If you’re building an e-commerce website or adding a small store to an existing website, you have plenty of options to choose from. With so many different options and so much variety from one to another, there is no right or wrong solution, just different choices that may work best for you in different situations.
You may want to choose an open source option that you can learn well in order to build a number of different client websites. Or, your client may want to go with a hosted or licensed option that can be up and running quickly. In this post we’ll look at more than 30 different options, provide some basic details, and point you in the right direction for getting more information to make a good decision.
If you don’t already have a preferred e-commerce system to work with, be sure to do some homework or experimentation before making any important decisions that could be difficult to change later.
Open Source Shopping Carts and E-Commerce Options:
There are a number of open source options that are popular with developers.
Magento is a leading open source solution. It is a full-featured e-commerce platform with lots of options for users.
For further reading:
- Magento Commerce - A First Look
- Magento eCommerce Review: Platform Perils and Impressions, Three Months In
- The PeC Review: Magento is the Open Source Powerhouse
osCommerce is one of the most popular open source shopping carts. osCommerce was started in 2000 and has a community of over 200,000 users. Others like Zen Cart and CRE Loaded are based on osCommerce.
For further reading:
- osCommerce Review
- osCommerce vs. Zen Cart
- osCommerce vs. Magento
- eCommerce Wars: Magento vs. osCommerce
Zen Cart is a popular free, open source shopping cart.
For further reading:
PrestaShop is a free, open source shopping cart (PHP).
For further reading:
Other Open Source Options:
Free Shopping Carts:
In addition to the open source options, these shopping carts will keep costs to a minimum.
PayPal provides a very popular free shopping cart system (they take a percentage of sales with no monthly fees). You can create “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons and accept payments from credit cards as well as payments from PayPal balances.
For further reading:
Google Checkout is payment processing system (can be used with other shopping carts or with their own) that is free to use for AdWords users. There are small per-transaction fees for those who aren’t using AdWords.
For further reading:
Websites and blogs powered by WordPress can download the e-commerce plugin. It doesn’t offer all of the features of a complete e-commerce solution (although it does have quite an impressive feature list for a plugin), but it may be ideal for smaller stores.
For further reading:
- 10 Powerful Shopping/E-Commerce Plugin Solutions for WordPress
- WordPress eCommerce Plugins: Shopp vs. WP e-Commerce
eShop is another option for WordPress users.
For further reading:
FatFreeCart is a free option from the makers of E-Junkie. It works with PayPal and Google checkout and does not require installing anything.
Other Free Shopping Carts:
Virtue Mart (for Joomla and Mambo)
Hosted and Licensed E-Commerce Options:
Many clients may not want to go with a free or open source option. Here are some of the leading choices for hosted and licensed e-commerce.
Network Solutions standard costs $50 per month, and the pro version costs $100 per month.
For further reading:
Yahoo! Small Business’s starter e-commerce plan costs $40 per month.
For further reading:
Shopify is a hosted solution with prices that start at $24 per month. There are tons of features and ease of use is emphasized.
For further reading:
CRE Loaded pricing starts at $50 per month, or you can download and host it yourself for a one-time fee of $295.
E-Junkie provides shopping carts and buy now buttons for selling downloads and tangible goods. They automate the transfer of files and codes if you are selling downloads. Prices start at $5 per month.
For further reading:
CubeCart is a feature-rich PHP and MySQL shopping cart. The price ranges from free to $180.
For further reading:
3DCart’s prices range from $20 to $100 per month for its hosted shopping cart.
For further reading:
Interspire costs $295, $995 or $1,795, depending on which edition you want.
For further reading:
X-Cart is a PHP and MySQL shopping cart. X-Cart gold costs $229 and X-Cart Pro costs $575.
For further reading:
FoxyCart is free during development and then $15 per month. It aims to make the process of designing and developing an e-commerce site easy.
For further reading:
Other Hosted and Licensed Options:
If you’re interested in seeing some well-designed e-commerce sites, please see:
