8 Best Open Source Shopping Carts

I came across your blog on Technorati. Nice site layout. I will stop by and read more soon.

Mike Harmon

So which one did you go with and why?

nice articles… how about 2checkout..is this included in the list ?

thanks..

you guys ready my mind this week. THANKS!

Frankly, I think OSCommerce sucks, and ZenCart sucks a little less, but still sucks…

I came across ZenCart awhile back while still hosting with dreamhost (they have it as one of their one-click installs). Eventually I used it for my first eCommerce project because it was open source, and dreamhost recommended it.

It was tricky to get into at first, but they have a great walk-through book available via a link at their site, and the forum community is one of the best I’ve been part of. It seems as though every question I asked was answered immediately, and by one of the cart developers.

I’d def recommend it, but be prepared to get your hands dirty (but this is nothing new for any project)

I have been searching for a great cart script to add to a new project. Some of these I have yet to come across so thanks alot for the info!

thanks for this post, I need to read something like this right now.

Hello,

You forgot the best one.
Check out:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/

I’ve been looking around for a good shopping cart with a feature that I need: people can buy credits, and then a plugin that I write can deduct credits as a virtual product is used, ie pay per e-card sent . Not having much luck on their feature pages though. Does anyone know if this can be done with an existing cart program?

Thanks for the heads up on Magento. I’m hoping it can integrate well with other applications.

Weeeeell … osCommerce might be popular, but just because it’s an all-around solution, but not because it’s well coded or thought out. It’s a horrible chunk of spaghetti code that still gets my pulse raging everytime I have to dig into its guts … X-(

cu, w0lf.

Its great to hear from everyone. The shopping cart I chose was Magento because of the code it outputs and its has so many great features. I look forward to hearing what others have to say about these shopping carts.

Another good opensource shoppings carts

konacart.com
A free enterprise java shopping cart application

Please take osCommerce off of your list . It is a steaming pile of crap and has scarred me for life.

I’m working on an ecommerce project using Ubercart (http://www.ubercart.org/), which is a full-featured shopping cart module for the Drupal content management system. The fact that it’s built on top of Drupal makes it extremely flexible. So far, Ubercart has been a breeze to get set up and has one of the nicest user interfaces I’ve seen among the open source ecommerce platforms.

Having had experience with both osCommerce (on the list) and Ubercart (not on the list), I’d swap out osCommerce for Ubercart.

yea really great layout, and great info too.

Thanks for the list. I just started using Presta Shop and I like it better than some of the expensive commercial shopping carts out there.

Nice, thank you.

hello,

join me here.

this is my personal website
i want to update catchy more entertenment and plz guide me about this
how can i update my website

http://www.shezhaag.com

I have to agree with Matt V. Ubercart + Drupal is a winning combo, especially if you ever want to customise things (including areas outside of the cart).

What the hell? It’s a shopping cart, write your own for christ sake.

@Tony Cheetham:

Yeah, everyone should make their own shopping carts when there are free ones out there which do exactly what people need. In fact, no one should use prebuilt libraries.

Why doesn’t everyone write their own programming languages, for Christ’s sake?! I mean what the hell? It’s just a programming language!

In conclusion, Tony Cheetham, shut the fuck up.

Anyone know if Magneto can be installed on a server that you don’t control (Network Solutions hosting package)?

STUMBLED!

Sweet list, never heard of some of these, thanks for compiling.

VOTED for this list at:
http://www.newsdots.com/tutorials/8-best-open-source-shopping-carts-webtecker-the-latest-web-tech-resources-and-news-/

I think I like PrestaShop.

Nice review of open source carts. I think the best one isn’t even listed. Apache’s Open For Business is by far the most solid and mature open source cart out there. But, with enterprise capabilities, it might be a bit overkill for most small cart projects.

I’ve been working with Magento for the last 4 months, and it spanks any other PHP cart I’ve ever worked with.

I really love hearing from everyone!!! I must say that even though OSCommerce might be very, lets say old fashion. It’s on this list because its been used by over 13,000 registered websites and yes I agree with you that it is not the perfect solution. But it has been used to provide a free E-Commerce solution.
On a side note Magento is one of the best solutions I’ve found.

Thanks for the list – has a couple I hadn’t come across.

I’d like to add my ‘osCommerce sucks’ comment to the ones you’ve got already: it’s a steaming pile of smelly stuff that was clearly coded by 3-month-old baboons with Attention Deficit Disorder.

This comment inevitably also applies to any cart solution that’s built on osCommerce.

Hi Crusty,

Magento can be installed on any Cpanel as long as it has a few packages installed:
php5-mcrypt php5-mhash php5-curl php-pear re2c php5-mysql libio-pty-perl libnet-ssleay-perl libmd5-perl php5-gd

These are all stable packages and if you have a nice host they should install it for you.

Keep well.

Great list! Thanks

While we’ve always used an inhouse solution, Magento is the future of e-commerce (if it were only a little faster and smaller ! )

hi,
Curently I m useing Agora shopping cart, there is only one option for customer. but i want give spical rebate to my wholesaler resaler. mean i wnat to make 3 area 1. customers 2. resalers and 3 wholesaler so please sugest me…which shopping cart i use…

fantastic complilation, i have to admit some of the shopping carts that i’ve tested are easy to install and customise. open source FTW.

