Magento for Non-Ecommerce websites?

Question

Should I use Magento for a product brochure style website with no need for e-commerce?

This may seem odd but I'm in need of some feedback as my client has decided to convert their entire portfolio of websites from PHP/symfony to Magento just so "it's all on the same platform" and "'one day' we may sell these products online".

An example of a 'product brochure style website with no e-commerce' would be something like this (random google search): http://ethicalnutrients.com.au/content/products-category

All shopping cart functionality would need to be turned off within Magento as it's just a brochure site.

Answer 1

If just now you need a Product Catalog, I don't recommend to use Magento, because if "one day' we may sell these products online" you (or another developer) will stuck upgrading magento to latest stable release and undoing all changes to make sales work again.

Just my opinion, but, you can do this with no big problems (now). Just disable Mage_Sales module and remove all "Add to cart" buttons from tempalte.

Answer 2

Yes, you can use Magento for non-transactional site. Mainly if you need it for flexible product management then that's good choise. You will need to amend all tempaltes and remove 'add to cart' buttons, disable some modules like Mage_Checkout, Mage_Wishlist, Mage_Sales... etc.. there is a lot of things to switch off.

Update: But if you need something more powerfull from CMS point of view then I would choose soemthing else (Drupal, Concrete5...)