Choosing Right E-Commerce Software For Your Online Store
Saad Bassi
There are numerous options available when it comes to choosing right e-commerce software for creating your online shop. From free shopping cart solutions to those who charge you a bill of thousands dollars for keeping your shop online, there are actually hundred of shopping solutions available out there. In this article we will dig deep in to the world of some most famous e-commerce solutions. Let’s get started.
E-commerce week is sponsored by SSLmatic which sells SSL certificates for much cheaper prices (RapidSSL, Geotrust, Verisign) and offers great support. Check their site to get the cheap SSL certificates.We can divide the whole section in three parts. First we will cover free and open source options and then we will cover pre hosted and paid options. We will also take a look on e-commerce modules available for extending your CMS to e-commerce website.
Open Source & Free E-Commerce Softwares
1. osCommerce
osCommerce is an award winning e-commerce shopping cart solution which has more than 200000 community members. osCommerce is released under GPL which means its open source and any one can modify its code adhering to the license under which it is released. You can download it for free and can create your shop online without paying a single penny to the developers of osCommerce.
The last update (3.0 Alpha 5) in osCommerce was in March 2009 so there are rumors that the project is dead. There are 5600 different modules available on their official repository which shows that community of osCommerce is really supportive.
2. Magento
Magento is the second big guy in the world of e-commerce solutions. Like osCommerce, Magento is also released under GPL and you can download it for free. With a very active development schedule, it got the latest update (1.4.1) on 19 February 2010. There is a big list of features which you can read there. But the biggest problem with Magento is that it’s heavy software and needs a huge amount of resources to work efficiently.
This is my personal choice and I use it for my client works. The community of Magento is still growing as it is new in the game. Recently the official extensions repository crossed the number of 2000 extensions. Varien, the company behind Magento also offers an enterprise version of Magento starting from only 8999$$$/year. The have previously worked with osCommerce and now they have developed their own solution.
3. Zen Cart
Zen Cart is a forked version of osCommerce, licensed under GPL and free for every one. The major difference between osCommerce and Zen Cart is the templating engine and some additional features which are not available in its superior. Templating engine of Zen cart makes it very easy to create custom themes for your online shop as compared to Magento and osCommerce. There are more than 1000 free addons available in their plugin repository.
4. PrestaShop
PrestaShop is also open source and free solution for creating your online store. It has a big community with more than 50000 community members. The best thing in PrestaShop is its light weight and fast speed. If you compare PrestaShop with Magento in terms of speed and size, it’s a lot better. One thing for sure, you will love its back end design. It’s really awesome, simple and easy to use. Even a beginner can set up an online store. We published a beginner’s guide for prestashop. You can check it out here.
Pre hosted and Paid Solutions
5. Shopify
Shopify is a pre hosted e-commerce solution which charges you for keeping your store online. You don’t need to set up anything technical. All you have to do is just adding your products. SSL, payment gateways and all the security measures are the responsibility of Shopify Team. You can setup your custom domain and you can also create custom themes.
Each shop owner can change the html/css of his store to customize the look of his store. All you have to do is just to pay their bills/month which depends upon your sales and the package plan you take. If you are totally scratch and want to make things easier for yourself then I will suggest you to go for it.
6. FoxyCart
FoxyCart is also a pre hosted version of e-commerce solutions but it’s a bit different from Shopify. Actually Foxy Cart is only a shopping cart (not a cms) which integrates in to your already existing website. You can customize the look of your shopping cart by changing the html and css of your shopping cart. Just take the code, put it into your website and you are done. At the end, you will have to pay them a monthly fee for all their efforts.
E-Commerce Modules for your CMS
7. Ubercart for Drupal
Ubercart is an e-commerce module for people who want to create an e-commerce store on the top of Drupal. It’s a fact that Ubercart is an almost complete solution for anyone who wants to create an e-commerce store but I will not recommend it those people who don’t have experience with Drupal.
8. WP e-Commerce for WordPress
WP e-Commerce is the most trusted and complete solution for people who want to include e-commerce functionality in their WordPress blog or website. We have already covered it out. You can check the detailed explanation here.
9. Virtue Mart for Joomla
Virtue Mart is an addon for creating online store using Joomla. There are 2 other plugins out there for same functionality but Virtue Mart is the oldest one and most comprehensive solution for creating e-commerce websites with Joomla. My personal opinion about Joomla is not good as I think a newbie will get puzzled with dozens of premium modules which have same functionally.
E-Commerce is an enormous subject to cover and each option has its own pros and cons. I have tried my best to write those options which are trusted ones and mostly people are happy with those options. There is always chance for improvement. Let me know if I have missed your favorite option and I will be happy to discuss it with you.:)
E-commerce week is sponsored by SSLmatic which sells SSL certificates for much cheaper prices (RapidSSL, Geotrust, Verisign) and offers great support. Besides standard SSL certificates, wildcard and EV certificates are offered with discounts too. Check their site to get the cheap SSL certificates.For Further Reading:
Did you enjoy this article and found it useful?
Get even more from us:
Osbaldo
Posted 26 days ago 55I need to get in touch with Companies or Individual programmers to build an E-commerce site that will be on my one. I need a customized solution.
