> Urgh. It has been several years now since I last had to deal with Magento, and nothing I've seen over the years suggests it has got any better.

One of their biggest vendors, WebShopApps, happened to write a pretty scathing open letter to Magento yesterday if you're interested:

http://webshopapps.com/blog/2017/01/what-magento-should-spen...

This is a company that just a year ago was making almost all of its revenue off of the Magento platform, and they are one of the most-respected brands in that community. Not a good sign for Magento.