Would like to hear opinions on many different shopping carts.....other than the old standard free cart, OSCommerce. Com on everybody...lets see how many we can discuss.

We could start with XCart, it is PHP-based with lots of customizations...

I have used X-cart and Miva Merchant before.
X-cart is php base which is very easy to change templates and can integrate more stuff into it for free.

Miva Merchant on the hand have many modules you can buy to add on. Miva Merchant in my opinion is very fast and professional. The Admin page have almost everything you need to handle a store. It support lots of payment gateway.

Both great shopping cart.

Miva merchant. But I do like OSCommerce :D

I use Dansie Cart ( www.dansie.net ) on a couple of my sites. It costs $150, but I like its flexibility and the fact that I can blend it in seamlessly with the overall look of the site.

Vito

Check this (http://www.zen-cart.com/modules/frontpage/) out.

oscommerce get my vote.

read our case study: http://www.optic5.net/article_1.php

I find the lack of response here and the limited number of carts ever mentioned on WHT to be surprisingly low with the literally hundreds of carts in use.

Once you get outside of xcart, miva, and oscommerce, carts are often much more expensive than most of the hosts around here can afford or could afford to offer to clients. You get into products such as Intershop, Softcart, iCat, etc... that are high priced carts.

Check out:
http://ecommerce.internet.com/reviews/glance/0,3371,10412_3,00.html

- John C.

http://www.blueshoppingcart.com/

http://www.comersus.com/

http://www.candypress.com/

http://www.cartit.com/

http://www.clickcartpro.com/


these are few of my favorite carts...i have had plenty of experience and problems with the free carts....such as oscommerce, agora, and a few of the others....i liked oscommerce at first...but when you have to do that many mods and so many newbies and wanna be programmers are doing the mods...well you put the consumer at risk to say the least....you get what you pay for...but you dont have to pay thousands either...i am currently testing candypress and it is very promising...these guys have got this asp down....of course there could be more payment gateways...but less is more for candy press. check out all the other they are pretty good. i havent tried them all though.
:D

chris

Originally posted by cpv1st
http://www.blueshoppingcart.com/

http://www.comersus.com/

http://www.candypress.com/

http://www.cartit.com/

http://www.clickcartpro.com/


Good list....I must look at candypress as well.

I have tried a lot of shopping cart systems so I'd here we go:

Interchange Sucks
The reason why interchange sucks, is because it is poorly integrated with cpanel. Interchange has a good idea on what a shopping cart program should be but it lacks in so many ways. One of our clients specializes in custom building interchange, and even he is now rethinking using interchange because of their poor developer support. Interchange is also phased out of cpanel for the most part We and many other hosts have taken it out of our cpanel skins due to the inherent problems.

OSCommerce
Oscommerce is a good program, but to my knowledge is also lacking in some key areas. I don't believe that they have the added ability to give discounts for multiple purchases among other things. On the other hand, OSCommerce is a very powerfull shopping cart that includes many features that others do not, some of which you have stated above.

X-Cart
In my opinion the best out of the three above. I like the functionality, it looks very easy to use pertaining to the adding and deletion of products. It looks very intuitive, and I like the multitude of features that it offers.

clickcartpro.com
Looks awesome, but it's perl/mysql. Has all the features that you could want.

eDatCat
Also looks great.

Squirrelcart
Appears to have everything needed to run a successfull ecommerce site, from inventory tracking to shipping integration with UPS, USPS..

-Steven

Originally posted by insiderhosting
I have tried a lot of shopping cart systems so I'd here we go:

[b]Interchange Sucks
The reason why interchange sucks, is because it is poorly integrated with cpanel. Interchange has a good idea on what a shopping cart program should be but it lacks in so many ways. One of our clients specializes in custom building interchange, and even he is now rethinking using interchange because of their poor developer support. Interchange is also phased out of cpanel for the most part We and many other hosts have taken it out of our cpanel skins due to the inherent problems.

that is a odd way of thinking. How does interchange suck because cpanel intergrated it badely?????

