I'm going to be selling my own line of clothing from my site www.jpwear.com and am driving myself crazy because I cannot make up my mind which shopping cart to choose (AuthorizeNet is my payment gateway and I have my own merchant account).

Does anyone know which cart is more customizable appearance wise... Zencart, osCommerce or QuickCart? I'm extremely picky and want things to look the way I want them to... so if I'm stuck using some specific cart template whereas I cannot change the appearance or more importanly layout... I'm NOT going to be happy.

Does anyone know which of the three carts mentioned is best? I want something VERY simplistic and minimal... nothing cluttered full of features I don't want or need. Therefore it almost seems that QuickCart would be the best solution?

I just read this article on a shopping cart comparision... it was really helpful:
http://www.zen-cart.com/modules/ipb/index.php?showtopic=27653

I also do not want customers to have to (or be able to) create an account in my shopping cart so that they can login again later to view their account and whatnot. I know all carts have that feature whereas the customer can create an account. But I do NOT want that. Can I remove that option from the three carts I mentioned? This is important since I do not want customers to create an account.

Does anyone know if I can use a shared SSL cert on all three carts above or if I must buy my own SSL Cert? I hope I can use a shared cert... but it seems that I must buy my own SSL cert and cannot use shared SSL?

Any help would be greatly appreciated... I don't know which cart to choose! :(

I have worked on a couple of ZenCart sites.

ZenCart is extremely customizable. Take a look at the showcase listed on there site, the dept of changes you can me will all depend on your knowledge of CSS, PHP, and HTML.


Checkout without registration. This has been a hot topic on the Zen forum, by default this is not support, but if you search the forum (using the word checkout) someone has created a mod to accomplish this task

I looked at your site it sould not be to hard to skin zen to fit that site.

Just on a side note, it's not a good idea to put flash on an Ecommerce site.

Yes, you can use a shared SSL cert on Zencart and OSC.

Both work fine with Auth.net/your own merchant account. Or you can set it up to collect the credit card numbers and then just manually run them through on your Virtual Terminal. Your choice.

As for customization, yes, ZenCart and OSC can both be extensively customized. I found it easiest to buy a pre-made template that I liked, and then modify it further. I chose it based on the overall color scheme but most importantly, how it functioned in the demo. Did it have the feel I wanted my site to have? Did it work the way I wanted to, in terms of layout and where things live?

Now I'm in the process of modifying OSC so it has the features I want. For example, I want to run my own newsletter system and not use the OSC newsletter system, so I will be installing the "remove newsletter" contribution. There are thousands of contributions for OS Commerce. Not so many for ZenCart. ;) That said, I really really like ZenCart, it's just that I wasn't able to find the selection of mods/contributions and templates that I needed. (Granted many of the mods are already built in to ZenCart. That's part of its beauty.) But that was just for my own shop, might not be applicable in your case.

So in case you couldn't tell :) I chose OSCommerce, purchased a pre-made skin and am customizing that. I'm installing the exact mods/contributions I want to make the cart do what I need it to do.

We've been running on Mal's E-Commerce (http://www.mals-e.com) for 5 years now. It's doing absolutely wonderfully, except that we need customer accounts and order tracking. :)

:) Bailey

Thanks for the responses.

shazer7.

Why do you think it's not a good idea to put flash on an ecommerce site? I see nothing wrong with it and no problems in regards to that. I mean, check out hostrocket.com ... they have loads of flash and seem to be doing just fine. My site jpwear.com loads very fast... most people nowadays have DSL... so load time is not an issue whatsoever. Just curiois as to whay you say it's not a good idea.

I'm no longer interested in QuickCart as that does not run on a database. So I have to decide between ZenCart and Oscommerce. But both these carts do not support checkout without customers having to register an account? That's a bummer :(

That is silly, they should by default allow you to choose whether you want that option or not.

Someone offered to make me a custom cart for $300 ... or install and customize ZenCart or Oscommerce for $200 ... do you guys think that's an OK price or am I being overcharged?

I don't know if I want a custom cart... I'd almost feel more comfortable using ZenCart or Oscommerce... what do you guys think?

