Which is the best Shopping Cart

[Passh Reloaded]

I need to create and test 2 shopping carts next week. Which one is in your opinion the most Advanced and Secure open-source solution for eCommerce.
It doesn't need to be installed by fantastico or cPanel.

[3Cell Hosting]

I use Erol 3.5 - not cheap! It is a full solution though and very customisable

They are about to release the next version which allows a whole heap of new extras like product kitting and supplier management. It also has a currency converter/selector so that foreign clients can select their currency and the whole catalgue reprices to their chosen currency (although the final bill will be charged in your chosen currency as the store operator).

Hope this helps

David

[jlgreer1]

This is a great thread. I'm currently setting up an ecommerce site. I am currently settled on osCommerce after trying CubeCart and Agora. I'm in the early stages so new ideas are welcome.
Thanks, Jeff

[Tomas]

Without a doubt, my first option is OsCommerce. Customizable, free and very easy to use.

[jlgreer1]

I checked out Erol 3.5. It came up on a British site that does not list US currency. A couple of resellers were listed for the US but their sites didn't seem to have much information. At this point, osCommerce still seems to be my best option.

[hbcloud]

I've been using OScommerce for a some time now and while I'm generally happy with it I find that it is sometimes kind of "buggy" and doesn't always do what you expect. For the next incarnation of my site I will probably look for a better "paid" solution. What I've found is that if you need to upload a lot of products there really is no, good, solution for doing that in Oscommerce.

If you look at http://www.webmakerscorner.com/ they have a lot of useful mods for oscommerce and also have something called Shoppe Enhancement Controller v2.2 that has the most useful mods already integrated. (all of them free)

All in all its a good solution in my opinon but like anything else it has its faults. One of my biggest problems is that doesn't handle dropshipping at all. If you need to calculate shipping charges that originate from different zip codes then you'll be out of luck with Oscommerce.

On the plus side, the community of people who use and support it couldn't be better. They deserve a big round of applause for helping!

One other thing, if you host your store on a shared server and there are other OScommerce powered stores you can run into problems if you go with the standard settings in OScommerce.

[jlgreer1]

Could elaborate on the following statment? Here at HostGator, the odds are very good that there will be multiple osCommerce sites on the same server.

// One other thing, if you host your store on a shared server and there are other OScommerce powered stores you can run into problems if you go with the standard settings in OScommerce.

Thanks, Jeff

[hbcloud]

I've run into problems with information from other stores displaying on my site. It seems that all the users on the server are using the same /tmp file. You have to make sure to configure the cart so that your not pointing to the same tmp file as anyone else.

[jlgreer1]

Thanks for the tip. I'll make sure to check the /tmp file setting.

Jeff

[netuser]

I am using oscommerce for a couple reasons.

1) It offers a lot of features out of the box.

2) It is open source. So I can write code to support my site. My site uses a third party moving company for shipping. I implement their shipping charge schedule myself. I also implement many different functionalities that don't exist in other shopping carts or oscommerce.

3) It is free.

4) It is well supported via hosting companies using cpanel.

[Serra]

X-cart is awesome. I'm a distributor for it, so I can save people a little off the list price. One factor sold me on X-cart over OsCommerce that is the ability to upload products to the catalog from a spreadsheet. (Yes, I know about EZ Populate, but it doesn’t do nearly enough).



I have a client that sells clothes and she needed to add about 300 items to her cart. Each item had a price, size (8-32), color (Usually 5 choices) and three yes/no options that change the price and shipping cost. She put them on two spread sheets and then I was able to simply upload them to X-cart. A few days later, she realized that she had set ALL of the prices wrong and had set some of the color options wrong as well. She called me and asked what to do, I told her to adjust the spreadsheet. Three hours later her whole catalog was fixed….



X-Cart is so configurable that I often can’t tell what shopping cart X-cart users are using.

[Kanojia]

I will be hosting a e-Commerce site soon, hence the information here will help a lot.

Thanks are starting this.

[SRE]

Check out http://ecommercetemplates.com

Reasonably priced and lots of features.

[Blondy]

Definatly osCommerce. Used it a few times.

[doodledandy]

I find MerchantOrderForm is a really nice shopping cart. It doesn't have the nice GUI as osCommerce has, but it is a very flexible cart.

http://www.merchantorderform.com

[Serra]

I've reviewed a lot of shopping carts and I still love x-cart.

I had an osCommerce user call me on Friday and he wanted to know how to hook his payment processor up with osCommerce... Guess what, it isn't supported. I pointed him toward x-cart.

I talk to a lot of eCommerce store owners who really don't want to shell out $185.00 for X-cart because they think it is too expensive... well, the store is one of the main things that gets people to buy from you. It has to look professional and it has to make people want to buy your products.

I look at it this way, if you don't spend any money on setting up your store, your customers are going to know it.

Another thing that is very important is your payment processor. SO many people HATE Paypal. That is simply a fact of life. If that is the only payment processor you offer, then MANY people are going to shop someplace else.

If you are sell more than about $1500.00 in products a month, then Authorize.net is worth the extra money. If your sales are lower than that, you might wonder if it is because you use Paypal. I was reading an article that said that when companies put the "Hacker Safe" logo on their store, their sales go up between 15-25%. One has to assume that your payment processor would have the same effect.

BTW: The hacker safe logo thing costs over $150.00 per month. Much cheaper than the e-Trust logo, but still expensive.

Disclosure: I am a reseller for both Authorize.net and X-cart. I use Authorize.net for my business. I tried a lot of other solutions before I shelled out the cash to become a reseller for both. I'm fairly sure both are the best on the market. If you are intersted in x-cart, you can contact me at my website, magicangel.net