The ZenCart is a fantastic, tableless css cart script. Best of the 8 for me. Nice list.

Another great shopping cart is Option Cart – http://www.optioncart.com. It’s only available through authorized resellers (I’m one), but it’s a great catalog system that requires no HTML knowledge for the user and works in conjunction with Mal’s ecommerce.

SEE MY SITE

Check this package out…

Includes it all to get everything working’
Joomla and Virtuemart prebundled. No seperate install required.
i.e. you know it will work once deployed on your server.
http://virtuemart.net/latest_joomlaee.php (their link doesn’t work, use this instead (without extra code trailing)).
http://dev.virtuemart.net/cb/displayDocument/Joomla_1.0.15_eCommerce_Edition_VM_1.0.15.tar.gz

VirtueMart is not a stand-alone script, but a Plug-in and requires the PHP Content Management System Joomla! (or Mambo).

The easiest way is to install the Joomla! eCommerce Edition: a ready-steady-go bundle of Joomla! & a pre-installed VirtueMart.

I’ve tried other e-commerce solutions like OSCommerce, Zen Cart and XT commerce but am less than impressed.
Customization of Virtuemart php code is straight forward. (you still need hands on knowledge of basic PHP Functions.)
It’s Flexible. It’s not a bridged component, but a native true Joomla component.

Good bloody luck out there guys!
(:

see my site i want to my site well up to date can you help me please
and what is software?

Thanks for the list. I haven’t even heard of some of these; will have to check them out. I don’t think Zen Cart should be on here, though. It’s bloated, slow, and uses way too many sql queries.

Hello,

Thanks for the list. I am looking for a shopping cart to use it on my web site, and I think I will use Magento after reading all the comments.

Cheers

Hello,
Thanks for the list. We pick aspdotnetstorefront.com
Cheers

Thank you for your article.
Wonder which one would you recommend as the best one?
After all you must have chosen one to accomplish the task.

OScommence is a nightmare with no portability. If you want an out of box solution and all you plan on doing is changing CSS and the logo, OSCommence is for you.

If you wish to create a complex re-design ( look of the site ) and only use it as a shopping cart engine, think again. The simplest change needed, will yield you hours of modifications to the code, for most with minor knowledge, prepare to pay for lots of hours to your favorite coder.

BLEH

Nice list, 3 i never heard of, what a great idea.

For all people interested in zen-cart that are scared off by the template/code nightmare, there is an alternative storefront with a much simpler structure and and a growing number of plugins: ZenMagick! (http:/www.zenmagick.org)

I agree the admin side is not much to look at (or too much!), but it’s getting better.

ZenMagick also includes an object oriented API to access virtually all storefront data which allows integrating products, cart, etc in other applications.

Check out the demo site (http://demo.zenmagick.org) for some sample Ajax features like drag & drop (from the product list)

Best of all, no more SQL in templates!! and no manual patching required.

mano

nice product urls on the http://www.zenmagick.org cart…..NOT!

its called seo, look into it

Most of these carts aren’t easy to customize and the fact that you only have a cart and nothing else is the big reason why i choose virtuemart. with virtuemart you get get everything else why? cause its a plugin for joomla. joomla has all the plugins you need from community builder to forums to blogging to gallery stuffs to newsletters and they are combine in to one system. not like standalone carts that you will still have to integrate your cart with your forum and your blog. now thats nasty. i see this in a perspective of a developer who has had customers tending to want stuffs that aren’t with in the bounds of the cart that they wanted.

@dsf: I suppose you refer to the ‘pretty link’ format, a la:

http://demo.zenmagick.org/product/61

I realize those are not proper SEO urls – that is why the plugin to generate them is named ‘pretty links’. This is actually a pet project of myself as I like this form.

If you want SEO with ZenMagick, you can use either zen-cart’s SEO2 or SEO3 mods you can do so via ZenMagick plugins.

Do any of these provide user product customization? For example, say you wanted to sell computers and give customer options for RAM, hard drives, etc.

Haven’t had the need to install a shopping cart yet, but I find this post to be very interesting with lots of very good information. I will surely keep this in mind.

Great post

PrestaShop Hungarian lingual variant is available( prestashop.hu) Look up valiantly with your questions with a Hungarian language. Thanks.

Has anyone had problems with Magento?

I was checking out this site to look for an alternative to Zen Cart and osCommerce and found out that they both made the top 8 list? I advise anyone reading not to use them or use them at your own risk. I have had so many un-happy clients with using them. The only positive I found was that it was very easy to set-up and get going, after that it was all down hill.

I think I might try Magento or Ubercart+Drupal. So far I’ve heard a lot of good things about Magento, looks like they are my top pick. Thanks everyone!

Great info. Does anyone know if Magento requires html knowledge? Because I make my own products, do my own website and take my own photos, I need a quick up and running cart.

Any help would be appreciated.

Pat
http://www.TheBouquetBoutique.com

Yes Magento is an amazingly really nice shopping cart system built in a strong coding. The back end as well show many more features than osCommerce.
I was doing e-commerce website since 2000, and now I use only this system.
I have my own store made in Magento: http://www.website1service.com

I’ve recently started messing around with OsCommerce…boy what a headache!!!

Thanks for this list – I haven’t seen most of them (surprisingly difficult to google with all of the other c**p that comes up.

must add my comments about OSC also

this software is a NIGHTMARE. Customising anything is a 5 min job that takes a day. AAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I set this up for a client and lost a week of my life. I will NEVER EVER EVER EVER use it again. Please take it off your list.

