OK, now I understand - first of all I have to choose a suitable shopping cart, and only then look for hosting, which supports or agree to install this shopping cart. Am I right?

Now I have almost all requirements for shopping cart – some of them with your help from another thread (so I will repeat them again). If I forgot something – please, tell me.

Thus, we are looking for a shopping cart for our project.

The project: We are creating a royalty free photographs on-line agency.

The product: We have a set of 10 CDs with our royalty free images, on each CD about 100 images.

In the very beginning we are going to offer the set of 10 images on discount price (so it will be only 1 product).
Later we are going to start to sell CDs – not different images, and further – we need an option to sell (let our clients to download from our site) different images. Afterwards we are going to add second set of 10 CDs, and so on. So in the beginning it will be 10 products (10 CDs), further 1000 products (1000 images), and in the future we will have let's say 20 CDs with 2000 images – its 2000 different products.

In the beginning we are going only to ship products (set of 10 CDs or different CDs), in the future we want to add an option of downloading of the images.

Shopping cart requirements:

- A shopping cart should let us change its code and to create a site which will look like these samples.
(What we are going to create, is something like these - There are links to some royalty free images stock agencies)

http://www.1stopstock.com/
http://www.ablestock.com/hemera/jsp/frameset.jsp
http://www.comstock.com/web/default...6319.5216655731
http://pro.corbis.com/
http://www.istockphoto.com/
http://www.comstock.com/web/default...6319.5216655731

What we are going to create will not have such complicated purchasing system like on some of these sites – I just wanted to show, that we have to have an option to change design, because some shopping carts are coming with ready made "shopping area" and you cannot change a lot).


- The shopping cart should operate with MySQL database for backend and not with text files.

- We have a programmer who can customize software written on PHP, Perl or ASP. So the shopping cart should be written on these languages.

- The shopping cart we are looking for is not necessary should be free – we are ready to pay for reliable and customizable software (or to take a host, which give us this program free or for some fee).

- we want "Add to Cart" and "Buy Now" buttons to be easily integrated into our site. When visitors click on it, they should not be transported to another secure site.

- complete shipping and tax options, email confirmations.

- our account should be linked directly to a payment gateway

- The shopping cart software should be in our directory (on our server).

- Our own SSL certificate (not shared one).



So what shopping carts are suitable for me?


Thank you for your help.

I have personally set up phpShop and osCommerce (formerly the exchange project) for people. Another I have looked at for someone but not yet installed is squirrelcart. All are php/mySQL carts, and all are SSL compliant. The first two are free, and squirrelcart was US$69 the last time I looked at it.

For ease of use, either phpShop or osCommerce are good. Both are open source and could be cusomtized to whatever extent you required within the limits of the GPL. phpShop has an odd setup relative to the structure of the typical web site, but the installation of either is a piece of cake. Both have shipping and tax modules, and both integrate with various payment processors/gateways. Email options are handled within both, and the templates can be customized to your liking. Image linking and display are better in osCommerce, in my opinion, but both do the job admirably.

If you have the means and opportunity, you might want to setup a copy of each to determine which would be most suitable for the plans you have.


Links
phpShop at http://www.phpshop.org (demo on that page)
osCommerce at http://www.oscommerce.com/
squirrelcart at http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/15326.html

Good luck.

GeeksRUs, thank you for your advice - I will consider squirrel.

I worry that free shopping carts do not guarantee anything and do not have support. Probably they even better then some of the chargeable carts (the same situation as with Unix and NT?), but we need something proven and we cannot take the risk to fail because of a wrong choice. We are ready to pay $100-200 for a proven, certified and recognized by e-commerce community program, which satisfies our conditions (see above).

So waiting for more advices.

Thank you for your help.

I recommend osCommerce. It's free, and works well.

Although it's relatively easy to install, I'm sure many hosts would install it for you for free. :)

Regarding paid shopping carts, in all honesty most come with terms of service that state that the developers won't be liable in any way. So in other words, whether you install something like osCommerce (which is, by the way, proven), or pay for a shopping cart... There may not be any difference. It's up to you. :)

I've dealt with osCommerce as well. It's a breeze to install and actually quite powerful

We recommend osCommerce too.

..Try www.vpasp.com

good luck