Shopping Carts and eCommerce plugins are a subject of massive debate among developers. In our view at iBusinessLogic there is no one real pat answer to the question “which Shopping cart software should I user for my online store? ”
We think a shopping cart should be what the user/client wants it to be and each solution has different advantages and disadvantages. Lets identify some of the options and then discuss what you need your cart to do for you in person.
is robust, professional grade e-Commerce shopping cart. In the back end, you will use a full featured back end to manage your inventory, orders, shipping, and customers in real time. Your customer’s payments are sent directly to your commercial bank account using the latest security technology.
is an open source PHP based online shopping cart system. OpenCart is easy to use and is SEO optimized with a very nice interface. A great feature of OpenCart is that customers can write their own reviews of the products.
is a professional open-source e-Commerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control. Magento is awesome, I would never believe it is an open-source project. It features clean urls and SEO from the start. Everything is designed in a clean and simple way. Magento also features: Unlimited flexibility, Completely Scalable Architecture, Professional and Community Support, and Smooth Integration with 3rd party apps. Website: http://www.magentocommerce.com
Magento is one of the newer shopping carts on the block but has already attracted a large following. The coding is based on the latest PHP 5 object oriented coding standards and the Zend framework.
Advantages +
+ Varian the company who backs the cart is very active in updating the code and fixing bugs
+ Multi-Store Capable
+ Nice default template
Disadvantages –
– Heavily layered and overly complicated coding style and thousands of files requires a lot of time to learn and do customizations. Estimate about 2 – 5 x more for your budget for customizing it vs. other carts
– Right now the technical documentation is very limited, making it difficult to customize and modify the programming of Magento beyond doing graphical changes.
– Runs fairly slow. Plan on spending at least $25/month for a 1000 product store, or $50 – $100 month for stores with over that.
is very popular shopping cart. CubeCart V3 is free, with the exception that you leave their copyright notice in your footer. CubeCart has a large amount of payment gateways and shipping gateways. Their support forums are lively and many people contribute plugins to the cart. To use CubeCart V4 you must pay but it has many features that V3 doesn’t have.
is another very popular online shopping cart, written in Perl/MySQL. It features a css manager so you can edit the look of your cart online. AgoraCart also features unlimited product options, up to 4 different tax zones at the same time, tons of shipping and payment gateways/options. The setup options range from a simple template based store to the integration of a complex visual design and support for program modification.
is a user friendly, open source shopping cart. Zen Cart focuses on the merchants and shoppers instead of the developers. Zen Cart also supports multiple payment and shipping options, quantity discounts and coupons. website: http://www.zen-cart.com
Zen Cart has a very nice wide array of features based on Oscommerce but has gone its own path. You can not install contributions directly from the Oscommerce web site onto Zen Cart. Some of the nice features include product attributes managers, template system, html editor for regular web page contents, built in coupon code system, ability to select what credit cards you accept, and more. An issue with Zen Cart right now is the Easy Populate contribution which would let you import products from an Excel sheet does not work yet. So if you need this feature we recommend the other shopping carts.
Advantages +
+ No licensing fees
+ Stable
+ Many contributions from Oscommerce already installed
Disadvantages –
– not possible to use Oscommerce contributions, they must be converted to Zen Cart
– Admin interface is a little messy in certain areas because there are so many contributions installed
is an online shopping cart that offers a wide range of features that allows online stores to be setup fairly quickly. osCommerce is backed by a great and active community. It also supports multiple currencies, allows customers to print invoices from the order screen, and has an easy database backup system. website: http://www.oscommerce.com
Oscommerce is the basis for both Zen Cart and CRE Loaded. As such is it is simpler and does not have all of the contributions already added that Zen Cart and CRE Loaded do. It runs well though and is a good back to basics shopping cart.