For all that are interested in picking zen-cart, but are worried about the templating mess, have a look at ZenMagick (http://www.zenmagick.org)

ZenMagick is a replacement for the zen-cart storefront code. It’s MVC based and includes an almost complete object-oriented API to query/update the database. No more SQL in templates and no more include/require orgies!

Best of all, ZenMagick comes with a comprehensible plugin API that allows to extend without the need to modify core files.

Code sample:

$product = ZMProducts::instance()->getProductForId(3);
echo $product->getName();

mano

Some comments why I am not recommending magentocommerce just yet for most of my customers: it’s deadly slow and the template system is a headache – it’s indeed easy to learn the basics of it but most of the tags aren’t documented at all (I am guessing that it’s their strategy for offering expensive services)

I am still striving to get the best out of magento but please be aware when diving into it – you may regret it.

on the other hand some of the open source ones, this includes oscommerce are lighting fast and if you install a template system like STS it’s very easy to customize the design. And let’s face it – if you need any additional feature for your oscommerce website you might find it in the contribution section or a decent programmer can easily code it for you.

Please also consider payed shopping carts too – give it a look to cs-cart or xcart

I have to agree with Radu about Magento. It is extremely difficult to use and customize. Unless you are good at back-engineering code and have lots of time, you’ll probably enjoy it. The documentation is sparse and incomplete. Trying to do simple things can take hours. Once there is complete documentation, some good tutorials and a GOOD book (not the one by php|architect, it SUCKS!), this would probably be an excellent full featured solution. But until then you’ll be banging your head against the wall for days. It simply not worth the stress or headache.

Hi there,

Anyone can briefly compare Magento vs. aspdotnetstorefront? I am not talking about PHP vs ASP.NET or free s/w vs. $1500, but from the end-user point of view. Which offers better features, user-experience etc.? Any comments about integration with ERP like SAP B1 will also be appreciated.

Tx,
Dukhifat

Kincaid, true you are right it takes several hours to do simple things if you are beginner but after learning you can do some customization with magento.

My magento website with 2 languages:

http://www.website1service.com

I am as well using Magento for selling 3d images for products software, CD or ebook.
This is my website if you want to have a look:
http://www.smartcoyote.com

Which is best?
Which is worst?
From what you’ve written they all sound perfect, which is not correct, and not at all helpful.

Would be nice if you could put more objective, comparative reviews for all of them. It’s more helpful for people to know what’s NOT good about things.

For example, its fairly ‘across the board’ knowledge that OSCommerce sucks. As do a number of the carts you mentioned.

This post is great as some links to some shopping carts, but no use in terms of helpful reviews.

Prestashop.hu >> new design and hungarian language demo available!

ZenCart is based on OsCommerce, and for all those Oscommerce bad reviews – you guys are lamers, OsCommerce is the best open source shopping cart, You should also Checkout CRELOADED.. google it (it’s also based on oscommerce)

~ Ilan

Thanks for great list. it’s useful for me !

anyone try storesprite?

Hi guys,

I am looking for a decent eCommerce solution to work alongside Protx (VSP Form) – which one of those mentioned above would people recommend for this.

Thanks for the list, Brett. It’s a good place to start. I agree with Gavin. A comparative study of these plus some of the others suggested, eg ubercart, virtuemart module, would be really useful. My only experience is playing round with ZenCart, which while simple to set up is a bit daunting when you’ve got very little time (and no money) to spend on it and need something to set up and go.

We just starting using storesprite, it is by far IMO the easiest to customise as they separated out the html from the php with template and tags.

I’ll pop back when we roll out our first store. http://www.brightsparkle.co.uk is an example store and the person who did that claimed to turn it out very quickly and effortlessly.

Also the control panel is very clean, very easy to follow unlike some of the others in this list.

/clive

I currently use oscommerce and I’ll admit is has its limitations. The main reason why I continue using it is because it is easily customized. For example a customer wanted a module in their admin that would allow club information inputted and have that information be a required field during checkout to prevent non-store owners to order from the site. That customization took me less than 2 hours to do. I’ve been looking at Magento and the features it offers are great. My only concern is how difficult would it be to do the same customization I mentioned above with Magento? Anyone know?

Same on you guys!
Any open source cart is worth for what it takes, people work hard days and are sharing it with others.
is that your way of saying thank you???.
with any choice you make, you will end up having modifications(by you or pay someone).
those cart are not copy/paste html, you will need to have some knowledge of html,php and mysql, if not just don’t use it!
osCommerce is the feather of all open source cart.
it is simple, fast and sure dose what it say!
there are more then 4000 modules for osCommerce, just get what you need.
crloaded is like the name say loaded with lots of stuff that you wont even need/use.
trust me, you start low, stay with osCommerce, and add only modules that are really in need.
leave all the other to your products, any module you add will slow down your cart.

Hi

Did you know that you can have a free copy(no limitations) of Avactis shopping Cart if you are a web Désigner, Web Dev etc?

I had a copy for free and it works very well!

Veyr nice back office.