P.S- I need order tracking as well of course... but not customer account registrations. I think that feature is useless... all it does is allow customers to login and view order status and their account info which I don't want.

hmmm, the last time I checked zencart was pretty bloated.
zencart was forked due to oscommerce being slow on the development process and several other reasons. 2 main team members from oscommerce are the ones who were on the original versions along with several other people.

oscommerce is behind the times however, they recently "finally" realeased a security patch. The last version of their retracked cvs was pretty sweet however, it was only about 60% finished with talk that there was more done behind the scenes.

both communities are helpful yet have thier own dynamics you will need to deal with.

oscommerce has slews and slews of code that is contributed almost daily -- a bit much for the senses at times. Not sure of zencart since I stopped visiting around the 1.d release.

the rates you posted depends on what you are getting and who is doing the work. Many good folks out there but there are those others too.

templating for oscomerce is a chore due to it's nested tables. Can always add on one of the 2 popular template systems and save some time.

zencart started with BTS template system if I remember correctly. But still could be a pain to get an out of the box look (errr, this goes for both). I cruised the net the other day and could spot osc carts a mile away so to say.

hmmm, hard to choose between the 2.
If you like to be able to turn off all kinds of goodies then zencart is the way to go. If you prefer having smaller code and less bloat yet a bit more necessary on adding things you want then osc is the way to go.

I'm sure that osc has the no register for checkout. However, knocking that out sort of defeats the purpose of recording data to be used in the admin section later.

Cheers and good luck

Why does having no customers register an account mean the below to you" "knocking that out sort of defeats the purpose of recording data to be used in the admin section later." ???

That to me makes no sense. Why would that defeat the purpose? Defeat the urpose of what exactly? I'm going to be selling my own line of clothing from my site. I simply want customes to be able to select what products they want to purchase.. place the products into their shopping cart... and pay for it. That's it. I do NOT want customers to have an account whereas they can login and view what they ordered, view order status or any of that. It is completey unnecessary, I don't want it.

Once the customer has placed their order... each order should be assigned an order# of course. Then I should be able to login to the admin interface... see a list of ALL of the order#'s that have been processed... ship the product... then checkmark that I have completed shipping the product to that particular order#... then I move on and ship the next order# and checkmark that order# off and so on.

If a customer sends a product back for a refund... they MUST tell me what their order# was... then I can refund that order# and indicate in the admin interface that the order# has been refunded. I mean it couldn't be any more straight forward and any simpler what I need.

The order# MUST show the customers address, what they ordered, what size they ordered, e.t.c. VERY simple.

I only want order#'s... not interested in customer accounts.

So why on earth would I need to have customers create an account? That has absolutely NOTHING to do with the admin side. Am I missing something? To me it is completely silly and unecessary to have customers register accounts as I do NOT want customers to view order status, view what they ordered, view their order history... but this in NO way should affect how the admin side works?

Ahh, looks like we had a slight misunderstanding.

I was just wondering how you were going to gather customers' information, ie; shipping and/or billing addresses, name, email, and/or phone numbers.

hmmm, were you thinking of just letting some outside source handle payment procedures? That way you just need to keep only the order number and purchased items.

Many carts have option modification code that allows you to skip the issuance of passwords, which seems to be what you're looking for. Heck, you could even hack a cart to just record only an order number if you want. Many things are possible.

I, however, like the idea of having some kind of (at least) hidden accounts since they allow you to later target repeat customers by offereing them special sale prices, or even discounts according to the amount they spend at your business. I've always thought that repeat customers are easier to make a sale to than a new customer, besides the fact it is cheaper to target previous buyers than try to find new ones.


Well, we all do have different ideas as to what we want.

cheers and good luck with your business :gthumb:

I need a shopping cart too. Its kind a hard to choose between those shopping carts. I'm more thinking of zencart...

zencart, creloaded, oscdox are forks of oscommerce so they should act very similarly. I say go with the community that gives you the support that fits you.

snowman_sapporo,

I'm going to collect every single customer's email address who orders something and I will be able to email all past customers anytime I want with my mailing list. I own my own merchant account. My shopping cart will work with my payment gateway AuthorizeNet and will bill the customer right away. ALL credit card info will be stored at AuthorizeNet. I do not need to keep it on file for recurrent billing because I'm not selling a service.

I'm going to set it up so customers do not need to have to create an account, I think that's completely silly. But I guess each to his own :)

I personally find it VERY annoying to shop at sites that require you to create an account. Then I have to login every single time... sometimes I forget my password... I dont know. I just find it incredibly annoying... when I shop I don't want to have to login at every site I shop at.

I just need order#'s.... the order# will contain all the order information. I ship the order... checkmark that order# off and go ont to the next one...

Actually, next to each order# in the admin interface I want a drop down box where I can select and specificy that I have either:

1. not shipped yet
2. shipped
3. refunded
4. exchanged (then I should be able to specificy, exchanged for what exactly).

And that should work perfectly.

EDIT: How does Zencart and Oscommerce work with exchanges? I mean if a customer buys a product... then decides to send it back and exchange it for a more expensive product for example? Can you specify in Zencart that the product was exccanged and for what exactly? What's the best way to handle and record exchanges?

I hear you on the account thing. You mentioned credit but what do you do for cash/Postal Order? None of my business actually, but some people like me still use cash or go to paypal before credit.

hmmm, base osc doesn't do exhanges you'd have to find a contribution. Possibly zen but I haven't played with that since they were still under 200 members. contribution would probably be under the name of restocking ... I think that's what it was called.

