I will have to start a e-shop to sell mobile phones. However, I will need to pick up from one of these:

osCommerce
ZenCart
CubeCart

Pros? Cons? Speak up!

CS-Cart, most definately, new, supported, very easy to use

I have heard it's kinda hackable?

hm, i disagree with that.. I have tried all of them and I can honestly say that ZenCart is the best.. It is easy to use, supported, with a great forum and much much more.. if you want i can give you detailed explanation from what i have tested :)

well...I really like osCommerce and it works perfectly, but the truth is that it doesn't have enough templates and isn't easy for modifying, unlike CubeCart

hm and u want to tell me that there are more templates for cubecart ?

i have a designer that wants $500 to customize my oscommerce template..

well and how much will the same designer take to customize a CubeCart template ? :) From what i have seen all good templates for e-commerce solutions are paid.. so get used to that :P

no matter which cart you pick, don't pick because its best. Pick it only if it meets your needs or else the best your pick does no good for you. If all meets your needs, depending on how much daredevil you are you can pick one. We might have different reasons why should we or why shouldn't we pick a cart software, but do they matter to you?. Irrespective of which cart u pick the developers charge same or similar amount of money it just depends on how wellthey know the cart. We implmenented OScommerce and Zencart to couple of customers both are satisfied the at the same rate.

I would go with ZenCart. ZenCart is an improve version of oscommerce. Much user-friendly and better, imo.

i have a designer that wants $500 to customize my oscommerce template..

try sunshop

I would go with OSCommerce, since you will have a huge community to help you and alot of plugins for everything.

Finally it is easy to manage on the daily basis and you don't have to pay for it.

Just my thoughts.

I currently use Zencart, and love it. Very customizable and user friendly. New modules are always being added. And, there are always people in its support forums willing to help you out if you have any questions.

well...I really like osCommerce and it works perfectly, but the truth is that it doesn't have enough templates and isn't easy for modifying, unlike CubeCart

Not true. If you buy the right ebooks and tutorials it is as easy as anything. I sell books dedicated to this exact subject for osCommerce and the amount of non-techie people who have built great looking stores is huge!

Another reason to go ZenCart as it is one of the few eCommerce scripts to have a printed Manual, bought seperately. Web pages and eBooks are fine for some but some of us still like to read from a printed book. ;)

Also, ZenCart is easier to customize than osCommerce and I know that from experience with both. ZenCart is also more secure and actively being worked on / upgraded. This applies to security patches and new features / modules.

Did I mention it was free? :D

I like " CubeCart" for digital goods and it's robust coupon system and payment modules

I like " CubeCart" for digital goods and it's robust coupon system and payment modules

zencart has all of that, too.

Zen Cart is the superior product has a great community and staff. There product is upgraded more readily then the others

Between osC and Zencart I think there are only a few things to consider...

osC has a much larger user community. This leaves the signal to noise ratio low sometimes but for almost anything you'd like to do someone has written a contrib you can use or modify to your needs. 1000's of them in fact. There are quite a few folks who can answer questions in the forums as well if you can get their attention.

ZenCart doesn't have quite the size of community but it is definitely active. By comparison the contribs are no where near as copious. That's maybe not as much of an issue since most of the ones you'd want in a stock install are already worked into Zen.

Can't really speak to CubeCart in a comparative way.

For myself I use osC and have been very pleased with it over the years. Looking forward to the next release :)

Iggy

Another reason to go ZenCart as it is one of the few eCommerce scripts to have a printed Manual, bought seperately. Web pages and eBooks are fine for some but some of us still like to read from a printed book. ;)

What's the print button for on Adobe Reader??

It's not for printing a Book -- that's for sure. :D

You might want to consider checking out http://www.oscmax.com/ They took oscommerce and just installed a bunch of popular contributions to it. Granted it isn't included in fantastico, so you have to do a manual install, but it's worth considering.

I use Os-Commerce, it's pretty good and I think they coming with new version soon, it's free as well

Im using OSC atm and having some problems.

Hello

Try www.sumcart.com

I've never used Cube Cart but between osC and ZenCart, I'd recommend going with ZenCart. Zen is basically an improved version of OSC with several modules built in. I doubt there's anything you can do with OSC that can't be done in ZenCart with equal or less effort.

ZenCart has XHTML 1.0 Transitional tableless templates so you can control more via CSS which is always good. I'm working on a ZenCart project right now and I gotta say be prepared to do a lot of work if you don't want a typical cookie-cutter 3-column ecommerce site. Template files are spread all over the place but the "override" system does help avoid having to modify core files (ease of upgrading). The admin UI needs a lot of work but even having said that, overall I think ZenCart is still better than most free open source solutions currently available.

Who the heck knows when a stable OSC3 will come out seeing as how there really hasn't been much development on 2.2 for years and it took 9 whole months between Alpha 3 and 4. Their roadmap goes to Alpha 6 and that doesn't even include later Beta stages. Perhaps if they had more than 1 core developer (I mean actually developing the application, not translating language files or something), it would move faster than a snail's pace. Do not make plans based on OSC3.

On the other hand, it's worth mentioning Magento (http://www.magento.org), which is currently under active development. The developers (a web dev firm called Varien) started this project because of their frustrations after working extensively with OSC. It'll be free and open-source. You can find all the info you need on their site/blog. If it lives up to expectations, the choice will be simple.

Other worthy mentions are Drupal/E-commerce (http://drupal.org/project/ecommerce) or Drupal/Ubercart (http://www.ubercart.org/).

cs-cart...i like that too..

it's a decent, easy to use cart that has 10 or more in built templates that you can fiddle around with. support all the payment modules like google checkout, paypal and all the rest.

demo:

http://demo.cs-cart.com/index.php?&demo_skin[C]=brickwork_dark_steel

owm

Some feedback based on expirience from client install and customization:

Oscommerce is a basic cart with a lot of add-ons available, the current latest release is stable and works well. (But to fully customize the cart you should atleast have some rudimentary php/html skills) ( www.oscommerce.com )

Personally i would avoid the loaded oscommerce versions, due to bloat and add-ons/upgrade complications, but if i had to chose one it would be cre-loaded.

Zen Cart is very fully featured product, but its a bit bloated and the last time i gave it a test run it did have a heavy query count. ( www.zencart.com )

Cube Cart is also easy to use, and works well. ( www.cubecart.com )

Open Cart is a new and promissing one ( www.opencart.com )