We have developed many sites using interchange that have been very effective. Furthermore, these sites are also well optimizable for search engines .... i am not saying it is the best out in the market... how ever, it is not for the people who feel it can be automatically installed in cpanel.

Originally posted by bizness
that is a odd way of thinking. How does interchange suck because cpanel intergrated it badely?????

We have developed many sites using interchange that have been very effective. Furthermore, these sites are also well optimizable for search engines .... i am not saying it is the best out in the market... how ever, it is not for the people who feel it can be automatically installed in cpanel.

Sorry, was typing quickly so I didn't make the full point. Regardless of the cpanel integration, we have other clients who don't use cpanel and were very well versed with interchange and still ended up having problems. It's code is bloated compared to other shopping cart applications, and we've experienced that it runs slower as well. That is just my $.02, glad you like it though...

-Steven

Don't forget ShoppingQ - shoppingQ.com, we have been using them for quite some time and are extremely happy with them. Our clients love them too, espicially for the template system.

How about iG Shop ? Its not perfect but its pretty good, I use it on a few of my e-commerce sites: http://www.igeneric.co.uk/ig-shopping-cart.html

Temi

I'd be interested to hear more about experiences with Candypress, please post as you do more testing :)

well..so far i have been testing since july 03 and the results were very surprising....the price is cheap and the versatility is just plain amazing. this little cart is light...runs fast and i have yet to make it time out or error out to this date...yes it could be better ..but i am talking on a very advance level....it runs well with a shared server enviroment with no problems..i have run the cart with three different hosting companies..all ran well...my favorite was myhosting.com..just because of the extra security measures they take to secure the database on a shared server. this cart is soon to become my cart of choice..and i am a really strong supporter of php. candy press asp cart also runs well with a shared ssl..but i would recommend against it if you are going to be a true ecommerce website...the cart also has catalog mode....which i also love...did i mention it was versatile..just go to candypress.com and see for yourself..they will answer any and all questions pertaining to thier cart.:D

Originally posted by cpv1st
well..so far i have been testing since july 03 and the results were very surprising....the price is cheap and the versatility is just plain amazing. this little cart is light...runs fast and i have yet to make it time out or error out to this date...yes it could be better ..but i am talking on a very advance level....it runs well with a shared server enviroment with no problems..i have run the cart with three different hosting companies..all ran well...my favorite was myhosting.com..just because of the extra security measures they take to secure the database on a shared server. this cart is soon to become my cart of choice..and i am a really strong supporter of php. candy press asp cart also runs well with a shared ssl..but i would recommend against it if you are going to be a true ecommerce website...the cart also has catalog mode....which i also love...did i mention it was versatile..just go to candypress.com and see for yourself..they will answer any and all questions pertaining to thier cart.:D

Agreed....we have customers using this cart and I'm myself very impressed with the features & flexibility it offers. The Cart comes at a price which don't burn hole in your pocket. Full Support for authorize.net/2checkout/paypal/paysystems & more..available source code...live community..what more you'd ask :)

was wondering if there are any shopping carts that will give us the option of creating custom "delivery" methods.

As I have a friend that requires "Meet Up", "Registered Mail" options but do not need online payment.

I have tried Oscommerce and Agora cart and both doesnt seem to have this feature.

OSCommerce is a great solution-- php based even. It's not complicated to setup, but you will need to learn some php scripting to get it to do certain things for you and troubleshoot.

Originally posted by superfrog
was wondering if there are any shopping carts that will give us the option of creating custom "delivery" methods.

As I have a friend that requires "Meet Up", "Registered Mail" options but do not need online payment.

I have tried Oscommerce and Agora cart and both doesnt seem to have this feature.

osCommerce does have this ability, but requires some customization to achieve this.

Overall, osCommerce is the best (IMO) of all the "entry" level to "mid" level solutions.

It usually requires some customization in order to behave exactly the way the customer wants it to. The trick with osCommerce is to use a host that actually supports it, rather then just install it for you.