I installed a copy on a client website.( http://www.products-plus.net/manicure_supplies/manicure_supplier/index.php )
What I like about Avactis is the “Tag” system” and “blocks”(small php templates) that allow you to integrate shopping cart fonctinality in an existing web site. So you may fit cart into the design of a web site.( like cartweaver) Of course it can be used as a stand alone also.

Now I am looking for shopping cart with multi-language option (french)

I tried LiveCart a little, I like it but not too shure how to customize and modify the design…hum…not much help about it too.

So I guess I will continue trying other carts out there.

I’ve used a number of these in the past, and really found zencart to be the most flexible, the most amount of plugins, and I’ve only had one glich (there should be a warning…are you SURE you want to delete this?) in the service since installing about a year ago. Two thumbs up for ZenCart.

Hi everyone!

Just installed Prestashop localy and for once, the experience was “exciting and pleasant”!! I mean it’s the first time installing a php script goes so well and smooth till the end. After creating the database it took me only 2 minutes to go trough install.

I have tried the demo on their website and I was impressed by the ease of use and all the features already available.

Now I’ll dive deeper into it and start customizing and configure the front store.

I’ll keep you informed about my progress and give you my experience on how easy – or not – it is to work with.

You forgot http://www.crowncart.com. I paid so little and they helped me with everything. If you really want a serious cart that will help your business succeed I recommend crown cart software.

After reading your post I went with Cubecart for my latest project and highly recommend it to anyone else, Thanks for your post.

My Cubecart driven shop can be viewed at http://www.forpetmenot.co.uk

Check out xSellit Storefronts at goxsellit.com. The company who developed this system have been software/web developers for over 17 years. Their monthly fees are lower than most hosted packages out there and you own the store! It is an all-in-one complete storefront – all inclusive -
with NO hidden monthly fees. They give you everything you need to sell online and are truly seo friendly.

DO NOT USE ZENCART! It requires all your buyers to login and there is no option to disable it. Also the admin interface is terribly terribly complicated and frankly excessive. It is definitely not the simple solution.

@no ZenCart: It’s true, zen-cart itself does require registration. However, there are a number of mods available to get around that.
ZenMagick (a zen-cart storefront replacement), for example, has build in support for guest checkout. All that is required is an email address plus whatever address information is needed to ship/bill the goods.

mano

I’m really sorry about all your revievs.
Trying most of them my conclusion is that there’s only one with a real simple installation, a very easy to change lay-out and very SEF.
My company is selling by Quick Cart.
You can find the software at http://www.opensolution.org

Does anyone knows if any of these allows for product customizations (like Dell or HP)?

Please, a open source shopping cart you can use like bizrate, shopzilla, shopping. I mean, in any of them, the ‘add to cart’ button instead of go to the cart, it has to link to a website.

This is great. Shipwire order Fulfillment is integrated into most of these; but, I need to reach out to a couple. Thank you for this list.

Nate
ecommerce order fulfillment service

Magento is a tough one to install on PHP4, and everyone doesn’t have PHP5 installed.

@mohamed: Maybe, but most large PHP projects are moving towards PHP5 (see http://gophp5.org/ for more details).
Personally, I find this about time too. I’ve started using PHP5 features in ZenMagick and have never looked back.

mano

BTW: zen-cart is also on the list of projects moving to PHP5

The products i sell are customizable. for example custom printed t-shirts.

what is the best cart to handle attributes where the customer can enter specific information.

for osCommerce there was an option type feature addon but im through with osCommerce now as far too time consuming.

Hey man, magento sucks, when we install some themes and i think its little bit slower.

hi
juzeilnj9ii0hi27
good luck

Anyone try CrownCart shopping cart as of yet? I am thinking about trying them out. They are also offering a free custom website design which sounds like a good deal.

Hi!! i live in a southamerican country ecommerce is growing day by day…. im thinking on putting a store like bestbuy some thing like that i will have a lot of products, can some one please tell me what is the best script for a big store with a lot of option and we want to give our web site our design….

I think that OsCommerce is one of the best open source shopping carts available on the net. It also has a forum where one can post any problems that they might have also. I use it quite often.

I prefer zeuscart which is the best open source software.But you have not listed in your post.

I find OpenCart the easiest to template up and mod. The cart functionality is pretty simple but it does all the basics well. I have built sites with Magento which offers more functionality but is a bitch to amend and be creative with.

I built http://www.dartease.com with Opencart and http://www.eufcshop.com with Magento. The end result is pretty similar with both but the OpenCart site took about a third less time build.

Came across your site on stumble. Great info thank you. It’s in my favorites.

I am looking to replace my site with a better shopping cart. I tried oscommerce but fid it very difficult to configure. For example I frown on hard sales approach and adamant on privacy. It was difficult to remove the suggestion (I never push items) or what others buy (protect customer’s privacy) columns or could not allow purchase without accounts.

Zen Cart together with ZenMagick allow guest checkout.

The next version of ZenMagick will also easily allow to customize the storefront in a way that no initial address is required to register. This might be useful in cases where the store is also used as master user repository for other 4rd party apps like forum, blog, etc.

I use magento mainly and wordpress ecommerce plugin

I have just started working for a company that uses ZenCart, and IMO it really does suck!!! We are however using an older version. The database has so many redundancies it is unbelievable. The layout from a developers point of view is all over the place. Just my two cents.

@Peuge:
Agreed! There is a table related to attributes that I still do not understand
The database API in ZenMagick tries to hide a lot of that and makes the data available in a more structured way (I think).