Advantages +
+ Has the most available number of contributions and modifications
+ Recent security update brings it up to date with MySQL 5 and PHP 5
Disadvantages –
– It can take a lot of time and money to install all the contributions you want (add-ons)
– No graphic template system meaning it is harder to modify the design
CRE Loaded Chain Reaction Edition of Oscommerce
CRE Loaded is like Oscommerce but with many more contributions installed. Some of the nice contributions it has are Easy Populate which lets you populate your database from an Excel file, coupon codes, administrator access levels, template system, and an affiliate manager. CRE Loaded also has one of the Oscommerce templating systems installed which allows you to more easily integrate a design into the system and control which information boxes show on the left and right columns.
Advantages +
+ Many contributions from Oscommerce already installed
Disadvantages –
– Contributions from Oscommerce.com can be more difficult to install, but CRE Loaded has many of its own already converted
– Buggy code for some modules like multi vendor shipping
Additional Information
CRE Loaded comes in 3 verisons. The regular version is free. The Pro version adds better product attribute support and credit card encryption, and the B2B version adds seperate pricing level support.
Click for Website:
X-Cart is a commercial package, but one of the most competitively priced and easy to modify.
Advantages +
+ Commercially supported and has very few if any bugs
+ Uses Smarty Templates system which many programmers like to work with for laying out the web site
Disadvantages –
– Licensing fees for system
OSC Max
website: http://www.oscmax.com/
OSC Max is an excellent version of Oscommerce that has many useful contributions installed. It is just as easy to use in the admin as the default Oscommerce installation.
Advantages +
+ No licensing fees
+ The contributions installed are very useful
+ Has wholesale/Reseller pricing module already installed
+ Well-documented
Disadvantages –
– Personal preference – I don’t like the mopics image module, you have to separately upload small and large images, but easily fixed by installing on the fly thumbnails module
Joomla
HikaShop
HikaShop is a Joomla Extension released in 3 different editions : HikaShop Starter, HikaShop Essential and HikaShop Business.
HikaShop enables you to manage your shop’s content (categories, products, etc), handle advanced prices management, heavily personalize your store by providing an easy interface to customize all the HikaShop views. You can also easily manage custom fields for users, their addresses and products, manage an affiliate program, easily handle the translation of the shop’s content in multiple languages, show statistics and so much more…
| HikaShop | |||
| Features | Starter |
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| Create Products | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
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Related products
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Products variants
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Product files
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Custom fields for products
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Product prices in several currencies
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Manage tax rules
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Prices auto calculated based on currency rates
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Currency rates auto update
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| No limit on the number of orders | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
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| History of orders modifications | |
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Invoices display & print
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Totally customizable checkout process
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Manual shipping methods management
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Paypal payment plugin
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Authorize.net payment plugin
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Moneybookers payment plugin
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Bluepaid payment plugin
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Bank transfer payment plugin
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Check payment plugin
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Collect on Delivery payment plugin
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Geolocation plugin
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Tooltip
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Custom fields for addresses and user information
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Easily customize your HikaShop emails
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Integration with AcyMailing for marketing campaigns
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Discounts and coupons
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Restrictions on discounts and coupons
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Affiliate program
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| Powerful dashboard | |
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| Gauge and pie chart on sales | |
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| Integrated Documentation | |
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Joomla MVC Model
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No advertisement in emails
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| Remove component advertisement | |
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| Multiple languages edition interface | |
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Virtuemart
website: http://virtuemart.net
Installing and configuring Joomla & Virtuemart together was a snap. On the Virtuemart website they have a combined installer that installs Virtuemart with Joomla. This is the solution you would want if you have to have your CMS (Content Management System) combined with your shopping cart. Joomla we feel is the best CMS out there, but Virtuemart on the other hand is not the best shopping cart system. It is not a bad one though, it is just not as fully featured as the other solutions.
Overall we would say that Virtuemart is about equal with default Oscommerce, but not the loaded versions of Oscommerce: Zen Cart & CRE Loaded.
Advantages +
+ Easy to install
+ Combines well with the best CMS Joomla
+ Has the basic shopping cart features
Disadvantages –
– Lacks a lot of high-end shopping cart features
– Not as many add-on modules available
We do not recommend Virtuemart for business use.
