This is a common question that you will receive when customers call. There are so many shopping carts there, it is difficult to know who to use for your Web site. That’s why we wrote this article for you on the advantages and disadvantages of each car. We will review:
Magento Shopping Cart Review (Transfer to us if you have a large budget web hosting – please see our review below)
Oscommerce Shopping Cart Reviews
CRE Loaded Shopping Cart View (our Transfer)
Zen Cart View Cart
X-Cart View Cart
OSC Max View Shopping Cart
Joomla & Virtuemart Shopping Cart View (CMS & Basket For combined)
Ecommerce Shopping Cart Feature Comparison Chart
It is important to know when choosing your shopping cart what features should be. All shopping carts function as follows:
* Customer management
* Product Management
* A variety of payment and delivery modules
* Order receive emails
* Option to use SSL secure layers of ordering process
However, the shopping carts are different when it comes to:
* Time required to change the cart to look like the current web design
* WYSIWYG ability to change the description of the products use different fonts, colors, etc.
* Ability to import / export of Excel tables
* Wholesale / Retail Pricing
In this review will be PHP / MySQL shopping carts that run both Linux and Windows servers. We will not review a pay-per months shopping carts. We believe these provide less value because they are expensive monthly fees. Also – they usually do not allow access to the source code of the system or customizing a shopping cart. Following the shopping carts below are open source which means that you can modify the source code and customize the cart for your needs.
Magento
Website: http://www.magentocommerce.com
Magento has just come out of beta to become the newest shopping cart open source system. Coding is based on the latest PHP 5 object oriented coding standards, a clean and easy to work outside the village of Box, it supports all functions and features that always need a shopping cart.
+ Benefits
+ Out of the box that has the most features like Google Checkout, Order editing products for import / export and a way for many more to list you
+ Is the pure coding all shopping carts reviewed
+ Has a good templating system, it easily upgrade
Disadvantages —
– This is the new shopping cart that was not tested as for other bugs. But they are designed so that the patches are easy to install.
– Change in the cart, can sometimes take more time as their coding style learning curve has floors of the other shopping carts.
– BIGGIE – Right now, the technical documentation is very limited, making it difficult to customize and modify programming Magento beyond a graphic change. After a few months time we expect that this will change.
– BIGGIE – Significant cost to host the platform and get decent results. Magento is unusable in a shared hosting environment ($ 10/month type packages). It requires about $ 25 + / month to host, because you need a semi-dedicated VPS server. The only company we found that are worthy of loading speeds, although not cost $ 100/month is crucial Web Hosting (A Magento partner). There are hosting plan is $ 25/month.
Oscommerce MS 2.2 – the car that started it all
website: http://www.oscommerce.com
Oscommerce is the basis for both Zen Cart and CRE Loaded. As such is it is simple and not all contributions have already added that Zen Cart and CRE Loaded do. It works well and although it is a good back to basics shopping cart.
+ Benefits
+ Is the most widespread number of contributions and modifications
+ New security update brings it over to MySQL 5 and PHP 5
Disadvantages —
– This may take time and money to install all the contributions you want (add-ONS)
– No graphic template system meaning that it is difficult to change design
Chain reaction CRE Loaded Oscommerce version of
website: http://www.creloaded.com
CRE Loaded like Oscommerce, but many more contributions installed. Some of these contributions, it is pretty easy Populate which allows you to transfer your data from Excel files, coupon codes, administrator access levels, template system, and affiliate manager. CRE Loaded is also one of Oscommerce templating systems installed that allows you to integrate more easily design the control system and information boxes that appear on the left and right columns.
+ Benefits
+ Supported
+ Stable
+ Many contributions from Oscommerce is already installed
Disadvantages —
– Contributions from Oscommerce.com may be more difficult to install, but the CRE Loaded has a lot of their own already converted
– Admin interface is a bit messy in some areas because there are so many contributions installed
Further information
CRE Loaded comes in 3 versions. The regular version is free. In the Pro version adds better support product attribute and credit card encryption and B2B version adds support separate pricing level.
Zen Cart – The Art of E-commerce
website: http://www.zen-cart.com
Zen Cart is a very nice wide range of features based on Oscommerce but not their own time. You can not install contributions directly from the website on Oscommerce Zen Cart. Some Nice features include product attributes managers template system, HTML editor for the regular content of a web page in a coupon code system, the ability to choose what credit cards you accept and others. One issue with Zen Cart right now is most easily Populate contribution that will allow you to import products from the Excel sheet is not working yet. So if you need this feature, we recommend that other shopping carts.
+ Benefits
+ NO license fees
+ Stable
+ Many contributions from Oscommerce is already installed
+ Nice looking designs pre-installed default
Disadvantages —
– It is not possible to use Oscommerce contribution, they must be converted to Zen Cart
– Admin interface is a bit messy in some areas because there are so many contributions installed
X-Cart
website: http://www.x-cart.com
X-Cart is a commercial package, but one of the most competitive prices and easy to modify.
+ Benefits
+ Commercial support and has very few if any errors
+ Uses the Smarty template system, which many programmers like to work with to work on web site
Disadvantages —
– License fees (figure $ 800 + only license fees do not include any web development)
OSC Max
website: http://www.oscdox.com
OSC Max is an excellent version of Oscommerce, it is very useful contributions installed. It is equally easy to use Admin as the default Oscommerce installation.
+ Benefits
+ NO license fees
+ Installed Contributions are very useful
+ There are wholesale / retail prices already installed module
+ Well-documented
Disadvantages —
– There are some bagi code in some areas
Joomla & Virtuemart
website: http://virtuemart.net
Installation and configuration of Joomla & Virtuemart module was together. Virtuemart on the website they have a combined installer that installed Virtuemart with Joomla. This is a decision you want, if you need to CMS (Content Management System), combined with your shopping cart. Joomla, which we think is the best CMS there Virtuemart but on the other hand, is not the best shopping cart system. This is not a bad one o’clock, however, it just is not as fully featured as other solutions.
In general we will say that Virtuemart is equal to the default Oscommerce, but not charged versions of Oscommerce: Zen Cart & CRE Loaded.
+ Benefits
+ Easy to install
+ Combines with best CMS Joomla
+ Is the main shopping cart features
Disadvantages —
– There is no very high class shopping cart features
– Not as many additional modules available
Final thoughts
If you decide to go with Oscommerce based shopping cart, we recommend you start with a full version – Zencart, CRE Loaded, or OSCmax – to save you a lot of money to install additional modules to plain Oscommerce version. You can then use the development money to create their own custom modifications, design, etc. rather than install all of the basics.
Magento but as we recommend that you wait to use it until further optimize its speed and provide better documenation for developers. If you decide to go with Magento, be sure to choose a web host fast enough. As mentioned, it does not run fast enough on most shared hosting plans. Please see our How to choose a good Reliable Web Host article for additional recommendations for our web hosting.
Do you need help building, maintaining or customizing your e-commerce web site? Please contact us and we will be happy to provide you with the necessary services.
