When we switched to using ExpressionEngine as our preferred content management system (CMS) one of our most important considerations was finding a robust, flexible e-commerce solution for it. What we ended up choosing was CartThrob and it hasn’t let us down.

Recently, we had the need for a little customization that fell outside of our own comfort level. It was a modification to a free shipping module created by the CartThrob guys and shared via GitHub. It involved modifications to it, to some CartThrob templates, and to the cart.js file. Which, since we’re still early on in our CartThrob education we felt best should be left to someone more experienced. So we hired the Barrett Newton guys - the crew behind CartThrob.

Working with Barrett Newton was very pleasant

We try to be detailed in our briefs when we outline the problems we’re having and how we expect the outcome to function. But there’s always room for miscommunication, especially when you’re working together with developers for the first time. But fortunately, working with Barrett Newton was almost effortless. We had a quick phone discussion and we followed up by sending an email with marked up screen grabs and notes.

It only took a few minor revision rounds to work out all the bugs in our requested modification. And even the persnickety “design and usability” requests we made during each revision were met with professional, quick turn around. And did I mention this was taking place during the end-of-year holiday season?

I suspect, the next time we need some heavy CartThrob mods or additions, we’ll once again turn to the capable hands of Barrett Newton. Sure, we can tinker with things ourselves, but when something is outside our expertise, you can’t really do better than dealing with the actual developers.