Stand Alone (Non CMS) Shopping Cart Feature Comparison Chart
This feature comparison chart compares the out of the box features of each cart. Sometimes a cart will have an available add-on module to install the feature listed.
| Magento | Oscommerce | CRE Loaded | Zen Cart | X-Cart | OSCMax | VirtueMart | |
| Free | Yes | Yes | Yes, but has pay versions | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited Products | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Supports SSL | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Edit Products | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Edit Customers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Admin Can Edit Products In Order | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Spreadsheet Database Upload | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Product Attributes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multiple Product Images | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Coupons | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Different Pricing Per Customer Groups | Yes | No | Costs Extra | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Graphic Template System | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live Shipping Quotes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google Checkout Pre-installed | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Paypal | Yes | Yes, but not IPN | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Paypal Pro | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Content Management System for Informational Pages | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SEO Tools for meta tags and URLs | Yes | No | Yes, URLs cost extra | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| One Page Checkout | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Multi-Lingual Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-Currency Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-Store Support | Yes | No | No | No | Cost Extra | No | No |
| Web Hosting Requirements | Semi Dedicated $25/m – $100/m | Shared Hosting | Shared Hosting | Shared Hosting | Shared Hosting | Shared Hosting | Shared Hosting |
| Our Overall Opinion from 1 – 10 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8.5 | 7 |
WordPress CMS
WordPress Shopping Carts
WordPress plugin shopping carts are being developed all over the world and some of the best and most reliable are the free versions of these open source scripts. WordPress itself is a feature rich platform to build a website upon, adding eCommerce seems to be a logical progression from a client ease of use standpoint. Unfortunately some of the early versions of eCommerce software for WordPress have been less than stellar.
We recommend the following strong contenders in this area with the caveat that your needs should fit with the capabilities of the solution.
eShop
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eshop/
This is a free but constantly updated and easy shopping cart to implement into a WordPress website. Creating products is as easy as creating a post and selecting the product SKU, Title and quantity available. There is stock management and a simple interface but this would not be a solution for thousand of products. Very good for a small business or a services business who may also sell digital downloads.
- Utilizes WordPress pages or posts, and custom post types, to create products
- enhanced for WP3.0 users – customers can sign up to your site (settable option)
- Various methods available for listing products
- Products can have multiple options
- Upload downloadable products
- Basic Statistics
- Download sales data
- Various shipping options, including by weight.
- Admin has access to an Order handling section
- Automatic emails on successful purchase
- User configurable email templates.
- Configurable Out of Stock message.
- Basic Stock Control
- Google Base Data creation
- Uninstall available within the plugin
- Various discount options
- WPMU, Multisite compatible.
- Merchant gateways:Authorize.net, Paypal, Payson, eProcessingNetwork, Webtopay, iDEAL and Cash/Cheque!
- Now compatible with WP Affiliate for affiliates – see wiki.
- able to be used as a product catalogue with no sales.
We have just started using this shopping cart but find that it’s flexibility and ease of use make it a great candidate for most small business users. Products may be inserted virtually anywhere on a WordPress website and the shopping cart checkout is seamless. There are currently some limitation with payment processing but the team at PHPurchase say they will be adding new payment processing options in the near future.
Our biggest excitement about this plugin is the obvious advantages of their integration with Gravity Forms. This feature allows for an unlimited customization of the checkout and product purchase process by creating logical customization (upsell) of products by the buyer. Great for custom embroidery, sign making, and other service businesses.
Gravity Forms Integration from Lee Blue on Vimeo.
Using PHPurchase with many of the other available WordPress plugins including MailChimp and Gravity Forms could make the ultimately customizable shopping site idea work. The client is not locked into pre-determined shopping cart styles or forms and can pretty much create the layout and style of the site in a way that suits them. One product per page or 100, it is all up to the user. The sidebar shopping cart widget auto updating with each click to purchase.