But this is a very good point and really haven't thought about this before.

I'm much more of osc coder than zencart. Personal reasons rather than code reasons.

Both carts you should be able to hack out the password section or even just have it generated randomly. I have done this before but then the question would always come up ... what happens if the customer comes back? lolo, put the code back into place.

As for the drop down (1-2 -- 3 and 4 you could just change the wording for the shipping status, easy hack but just might work) those are on the individual order page for osc ... most likely for zen too.

Both osc and zen can easily be set-up with a no-account creation feature.

You can install a module called Purchase Without Account (PWA) .

This gives the customer a choice if he/she wishes to create an account or not.....

If you do not wish the customer to have this choice and just proceed directely with the checkout without creating an account....this can also be easily done by just editing one line of php code.

Editing just one line of code?

I didn't find it that easy. However, with the PWA maybe one line but standard osc it requires a bit more work.

1. not shipped yet
2. shipped
3. refunded
4. exchanged (then I should be able to specificy, exchanged for what exactly).


You just add the status you want in the db for Zen. They have pending, processing, deliverd already, so you can just add whatever else ones you want.

Although Zencart and osCommerce are pretty similar, Zencart is becoming more popular because it seems more Admin friendly. Some options are setup by default that require an Addon module in osC. That's what I've heard/read anyway. I'm more familiar with osC from a coding level just because it has been around longer.

As to Frosty's specific criteria of not allowing/requiring accounts to be created, remember as well that many people "like" setting up an account. Makes it easy to see past purchases and account specifics. Would seem like a good idea to give the Client a choice.

Why do you think it's not a good idea to put flash on an ecommerce site? I see nothing wrong with it and no problems in regards to that. I mean, check out hostrocket.com ... they have loads of flash and seem to be doing just fine. My site jpwear.com loads very fast... most people nowadays have DSL... so load time is not an issue whatsoever. Just curious as to why you say it's not a good idea.

Sorry for the late reply

Before I put my explanation / opinion (but we know what they say about opinions)

I would first like to state, an individual could run there site anyway that they see fit.


I should have said in my opinion it’s not a good idea to put flash on an Ecommerce site.

After creating a few ecommerce site for myself and clients, you want to try every thing to keep that customer on you site once the find it.

You stated, “hostrocket.com ... they have loads of flash and seem to be doing just fine.”

1. First you cannot compare a web hosting site to an ecommerce site.


2. This site has been around for a while and has a big customer base. I am sure that it would not really hurt them to loose a few customers, because they are browsing with flash turned off or don’t like the music loading on the site.

3. I am also sure they have a lot of money for advertising.




My site jpwear.com loads very fast... most people nowadays have DSL... so load time is not an issue whatsoever.

If you think the issue with having flash on an ecommerce site only has to do with load time. You have
a lot of research still to do.

I don’t know if you already factored in how you are going to get customers to your site, but to start you will have to pay for some type of advertising, I don’t know about you but I don’t have a large advertising budget and I would hate for a potential customer to click on one of my adds (1.50 per click) then get to my site and leave because:

1 There web browser is outdated.

2 They don’t have a flash plug-in.

3 They did not like that my site has music/ don’t like to song playing / cannot find how to turn it off (Time they should spend looking for items to purchase).

4 Still using dial up.


When you have an ecommerce site the main point is CONVERSITION/ MAKING SALES. I want every customer that locates my site to have a chance to convert to a sale, not leave.


I will say this once again I am not telling anyone how to run there site, but I am looking at some of your comment to some of the reason you don’t want certain feature, and it’s all about you, what about your customer base?

I recommend that you go to bizrate.com and read some of the reviews.

When you get a chance checkout www.webmasterworld.com

I still prefer flash and will not be allowing customers to create accounts. That's just the way it's going to be. I guess each to his own. I'm having my own line of clothing manufactured in china and my clothing will be sold in retailers throughout the US. My site url will be listed on all the clothing tags which are attached to the actual clothing. That's the only advertising leading to my site. Internet sales is not what I'm targeting... its retailers and selling to retailers wholesale but I would also like customers to be able to buy mys shorts and lingerie online as well. Nevermind this, it's off topic. I'm not conernced with flash or this and that on my site... I'm trying to make up my mind which cart to choose :)

I found someone who can make me a custom cart. Do you guys see any downside to having someone make me a custom cart? Or do you think it's a better idea if I just use the familiar zencart or oscommerce and customize those carts instead?

Is there a downside to having someone make me a custom cart from scratch using their own modules they've built?

ive been looking into cre loaded os commerece, it has a lot of cool features, and such, if u search for creloaded you will find it