Hmm, I setup a zencart site and it seemed easy to start with.
Then I tried to change templates and such and add paypal and google checkout. Paypal went in nice but google checkout is a pain to install. I enter 1800 products for sale. What a task.
I fought with pictures and other small things that should work but do not work and spent tons of time online trying to find a way around them.

I gave up.
I loaded magento.. took a few trys… 10 to be exact.
magento is partly easy to use and partly very difficult.

by the way google went in easy.. Paypal is a pain.. one cannot win.

I think the site looks good but it cost me tons of time and I did have to pay a programmer to do a few things.

One of the Problems with magento is finding out how to do something. Tons if Blogs and Tons of info.. But not a lot of answers.

Also..

I built the site to sell stuff.. I have about 20,000 item that I want to get up for sale.

I cannot believe how hard it is to do that.. Uploads might work sometimes and sometimes not. It takes a long time to enter a product on line with there interface.

Excuse me… We are here to sell products. Right.

That should be one of the most important features of a cart program I think.

So we are all stuck with people selling ecommerce programs that might work.. should work… and not have to mess around with templates and the rest of the stuff..

I am in business to sell stuff and that is what I do.

This whole thing should be EASY!

By the way I have sold stuff on line for about 15 years…
Had a BBS before the http://WWW... Not like I do not know what I am doing.

Finding a cart that works the way you want it to work should be what we are all looking for.

Fantastic, great.

This was just what I was looking for.

Thank you for pointing out the benefits of each shopping cart.

Mike

another opensource cart option is wosci.com

Does anyone have any experience making a shopping cart compliant with SAP and their Catalog integration punch out? It requires a post from their system to do a generic login, and a hook_url to get information back from the system for checkout.

Thanks,

daniel

So far I have used oscommerce, cubecart and magento all on production websites. And I really feel they all have their strengths and weakness’s.

cubecart4 – my client purchased this and had me implement it, he also bought a template so I didnt have to do any of the design. My original only task was to get the thing up and running. It was simple to install, quick, light weight, and easy to modify. However alot of random stuff didn’t work they way it should of, some browsers add to cart didnt work, if u a product has options like color or size and click add to cart without selecting an option nothing happens. and so on. Also my client sold shirts and shoes, so he would have a pair of nikes that came in multiple colors and multiple sizes all for the same product. Out of the box cube cart does not support multiple inventory levels for one product. ie I have 10 pairs of a size 10 in black on 2 pairs of size 8 in white. I had to build that out myself (it suked). also the image managing is horrible and so is a lot of the admin section. I would only recommend this if u are a small e-commerce looking to sell less the 250 products. I personally would never use it again, nor recommend it especially since it cost money for the latest version.

oscommerce – It works! and its dead simple, code is getting a little unorganized, and its lacking some key features but u can easily find any mod/template for it since its been around so long. Problem is once u start adding all these mods/contributions to it random stuff starts breaking. but its free simple quick and reliable.

MAGENTO!!! – out of the box this one has it all!!! Highly recommend for larger more serious e-commerce sites. it is much harder to use and the admin can be a little slugish. but I installed it for a client who does about 7 million in sales a year, and has about 10,000 different skus and it works amazing. But it is definitely harder! only recommend if you are a larger site with the need for more advance catalog system.

Hope this helps anyone

If you are looking for a full ERP system with e-commerce, order processing/fulfillment and integrations with most the major payment processors I would recommend the Apache Open For Business Project (OFBiz). Being one of the creators, I am quite biased, but I do believe it is one of the most powerful open source solutions available. Check it out at http://ofbiz.apache.org

Dear all, thinking that the articles is brilliant… However, I am completely clueless when it comes to installing the fabulous MAGENTO Programm on my pc; can someone recommend an easy step by step guide?

Many Thanks

MamaG

A great Open source CMS and shopping cart to go with ver much reliabe..
Cheerz

Superb new development and list to go with need some more to make developers feel of ease

Great list of Shopping cart i am gonna download all of them and try my self for client satisfaction

I am currently using Oscommerce for my store. It came with my template and the code is hacked and makes installing some of the contributions a bit challenging. However, maintaining products and such is fairly easy. Just be prepared to modify php files. I do like the oscommerce support system and community. I have had no problem finding information for modifications.

I am also working with zen cart, which has a similar feel to oscommerce. I am not using a template for my testing. So far, I have no major complaints except for figuring out how to set up the ability to download virtual products. Zen Cart, like oscommerce has a fairly good support community as well.

So, after reading the positive reviews of Magento I thought I would give it a try. It is much slower and is very difficult to manage categories and products. The demo store looks nice but, I have not been able to get a product listed on it yet. I am almost ready to give up on this one.

Nice list of sites. It is good to try out several and see which one(s) will work for you.

Zencart is sucks and OSCommerce sucks too , But I have not trying this new Open Carts 4 me but Thank you webtecker that useful

I think Open Cart is ace! I use all other carts and found opencart is the best. Opencart code is clean, powerful and easy to handle. BTW, the new version is excellent! highy recommend to all developer and shop owner!

Looking forward to use this kind of essential cart

Brett, how is that magento store working for you? Have you tested others since? You should also test out Interspire shopping cart (link above).

