Hot Property VS Open-Realty

1. Open-Realty is Free for use and distribution, Hot Property is a licensed product that starts at about $100
2. Hot Property seems better suited for open commerce or FSBO type sites generally when one considers it comes native with features that allow it to create users based on pay levels, where Open-Realty requires a commercial shopping cart under development by Tombones.
3. Open-Realty is really a photo gallery script with titles and search abilities that can be adapted to just about any gallery driven type site. Hot Property is a property listing site that works with Mambo.
4. Open-Realty is very easy to use for the end user and pretty easy to set up and customize by novices. Hot Property can be complex to set up and even more complex to customize.
5. Open-Realty seems better suited to handle listings on the order of tens of thousands as is Hot Property but Hot Property is largely dependent on Mambo which has recent issues with vast database loads. Mambo is also reported as being slow beyond 100k records and is one of the fixes in the next release.
6. Open-Realty seems Ideal for individual agents and small to medium size Realty Companies. Hot Property in my opinion is really overkill for most individual agents and is usually more than a small company needs.
7. Open-Realty seems Ideal for new web site developers since its easy to understand and has a support structure that is well developed and organized. (hence these forums). Hot Property is a commercial product where much of the development is quite customized at my last check.
8. Open-Realty is easily adapted to other types of gallery presentation sites. In fact, I'm using it for a client who owns a furniture store. Hot Property would in my opinion be overkill as a similar solution. One would be better off using Open-Realty with Mambo or even the Mambo shopping cart if that was your objective with Mambo. I'm using the Mambo / Shopping Cart combo now for a Commercial Jewelry Company that has 15,000 items in their inventory.
9. Hot Property seems better suited for user management and overall user communication including intelligence gathering, management of clients and visitors, news letters and other things that may be way beyond the scope of Open-Realty's intended design.
10. Open-Realty in my opinion seems much quicker in the db than Hot Property, which doesn't make tremendous sense considering Hot Property uses a DB structure that is actually somewhat Normalized. Open-Realty isn't normalized and does store redundant and repeated data. It may be slow above 30k or so records as I've been told.
11. Templates and Themes. Open-Realty has a unique advantage over Mambo and Hot Property in that the template system is much easier to work with. I may get sharp replies about that statement but when you consider the ways in which each handles the display of information "Professional Developers" would agree that Open-Realty is simply cleaner. There's really nothing difficult about {content} . Hot Property requires at least an entry level understanding of PHP and could certainly benefit from more advanced knowledge of PHP. Dont believe me? Ok, Just look at the several hundred carbon copy templates that Mambo has and you will understand why so many templates nearly all look alike. Only the very best designers are doing great things with Mambo and Hot Property. This stands to reason why designers charge so much for custom templates, in fact my Mambo templates are often priced twice and sometimes three times the amount of an Open-Realty template.
12. And the differences goes on. So In my experience I give this summary, from my perspective. This is of course my opinions and should be kept in mind as such. You may have different ideas.

The good, bad and the ugly. Both are fine products and few would argue that either could be called anything but good. Each has its short falls that in this round up by comparison should be stated. Here they are.

If Open-Realty were my baby, I would quickly remove the useless ADODB abstraction layer from Open-Reatly and call it "Open-Realty Lite" after I put it on that diet. ADODB is largely over done and useless for the most part, and very few and I MEAN VERY FEW use other databases other than MySQL. The Open-Realty weight loss program would take the script down to barely a 1/3 of its current size.

I would also consider the use of Modules rather than the Addon system in OR simply because its easier to understand in my PERSONAL opinion. I still am not clear on why Open-Reatly seems to make two passes through the addon system each time its loaded. This discovery could be in my error and If I'm wrong then please correct me.

Other than that Open-Realty Kicks Serious Butt. It has a bright future if the developers can remember backward compatibility which has been my recent complaint with addons failing one after the other with the release of 2.0.5. Ryan does deserve credit where credit is due and I'm forgiving of the fact that Open-Realty is still a youngster in this stage of its life.

Hot Property: Is well thought out, well designed, and also is a good product. It's short coming is the dificulty of customization in my personal opinion. Hot Property is very hard for the novice and does take a spank of time to get to know well. Open-Realty has the advantage that its pretty easy to learn in a short period of time. If I could suggest one upgrade to Hot Property is better documentation.


In Summary:
If a project for hire were presented to me for estimate, and it was real estate or similarly related, the first question I would ask would be "intended audience" then "intended use". Those two questions would direct my focus pretty quickly in the approach I take.

If the project were for clients and visitors to a local car dealer or a local real estate company or an individual agent and the type of listings and content were really designed to do nothing but get the phone call to sell a product, home, car, whatever. I'd select Open-Realty. Since all other methods are really just showing off and do nothing for Real Estate sales. Pictures aren't enough so I'd design accordingly using OR.

If the project were on the order of a large scale FSBO or mini MLS for some county or even large Real Estate Firm or investment firm, I'd likely go with Hot Property because of the greater user management abilites of Mambo.

Cases in Point:
I've been contracted to build a community portal to replace the existing one in a Municipality in the State of Utah. The portal is a lofty project which far exceeds the use of just a gallery script. The project calls for County Sheriff Auctions of Properties, Cars, and Other Items which go way beyond thier current classified advertising script and certainly beyond Open-Realty. This site will have tie-ins with the county and courts and likely parks and recreation depts. It will feature the county fair information and will be used as the County's primary information portal for visitors. I chose Mambo, Hot Property, and some other products I can't really disclose. But this project has a budget well in excess of $7,000 and is set to begin in October. The real estate portion of this site simply wouldn't work well with Open-Realty.

Now however, I have another project for a small FSBO that wishes to syndicate the site accross the nation by methods I can't disclose, but requires that the site be a Pay Per Listing Real Estate Site with some discount products and phpAdsNew integration which required me to hire a developer to develope several custom addons for the project. I chose Open-Realty because the project budget for the first site is under $400 with some residuals in the future. I make almost nothing on this project considering the custom programming and the template has taken me three days to cut apart and get to work just right with Open-Realty. Its one of those lofty templates from template monster (http://www.templatemonster.com/websi...ates/3508.html) This baby was tuff to cut up and make work with open-realty but it works. Can I complain, NO, Open-Realty came to the rescue in that it is a free for use product. That means I spend $275 less than I would have to spend if compared to a similar Mambo and Hot Property solution.

There you have it.
Use Open-Realty where Open-Realty would apply and use Hot Property where that would apply. I have a full licensed copy of Hot Property I use to test on in my domain gallery. I like it. Its cool, it is loaded with features and its capable. Open-Realty is loaded in 5 such gallery folders each addressing different uses from Rentals, FSBO's, Product Galleries, and so on that I use to demo accordingly. Again, I love Open-Realty, its a good product. Which still remains the only product I'll install free providing you dontate to Open-Realty $25 or more.

Jared
I give two thumbs up to both products.