My $0.02

x-cart - a lot of functional modules, is reliable and secure

oscommerce - is very fast

I use americart.

xpcart
anyone has problem accessing that?

OSCommerce not a bad cart considering its free lots of features 2 and easy to install

i use oscommerce for many of my customers and lets face it its the best cart around plus i love the mulati lang option where you have defrant text for the same product.
i found it easy to skin, translate, install
as long you set your maind to doing something defrant with it , it can be done just dont give up on it fast.

Originally posted by Incognito
Would like to hear opinions on many different shopping carts.....other than the old standard free cart, OSCommerce.

Besides being an older thread, did any of you guys mentioning osCommerce actually read Incognito's post? ;)

Originally posted by akashik
Besides being an older thread, did any of you guys mentioning osCommerce actually read Incognito's post? ;)
i know i know but this is my best advice is dont give up o osCommerce so easy.
:)

Just out of curiosity... regarding shopping cart selection - a question for the forum here.

How important is it that the shopping cart system reside locally on your server?

In other words... say there was a shopping cart system with all of the features you wanted, all of the flexibility you wanted, but it ran off a central server system as opposed to being installed locally... would that disqualify it from your consideration?

Or would it still be an option for you provided it met 100% of your criteria?

it all depands
i would make more profit if the cart is on my server
but then again i would sleep better knowing the hosting company of the cart is handeling things

Ok, that makes sense... let me add an additional item to that question.

If the shopping cart were free (or nearly free)... and if the primary content was still served from your side on the hosting account, would you have any remaining objection to a centrally-based cart?

Then it no longer becomes a locally hosted shopping cart
as the original premise started out by saying.

Hi Chris,

I would have concerns around loading speeds and SSL certs.

As I understand it, an SSL cert will show a security risk in most browsers if images or files are loaded from a different location.

Give me some more detail though, this sounds interesting...

ok long time no post ....anyway i still like candy press ...but i have found another interesting cart system ...but it is very high priced....this cart to say the least will take you into the big league of ecommerce. i have talked to the cart provider several times...and they know thier stuff.....check them out

http://www.storefront.net/

its an asp based shopping cart system ...and they support all the payment gateways, but on a more advanced level as in the form of API...and get this all the gateway wrappers were custom made by them for you....wow.....if you know the history ...sometimes wrappers can cost alot from a programmer just to get your cart to work with your secure payment gateway and your merchant account...anyway ...got to go....they are worth the look

chris

dr. ralph wilson has a very comprehensive review of many of the major shopping carts out there, along with a PDF eBook as well.
it's about $35 bucks, but well worth the read:
http://www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/carts.htm
reviewed here:
http://www.website101.com/shopping_ecommerce/shopping_cart_report.html

if you don't want to shell out the bucks, a basic list of e-commerce and cart articles / links is here:
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct7/cart_intro.htm

i have often heard of this wilson web made reference to ecommerce...i saw his site ...and i wasnt too impressed....i am sure he knows his stuff.....but if you want to be considered the authority on ecommere you might want a more WOW effect....his site is in cfm ... and most ecommerce sites are not in cfm...anyway...ifound this other cart today ...i have never heard of it though.....

http://www.mcart.com/

any opinions on this cart..it looks semi appealing as far as ecommerce. it is written in cgi.

Originally posted by cpv1st
i have often heard of this wilson web made reference to ecommerce...i saw his site ...and i wasnt too impressed....i am sure he knows his stuff.....but if you want to be considered the authority on ecommere you might want a more WOW effect....his site is in cfm ... and most ecommerce sites are not in cfm...anyway...ifound this other cart today ...i have never heard of it though.....

http://www.mcart.com/

any opinions on this cart..it looks semi appealing as far as ecommerce. it is written in cgi. I've used it, its ok but not great, its pretty old.