You list doesn’t contain any ASP.NET shopping cart. Here is one very good ASP.NET shopping cart:
nopCommerce – http://www.nopCommerce.com

OpenCart looks like a nice Magento-lite shopping cart to me.

Quite useful article – unfortunately only 8 shopping carts are mentioned but i hope there will be more to come. We often encounter the problem of shopping cart switch. Now it’s easier to do with cart2cart online service. It automates data migration http://www.shopping-cart-migration.com

I expected zeuscart and I go for that.

Great list of useful resources. I bet many people will find this interesting while choosing suitable shopping cart for their store.

In case you’re not satisfied with e-commerce solution you currently have you can always switch to smth different. You can try shopping cart migration service cart2cart. It automates migration fm shopping cart to shopping cart http://www.shopping-cart-migration.com

Thank you for this list. After reading these reviews I think I will checkout Zen Cart and Magento…

Good list of useful resources. I think its good post for selecting suitable shopping cart for e-store. FMEOS.COM Offers e-commerce shopping cart packages based on Open Source, have look at http://www.fmeos.com/ecommerce-solutions/os-php-shopping-cart-software/

If you are not good in php then its better to have a experienced e-commerce solution provider for your online store setup.

hi
all,
good list of open source shopping cart scripts,
but unfortunately you all forgot about
joomla and virtuemart combinition,
its excelent ecommerce package,
joomla is one of the most stable and popular open source cms and virtuemart is one of the most used ecommerce component

regards
webworldguru
http://www.webworldguru.com

Thanks for all those nice list of shopping carts. I was searching for shopping cart softwares and i found your website. Really nice information man!

Hello,
Could anyone recommend me an affordabl e-commerce?
I don’t mind paying $30-$50 / months.
I’m looking for a reliable e-commerce that my graphic designer can customized easily (unlike shopsite that has the ugliest templates in the world). My dreamt e-commerce has a customer support, is easy to use for an unexperienced woman, not too pricey (Not Nexternal), and that won’t take a fee of each piece I sell (unlike Shopify).
I run a jewelry business so I would probably start w/ 20 products. I used Shopsite for a minute but the templates were close to uncustomizable and they suck !
Please help me to find this!

Yeah, we gave Magento two chances. Sucked every time! Waaaay to slow of a script to run on any given platform, it bogged down hugely and is way too complicated to customize and I’ve been doing this for 10+ years. One last note, their support is filled with a bunch of cocky assholes.

I would like to say that OpenCart is definitely the greatest shopping cart available out there. I’ve benn through some others and spent a lot of time and none of the others worked at the end.

You guys have to try the http://forum.chromiumcart.com/ this is the best cart i have found.

Try http://www.chromiumcart.com. Very nice, simple, and clean shoppingcart!!!

I try chromium cart and opencart, I will say opencart is much better and more powerful! Being user friendly and with easy to learn adjustments to templates and features, plus the sleek design and interface, it is all what i need! Everybody should try!

Nice Posting
Thanks

good list of open source carts, joomla and virtuemart is also good combination for small users.

I m currently using 3 different shopping carts can anybody refer me the free cart for ASP.net

Good Post all shopping cart information find at one place. What about .net shopping cart?

Just built 3 ecommerce sites for clients using opencart (now forked into chromium cart).

++Great code,

++Great looking,

++Very easy for customer,

++Lots of addons/modules,

++Reasonable size community.

I would definitely, definitely reccommend it.

This is a warning to users thinking about PHP open cart be very careful the primary developer is very unhelpful. I believe this to be since he’s trying to get you to fork over for upgrade/downgrade services. (An often not very easy nor well documented process.) Just scan the forums and see what I mean. Upgrading the thing usually means you have to fork out cash for the upgrade process or an alternative is having to redo the entire site over which is an absolute pain.

Thanks for putting together this list – very helpful.

I have to add my vote against osCommerce. It truly is a steaming pile of poo. It’s inclusion on a list of “best” Shopping Carts merely because it is popular is a terrible disservice to your readers.

If you want to make a list of the most popular Shopping Cart suites, it belongs on that list. It does not belong on this list.

This page is really nice resource for newbies to get the knowledge on Open Source Shopping Cart.

Few months back I was in search of affordable or open source shopping cart solution and one of my friend refer me to http://www.fmeos.com as he is running their solution from more than a year, Initially I think their packages are costly but when I make calculations based on hosted solutions (like yahoo stores, shopify, 1shoppingcart, volusion) they charge about $25-$500 per month with transaction fee 1.5%-3% with each order, when I calculated 1 year cost according to my products its way high (almost 10x) what I get from FMEOS.COM for one time fee.

As I don’t know coding so I decided to contact FMEOS and tell them what I am looking for my e-commerce website, depending my customize requirements they quote me a package based on open source (Magento), I accepted their quote and within 2 months my site goes live. My experience with their support was excellent, specially Sh. Ehtisham from Customer Services help me a lot to define my project in a better way.

From my personal experience I highly recommend FMEOS.COM for e-commerce website development, they have a professional staff for shopping cart development.
here is link for their e-commerce solutions
http://www.fmeos.com/ecommerce-solutions/

I hope you too have a good experience.

Regards,
Shaun

great collection though cube is the best among them

Has anyone found any shopping carts which have Korean language packs?

Magento is overkill for the project, and as many people have noted, OSCommerce is… shall we say.. less than optimal – so any OSC or OSC-based solution is out.