| PHPurchase Features | Standard | Professional |
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| UPS Real Time Shipping Rates |  |
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| Track Inventory | |
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| Sell physical products | |
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| Sell digital products | |
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| Sell services | |
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| Manage orders | |
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| PCI Compliant | |
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| Promotions | |
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| Tax by state or zip code | |
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| Multiple shipping options | |
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| Custom fields for products | |
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| WordPress Affiliate Platform integration | |
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| Products on any page or post | |
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| Product Variations that change the product price | |
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| Gateways | ||
| PayPal Website Payments Standard | |
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| PayPal Website Payments Professional | |
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| PayPal Express Checkout | |
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| eProcessing Network | |
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| Quantum Gateway | |
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| Authorize.net | |
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| Offline Payments | |
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| Professional Features | ||
| Memberships with private content | |
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| Members only pages | |
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| Members only sections of pages | |
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| Subscriptions/Recurring payments | |
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| Sell unlimited numbers of subscriptions | |
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| My Account page listing all subscriptions | |
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| Fixed number of recurring payments | |
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| Unlimited number of recurring payments | |
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| Set up free trials | |
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| Gravity forms integration* | |
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eShop Basic WordPress Shopping Cart
eShop is pretty amazing for a Free Wordpress plugin! This piece of open source software offers so much and can be configured to run any basic shopping cart required by a small business, musician or digital products Internet marketing guru. But if it's free, why would you promote it on your website development site? Because it works and it has some great features, it also usually requires some tweaking and manipulating to get it to do more advanced stuff, or to get it to fit within a specific theme. So, while there is no cost associated with the software itself...
PHPurchase WordPress shopping cart simplicty and complexity
We have used PHPurchase on client websites like Aunt LuLu's Embroidery (under construction now) and find that it is a very simple to use and convenient plugin. The integration of Gravity Forms is a master stroke in our opinion. While our client at Aunt LuLu's is not yet using this feature, we believe that construction formas that have conditional logic and can create a customized product for the customer with a simple one page checkout at the end is really a huge leap forward in Wordpress shopping carts. . Gravity Forms Integration Enhancements Now you can use Gravity Forms to...
eShop Basic WordPress Shopping Cart
eShop is pretty amazing for a Free Wordpress plugin! This piece of open source software offers so much and can be configured to run any basic shopping cart required by a small business, musician or digital products Internet marketing guru. But if it's free, why would you promote it on your website development site? Because it works and it has some great features, it also usually requires some tweaking and manipulating to get it to do more advanced stuff, or to get it to fit within a specific theme. So, while there is no cost associated with the software itself...
PHPurchase WordPress shopping cart simplicty and complexity
We have used PHPurchase on client websites like Aunt LuLu's Embroidery (under construction now) and find that it is a very simple to use and convenient plugin. The integration of Gravity Forms is a master stroke in our opinion. While our client at Aunt LuLu's is not yet using this feature, we believe that construction formas that have conditional logic and can create a customized product for the customer with a simple one page checkout at the end is really a huge leap forward in Wordpress shopping carts. . Gravity Forms Integration Enhancements Now you can use Gravity Forms to...
There are more WordPress based shopping cart solutions available and we will be adding a few here in the near future please call or contact us if you have any questions about a specific cart that you have been looking at.
Final Thoughts
Much of your decision will be based upon the type of website you have chosen to develop. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or simply a shopping cart only site with no content management capabilities. We prefer that our clients use a CMS to allow them the opportunity to build a SEO friendly and dynamic website. Joomla and WordPress are our favorite platforms for CMS. Fortunately each has choices in the shopping cart realm. Ease of use and simplicity is where WordPress shines. Depth and robustness with a capability to create a complex site is more of the Joomla game.
If you decide to go with an Oscommerce based shopping cart, we recommend that you start with one of the loaded versions – Zencart, CRE Loaded, or OSCmax – in order to save you lots of money on installing additional modules to the plain Oscommerce version. You can then use your development money to put in your own custom modifications, design, etc. rather than installing all of the basics.
We can not recommend Magento unless you like the default features and layout because it is way overly complicated to customize efficiently (with a normal budget). If you decide to go with Magento, make sure to chose a fast enough web host. As we mentioned, it does not run fast enough on most shared hosting plans.
Small businesses should look hard at a WordPress solution, the cost savings alone will put you far ahead of other choices.