Originally posted by cpv1st
i have often heard of this wilson web made reference to ecommerce...i saw his site ...and i wasnt too impressed....i am sure he knows his stuff.....but if you want to be considered the authority on ecommere you might want a more WOW effect....his site is in cfm ... and most ecommerce sites are not in cfm...

he's more of a small business / marketing guy than a programmer (and i admit his site may suffer from "too much information" disease ;) but don't let that prevent you from listening to the guy or his research... he does a good job.

seriously, every time i end up wanting to research an issue like email marketing, paid search, affiliate networks, etc... seems like he comes along with some great research and helpful articles.

message, not the messenger...

maybe i will give it better look

I saw one mention of zen cart hidden away on a link in a previous post in this thread and don't forget cube cart, which looks like a clone of zen cart to me.

You may also want to consider a cms/shopping cart hybrid like 0sc2nuke.

Just some more options..

I use oscommerce too, but it has some problems and is not easy to customize. Besides the way the script is organized is not very logical... Good point it is free!

Hi, we are searching for a Java based shopping cart.. do you have some to suggest us (even better if there is one open source)...

thanks,

Marco

Try Jshop...

http://javaboutique.internet.com/JShop/

The homepage is www.jshop.co.uk and the open source homepage is www.whorl.co.uk

Hope this helps

From: http://www.jshop.co.uk/features_jss.php

"
Technical Requirements


* PHP 4.1.x and above required (PHP should not be running in Safe Mode)"

??????????

M

If you look at the PRO version it's java try this link..
www.jshop.co.uk/products_jsp.php

unfortunately this is not open source :-(

Ok but that's a client for the backend. The front end will still be in php. And I would like to have a web client instead... :(

M

Marco, Only other link I can think fo right now for you to try would be..

www.hotscripts.com/Java/JSP_and_Servlets/E-Commerce/

Good luck in your search

Look here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=221985

Have you thought about making a cart using ASP.net? You can download the source code from Dotnetnuke.com and then get the portal store upgrade.


Seth
www.elexacp.com

We have quite a large platform for Content Management and so on in Java so we are quite Java oriented.. :(

Till now I haven't found any open source Java cart... :(

Originally posted by PayPalGeek
if you don't want to shell out the bucks, a basic list of e-commerce and cart articles / links is here:
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct7/cart_intro.htm

While there is a lot of information in this article, a quick read found a big flaw in one of the sections I've had some experience with. He talks about sales tax and implies that most carts do an adequate job, and then references the need for zip code base taxes to support NY. NY's Sales Tax Guide specifically says that you can NOT use zip code to calculate sales tax. It is done by community and the only way to do it is to ask the buyer to identify where they live. There are multiple sales tax rates in some zip codes in NY. I found very few carts that do this properly without some modification or inefficient method of collecting the information.

I also did not find a list of carts in the article.

Originally posted by ldshost
I use oscommerce too, but it has some problems and is not easy to customize. Besides the way the script is organized is not very logical... Good point it is free!

This summed it up for me. If you're not being paid by the hour it might be worth investing in a commercial package. For my last project, two thirds of my time was spent fixing bugs, rewriting legacy code and generally trying to make it work on modern installations. It's free, but it cost me money by using it. :rolleyes:

I've used JShop Server before, and it's a very powerful piece of software. Pricy, but recommended. I'm evaluating JShop Pro and X-Cart now and they both seem good (although X-Cart doesn't seem to like not being a US store).

I have been using ClickCartPro since version 4.0 and have been continually impressed by the new features that have been added to the cart on every upgrade. The developer takes an active part in the forums for his software and listens to what the people want. A new version will be coming out in the next few months that will be modular in structure like PHPNuke and will take advantage of hyper-threading and modperl. Should make a fabulous cart even better!

Originally posted by insiderhosting
I have tried a lot of shopping cart systems so I'd here we go:

Interchange Sucks
The reason why interchange sucks, is because it is poorly integrated with cpanel. Interchange has a good idea on what a shopping cart program should be but it lacks in so many ways. One of our clients specializes in custom building interchange, and even he is now rethinking using interchange because of their poor developer support. Interchange is also phased out of cpanel for the most part We and many other hosts have taken it out of our cpanel skins due to the inherent problems.