Ideally I would like to use opencart or prestashop, but I don’t think they have the language packs.

Thanks

Hi:
I need a open source code that let me add external providers using an api like xml and integrate easy, can anybody recommend me some???

Thanks.

Tried some of these for the purpose of an online boutique.

Magento – Lots of hype, easy to learn, not so easy to install, can be tricky installing on third party servers.

OsCommerce – non-Phd coders need not apply.

Zen Cart – designed for Zen code masters.

Prestacart – perfect.

Do yourself a major favor: http://www.OpenCart.com. It really is FREE and is awesome. Create a MySQL data space on your web server. The, install the software on that space you created using your FTP upload program. Bam! Do some fine tuning but it will work and soooo worth it.

I struggled for hours and hours with other crappy programs, expensive carts and this is the one that rocks! Wanna try it out and see what it looks like? Easy-schmeazy…go to their web site and take a peek. Click demo. See the back door (Administration) controls as well as the front door (Store front) and you’ll love it. Easy, point, click. Done!

I really depend on your needs, free sometimes will help you at times you will need to pay, all of them are good but will it work for you? Million Dollar Question.
I personally recommend Xcart about $115, Cs Cart $265.
Get a programmer to customized this two cards
Add CRM to it with bonus add synchronization with QuickBooks
You will win big time

But remember it has to be simple and stupid some times
Too much complication will overwhelm you

Thanks for the list. I dare to say that the comments were actually more helpful than the post. I would have love to see pro and cons next to your recommendation.

So I went through all the comments and the most recommended, positive solutions were: OpenCart, Magento and PrestaShop.

I’m going to try PrestaShop and if the customization doesn’t work out I’ll try OpenCart. Since the reviews about Magento were good, but the backend seems to slow, I’ll face that the last.

Thanks everyone for writing very useful comments.

awesome stuff but online mall. http://www.169-shop.clickshopnow.com

Have tried most of these out, and have always stuck to osCommerce, mainly because it is easy to add and change the code for very specific needs.

From a usability perspective, I think Prestashop is the most professional looking and performing of them all.

My advice as far as Magento is concerned is stay well away!! The reason is that the designers have over complicated the database and the code, and as a result, runs VERY slowly (even on my dedicated server).

Might look good, but potential customers will hate the waiting around, and will probably leave before they get to far in to your site.

If you don’t mind using ruby on rails, then spree is a wonderful open source shopping cart.

here is the web site which has demo store and live cart examples

http://spreecommerce.com/ (no affiliation)

It’s fun making site decisions based on the year old recommendations of someone you never met…

Having used ZenCart for an ecommerce build, I can say that is is very good, but the code would make Chef Boy-ar-dee proud. You do have to know PHP/HTML/CSS and be prepared to dig around in it if you want to get the most benefit from it.

WOW great sources with excellent comments, however all these solutions are php/mysql based (correct me if wrong) and with standard functions.
We were in need of an ASP.Net solution (as our website based on asp) so we search a lot for free/paid solutions but nothing come to fulfill our requirements (we need to create products’ codes values on runtime quote calculations),
Answer was custom e-commerce solution and we contacted FMEOS (as some of their clients already mentioned above). They developed a solution with runtime item code generation and prices by combining Width and Heights. Initially we thought it is impossible but when they do it. We hats off to them and give them extra bonus; I’d never seen solution like this before. So we strongly recommend them for Custom e-Commerce Solutions (you can check their custom e-commerce features at http://www.fmeos.com/ecommerce-solutions/custom-shopping-cart-software/ ).

Rachel McKenzie
ST Shutters Co.
SA

Great post, it’s very helpful to have everything all in one place.

after using some paid and open source carts i think virtue mart is best as per its friendly enviroment

have tried them all, dug rewired and butchered them all.

Cold fact is that if you are planning to run a serious online business with the growth potential, none of the open source shopping carts will be able to scale and flex over to accommodate. they are ALL buggy with security issues that you have to watch closely for patches updates so you don’t get screwed over by some security issue etc.

my recommendation for an incredibly powerful and flexible piece of software that you can own would be interspire shopping cart.

If you prefer managed solution including hosting Volution shopping cart is your friend.

P.S.

have you seen a Family guy episode where Stewie creates his clone? yeah, that clone=magento

tats it.

Prestashop has serious email issues.
Many people are lost because there
is no help available. At least
competent help. So we had no choice
other than look for another software.
Hopefully they can admit the problem
and come up with a solution.
Thanks

The upcoming version of ZenMagick (http://www.zenmagick.org/) will be available as either a zen cart mod or as full installer. That means effectively ZenMagick will become a fork of zen cart.
Advantages:
* based on a patched PHP5.3 ready version of zen cart 1.3.8a
* simpler templates
* growing community and support from zen cart developers
* real plugins
* rule based form validation that allows to change validation without changing core files
* the storefront code offers most of the features announced for zen cart 2.0 – today!

i have used ubercart for all my web projects, so far this is the most flexible shopping cart, since it works with drupal CMS as core CMS, ubercart support multiple payment system, shipping method and other customized you can imagine,

i totally agree with the user above the virtue ecommerce but the templating is the issue

Thanks for this article. It was just what I was looking for! I think I am going to try out Magento. It sounds like the best cart.

Thanks again.

