[theseanstewart]

I run a web dev company and we specialize in ecommerce. What you're saying couldn't be further from the truth. Our clients want a shopping cart that can evolve with their functional needs. Magento does just that in its current form. From a marketing perspective (which we also specialize in ecommerce SEM/CRO) Magento can handle everyone of our objectives with a module. If not, we build one.

Everyone on HN gloats about Shopify. Shopify is a plain ecommerce platform with a simple to use backend that also implements these marketing functions through plugins/extensions/modules. The difference is that with Shopify your functional needs can't always be answered as they evolve.

Other self-hosted ecommerce platforms are still playing catch up with Magento. It's not a perfect solution, but it's still the best one out there.