Interchange does not suck at all, it's a high-level application server that is intended for use on websites that have a thousand or more products to manage. Using it for a website that has 100 products for sale is probably overkill. My company employs Interchange developers who know their stuff, they do not have any problem engineering Interchange to perform virtually any custom "shopping cart" task.

I will agree with you however that their documentation is piss-poor and that developers do not get the support they need from the IC Dev Group. I think this is in-part because you are expected to be a pretty competent software developer when you start using IC.

The whole CPanel issue was caused by CPanel, not the IC Dev Group. We run IC 5.2.0 on Ensim powered servers and pure Red Hat machines.

OsCommerce is wayyyyy too buggy.... And that was just some of the functions in the admin area. I would never use it for a live shop with the intention to sell something, unless my shop only had 1 or 2 products to sell.

not that i am defending oscommerce...but all shopping cart software is buggy....i have spent up to 1500.00 on shopping cart software and have used the free solutions as well ....and oscommerce is no more buggy than any other solution....if you show me a company that states thier shopping cart software is bug free...i will show you a liar...:D ... i have yet to use oscommerce for a real time ecommerce solution...but i am not going to rule it out......;)

I've been giving OSCommerce a try and I'm about to give up. As others have said it seems a bit buggy, and it's total lack of native CVV2 support is not a good start (I'm very surprised more people don't bring this up!).

I'm now trying Zen Cart out, it seems rather nice, I have 2 stores that I'm about to open with a shopping card, perhaps Zen Cart will be it (or not). It seems like the best alternative to OSCommerce so far.

I tried several shopping carts before finding thsi great cart. I started with OScommerce, after a month of trying to get thing to work I finally gave up. So unless you know PHP I wouldnt recommend it. I am mre ASP proficient, and if this is your case.....

My vote goes to an ASP Shopping Cart called Uniwin Ecart, it took me three hours to set it up. Its in ASP and so far it has exceeded all my expectations. The admin panel is amazing and very easy to use and configure.

Other cart in my list of favorites is cactushop, its also very easy to configure and they have a free version to try.

WOW ! :eek:
first time to see "recommend ASP shopping cart" here .. i worry about security more than easy to use and configure..

Xcart is good .. I like the functionality/multitude of features that it offers.(such as payment methods and modules)..

I am so happy to see that most people seem pleased with X-Cart. I only just found them a few weeks ago and am interested in purchasing them.

Built mine from scratch. like it alot better!

osCommerce is a joke.

It's coding techniques are extremely outdated, spaghetti code. For designers it's a nightmare, that's why most oscommerce sites look the same, because you have to jump/crawl through directories to change certain design aspects. The bugs are insane, I think they have almost 1000 bugs currently still open for their latest "stable" release
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/bugs/status,open

Also because it's free it doesn't mean it doesn't cost anything. Maintenance costs are a lot more for osCommerce than other systems such as X-cart or litecommerce

My recommendations are the following

X-cart - great value for what you get and well coded

Litecommerce - not as featured as x-cart but coded using OOP, good for maintenance and future addons

I haven't played around with php-shop much, but it now integrates with Mambo, and I believe the coding is much cleaner than oscommerce and the fact that it integrates with mambo would make design simple. ALSO IT'S FREE.

All osCommerce has is a large contribution community, a lot of which are buggy, but appealing nonetheless. The contribution area is a joke, you don't even know if a project is in beta stages or not, all one can do is post a file and comment.

I don't recommend oscommerce to clients because it's not a professional cart system. If I did, I would not be a trustworthy consultant and they'd go elsewhere after seeing all the problems with it

I gave up on osCommerce a year ago...

Only 5% of my sales comes from online, 95 % of my customers call me and order over the phone! To me its just another good option to have for your customers

Any experience with PDshopPro cart(s)?