I have 2 years experience of PHP developing and about 2 weeks ago i started using Magento, after some testings and breaking down the code i realized that people that created Magento had taken the maximum out of PHP as programming language, read it again, the maximum from the PHP language. It is something amazing how code is organized and how it functions. Never tried any other shopping carts so i won’t go into judging.

Thank you for share a open source shopping chart.

I have over the years used osCommerce and Zen Cart and used a number of CMS systems.

I have to say I will never recommend anything but Drupal again. Drupal actually gives you a choice of 2 e-commerce systems.

ecommerce – http://drupal.org/project/ecommerce
ubercart – http://drupal.org/project/ubercart

I have used Ubercart many times and I have to say it does what it promises. A few times I have tried to make it do things it was not designed to do and it got a little frustrating but having Drupal as a development platform makes all the difference. If Drupal is good enough for the whitehouse.gov then it is good enough for me.

Drupal + Views module + CCK module + UberCart module makes for a very powerful combo. Cant wait to try out the ecommerce module and compare it to Ubercart

But dont take my word for it, have a look this list of sites Dries Buytaert (the man that started Drupal) has put together – http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites

And lastly let me just say that I will never again use Joomla for anything.

cubecart is not opensource. It is free. Every free software doesn’t mean it is opensource one.

Very useful information provided, you have definitely made life for a lot of other website owner.

Very useful information provided, you have definitely made life for a lot of other website owner. good job Done keep it going.

Zen Cart is seems OK until you realize how many things require tweaking and modifying. Keeping all your overrides in order is a little crazy. The overall template system makes a lot of sense but, it also seems that Zen Cart’s designers didn’t put any effort into the invoice, packing-slip, or email sending part of it – poor template system and difficult to follow when trying to modify.

hijijkopk

I recently try Interspire Shopping cart, its awesome one and rich feature, I used to use OSC which is a mass in my eye.

I recently try Interspire Shopping cart, its awesome one and rich feature, I used to use OSC which is a mass in my eye. I forget to say its a paid product.

You have missed out http://www.osCMax.com a loaded version of osCommerce using Basic Templating System.

Keeps close to the original source, lots of pre-installed functionality, easily editted, easy to add your own mods but developed enough to use out of the box.

New Version 2.1 coming soon with redesigned admin section.

I need a good shopping cart, especially one that is easy to use- Got ideas!

If you are looking for a good hosted solution I’d throw http://www.WebplusShop.com into the hat. It’s not as milky as zencart and much easier to us than OScommerce.

OS wouldn’t be so bad if they had better support…..any recommendations on an OS host with at least business hour phone support?

After evaluating ZenCart and osCommerce I finally found OpenCart which I found to be great. However, after realizing that OpenCart was to limited I found a cart software that is state of the art. I have converted ALL my shops to run this software now. And the name? PrestaShop!

PrestaShop is really a state of the art software. It has everything you need, stock handling, payment modules, localisation editor and so on and so forth, the list of features is so long that you need to check it out yourself. It is VERY nice indeed!

I highly recommend PrestaShop!

i wonder why zeuscart aint that popular i think its a pretty good online cart

Try Plaincart.

Regarding shopping carts.

It’s not JUST the shopping cart, it’s the BACKEND that really counts. ALL of these so-called shopping carts (Magento, OSC, Zen…) have absolutely *NO* accounting featutes built-in.

After you spend 1000s of dollars getting your website operational, and you start selling products, it’ll suddenly hit you… What about all the accounting? You are making sales, collecting tax, every transaction REQUIRES auditable accounting!!!

You’ll have to start recording that $1.50 profit you made as taxible income… Huh? Go grab a paper and pencil because you didn’t think things through.

SO: What next? Well, because you unfortunately chose a shopping cart w/o accounting, Magento (and a few others) have so-called “connectors” that interface with QuickBooks, Sage, and even SAP, but they are expensive and require expertise to implement and maintain. Also, they are not perfect, using dissimilar databases, communicate over XMLRPC, etc.

Suddenly, you now have “another” database to backup, another machine to maintain, another consultant to call and pay. Basically, they are all hokey “kludges” that are slow, unreliable, and when you have to troubleshoot “where are my transactions”… A nightmare.

SOLUTION? First choose an ERP *with* ecommerce features, like Apaches OFBiz (Open for Business).

http://ofbiz.apache.org

A SINGLE database (mysql, postgres, even ORACLE!) handles all the ecommerce, accounting, inventory, stock, EVERYTHING. If you need to update the stock inventory, you just go into the catalog manager, update the stock/price and poof, the website has the new information. You want to take a telephone order.. Or you have a brick and morter shop? Well, use the built-in Point OF Sale (POS) terminal that is automatically integrated with your (global) catalog manager. You need to call a customer? Built-in.

You make a sale, OFBiz automatically performs the ecommerce duties (credits your merchant account) *AND* updates your general ledger, stock, etc.

It’s all java based, so it’s secure/safe, unlike those PHP security nightmare based shopping carts that are dog-slow (like Magento).

People. It’s *NOT* just about the shopping cart… That should be about about 30% of your decision making process. Keep your life simple and look for automated accounting features. None of the above shopping carts have this.

Don’t make the mistake of choosing the shopping cart because it has cool features and templates. Think about how the shopping cart will interface with day-to-day business. If you don’t, your success will be your worst enemy, and you’ll be spending all of your time getting your accounting caught up.