I invite to conect me by emails.
Osbaldo
Ecommerce
Posted 33 days ago 54Obviously, these are some truly amazing, inspiring e-commerce sites that help get the creative juices flowing in my mind. Like most developers, I too dream of an e-commerce solution that can one day make a list like this. Until then, I will enjoy reading about these powerhouse e-commerce solutions on posts like this one.
Shahril
Posted 62 days ago 53I’ve been used Opencart for like two years now..and for me it’s always the best…but really surprise it’s not even in the list!!
Webshop Nijverdal
Posted 72 days ago 52Good collection, I prefer to use Virtuemart! Great opensource software to use i.c.w. Joomla.
Md Shahnur Arefin
Posted 132 days ago 50I am looking for a ecommerce cms with the following features.
“Viewer can create there own shop inside that. And clients should have the ability to add his own product. ” Please I need help regarding this. I need to know which CMS has this feature.
Arefin
custom printing
Posted 187 days ago 49I think a Table comparing all the top e commerce platform will be helpful which can show the pron and cons of all the soft-wares then giving conclusion to the readers.
Razibul Hassan
Posted 199 days ago 48Zen Cart & Magento are 2 best e-commerce solutions around. They are quite capable of producing a Small e-commerce solution in a very sort time (considering the developer knows how to do that), and on the contrary are designed to produce large scale, comprehensive, feature enriched large online commerce site.
Moreover, the features are getting updated round the clock by the millions of developers worldwide.
Zen Cart and Magento should be on the priority list for anyone who requires a e-commerce solution.
Razibul Hassan
Posted 213 days ago 47Shopify !!! I am kind of surprised to see this hosted e-commerce here in this list. Shopify no longer even provides the free trial, though they are advertizing it on their homepage!!!!
Leslie Nicole
Posted 100 days ago 51Shopify does have the free trial. I’m checking it out right now.
altteam
Posted 250 days ago 46Hello, everybody.
We invite you to take part in the poll Best E-commerce software.
You welcome to propose any of shopping cart you like and vote for your favorite.
We’d like to get as many independent and honest opinion as possible.
http://www.alt-team.com/best-ecommerce-software.html
António
Posted 280 days ago 44Any good ideas about where to find serious reliable total on-line business platforms?
Rean John Uehara
Posted 279 days ago 45Hi, maybe this could help: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/wordpress/ecommerce-themes-and-plugins/
Patti V
Posted 282 days ago 43OS Commerce is very difficult to install and use – and it’s very limiting. There’s not enough features to run an entire professional business. The same goes with ZenCart. Magento almost has it right, but it’s also very difficult to install and it’s slow.
You should look into a total online business platform such as http://www.haikuob.com which handles shopping cart, website, customer database and marketing features. It’s a hosted solution so you don’t have to worry about the technical stuff either. All the other bases are also integrated, such as the payment gateways, shipping modules etc., and you can even give your customers coupons and vouchers. It’s an all in one solution so you don’t need to juggle multiple systems.
Razibul Hassan
Posted 283 days ago 42People who don’t have any e-commerce or online shop building experience should definitely try the “Zen Cart” e-commerce solution. It’s free, feature enriched and easy-t-maintain.Thx for the brilliant post.
@JesseLuna
Posted 318 days ago 41Hi Saad,
Have you had a chance to test out PrestaShop yet? We’re checking out PrestaShop and Magento. The store will have less than 100 products total but we are preparing for a lot of traffic.
Also, I’ve seen several comments about Magento being resource intensive. Is a dedicated server the best way to go if we use Magento?
Great post, BTW!
~@jesseluna
Ralph
Posted 341 days ago 40Good list, but you’re missing some that are being used widely: bigcommerce, amazon web store, web retail group, google stores/checkout. In my experience, dealing with 50 diff companies was a pain, and I never had the time to really get any marketing/sales going because we were riddled with problems. We now use Web Retail Group for our solution, they use a pretty advanced ecommerce platform. We also had them do our design, and we’re happy with that too — we like using an all-in-one company since we’re retailers and did not go to school for this stuff. We looked at bigcommerce in particular and oscommerce, but it was just too much work/learning for us as retail store owners. Still, I think you should update your site with some of these others…cheers!
Jagchana
Posted 462 days ago 39I am looking on starting a online opticians which e-commerce package would you recommend? please note will require options menu for prescription lens shopping cart with zoom function etc
Fabian koliren
Posted 470 days ago 38Great Post!!!!!
In your opinion, Which is the best combination of CMS and shopping cart?
Sally Green
Posted 491 days ago 34I am looking for a powerful, feature-rich ecommerce cart that you’re able to write your own url’s. We currently have a very successful shop and do not want to abandon the established urls. I have been told that redirects are a fast way to loose your page rank – hence the ideal solution of being able to recreate our established static html pages.
Saad Bassi
Posted 491 days ago 35Well, 301 redirects are best way to maintain pagerank. Magento FTW. Nothing is better than it :)
Nirmik
Posted 527 days ago 33Great post thanks…
It is very use full. It’s Great