There is of course another contender. JoomListings is relatively new software beings old on a commercial basis as a Joomla 1.5 plugin.
Take a look, the software is fully featured. I mean it does practically everything you might think about doing with classified ad software. Or at least it says it does on the features list. There is no demo site and the software is new, so you run the risk of paying for development.
However, I have a friend who has bought and installed it. OK so he’s not put it in to a production environment yet, but it’s looking very promising and could easily be a contender. The vendor is even communicative and keen to improve the software.
JoomListings costs 45 USD for a 6 month update and support licence. Which is cheap enough, but you just worry that the vendor is going to try to raise the price up to the 150 USD a year mark other classified ad programmes run at. Oh please someone release some open source software!
I must admit, I’m not a Joomla advocate. I gave it a go, but quickly got fed up with trying to explain the fussy and non-intuitive admin UI to my customers. But Joomla 1.5 seems to run much faster these days and the functionality list of JoomListings is drawing me back.
Hi, have you tried using AdsManager instead?
AdsManager 2.5RC2 is the latest version so far. Not Native Joomla 1.5 but it’s getting there, slowly.
You can find it at http://www.joomprod.com.
The standard AdsManager package is Free as in free speech and as in free beer.
For the possibility to earn some money on the ads on the site you have the PaidSystem component which enables the payment system in AdsManager, or you could choose the Joomla Pack PaidSystem package which is the whole thing preconfigured with multiple other components and functions so that you don’t have to do all the work your self to get it up and running.
JoomlaListings is typical, typical opensource junk. The fact that they charge for it makes it a crime. The average user won’t get past the installation stage. The documentation is worthless and the support that they charge you for – well you know what grandma said. Joomclan should be paying people to beta test this mess.