I bought Easy Populate Advanced, and everything.

haha ... very funny :P

You only forgot to include the :blush: smilie ... ;)

DrByte:

Strictly technically speaking, there is a limit. It's 2,147,483,647

... which is about the total number of products in the world today :D

So now I'm curious: Whats the most products anyone has added to Zen Cart?

I'm in negotiations for a store that would have 4 million SKU's to start, with hopes to scale up to 25 million.

Am I asking for trouble with this number of products? Luckily the client doesn't need a fully functioning cart for now, just a way for customers to inquire about the products in their cart (not too hard to accomplish).

And does anyone know the maximum number of items Easy Populate can handle per upload? Can it handle multiple product spreadsheets?

empirenine:

So now I'm curious: Whats the most products anyone has added to Zen Cart?

I'm in negotiations for a store that would have 4 million SKU's to start, with hopes to scale up to 25 million.

Am I asking for trouble with this number of products?

I once had approx 30,000 products in one store I set up (ZenCart V1.3.7) and it ended up being so slow that it was virtually unusable. It was 'acceptable' with about 10,000 products.

I managed to track down why it was so slow with a lot of products, but never got around to coming up with a good solution. It was a result of the way the product selection code was working, it did a 'select all' followed by a 'select excluded' then output the difference between the two selects. (At least that's how I remember it)

I should add that all 30,000 products were in a single category (a result of the import from his xls spreadsheet) and I think I concluded that the problem would have lessened if I'd had the products spread across multiple categories with "only" a few thousand products in each one.

Things may or may not have changed with V1.3.8. My client sold his (physical) shop while I was trying to solve the issue and the new buyer belonged to a franchise and didn't need his own store.

Cheers
Rod

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=592193#post592193
The upcoming v2.0 version has major improvements to database interaction, which should get around many of the unfortunate limitations inherited by the Other Shopping Cart's code base.

empirenine:

...I'm in negotiations for a store that would have 4 million SKU's to start, with hopes to scale up to 25 million...

so just curious, what industry would have 4m sku's??? i have some experience in fashion, which is quite bloated (seasonal ranges, colours and sizes) as well as hardware (how many different screws and nails do you think there are?) but i have never seen more than a million even in companies grossing over 100m annually.

am i simply naive?

cheers
andrejs

I'd guess Grainger.com would have at least that many.

w o w !

seems i am : )

time to go back to my cubby hole and remember there's always someone who does it bigger and better...