Open Source Shopping Cart
Open Source Shopping carts software are will matured these days and can be used to run online shopping portal of any size. If you are a small company and looking for setting up your own shopping portal then you can choose any of the good open source shopping cart software, download, install, customize and add products on it. After adding the products and categories you add your payment details for accepting the credit cards from your users. Once all these things are done, your online shopping portal is ready to go live.
Choosing the right Open Source shopping cart is very important factor in determining success of your e-commerce business. Good software will help you in growing your business. But if due to some reason wrong shopping cart software is selected, then it will add a burden on you. You won't be able increase your business. You may face server down time or slow performance of website. So, choosing a right shopping cart is very important factor in determining the success of online business.
There are many Open source shopping cart developed by many organizations. These open source shopping cart can be downloaded from their websites. The source code of these shopping carts are also available and can be downloaded from respective distribution websites. Availability of source code is a big advantage of using any open source shopping cart. You can download and modify the source code to support your specific business requirement. Now you are not vendor locked, you can modify source code of shopping cart as per your needs.
The open source shopping cart is now very advanced software system which provides following features:
- Scalability: Modern shopping cart
system is highly scalable and can handle your growing
business.
- Integration with other software. It
provides xml and other format export and import of data. So,
it can well integrate with existing ERP system of the
company.
- SEO: Most of the open source shopping
cart is SEO enabled.
- Extensible: It can be extended to add
new features and functionality
- Template support: These are based on
template which makes much easier task to change the design
of store font easily.
- Plugin support: There are many plugins
developed by developers which can be used to add extra
features on the top of base shopping cart system
- Web 2.0 based design: Most of the
shopping cart software is based on the Web 2.0 design
principles.
Advanced feature of Open source shopping cart system:
- Marketing Promotions and Tools: Most of
the modern shopping cart software is equipped with marketing
promotion tools.
- Analytics and Reporting: There
are various types of report to view the overall performance
of the e-commerce portal.
- Search Engine Optimization: Search
engine optimization is very important since most you will be
getting lot's of traffic from search engines. These tools
help the e-commerce portal owners to take the full advantage
of search engine and natural traffic.
- Site Management: Helps the web master
to manage the e-commerce portal well.
- Catalog Management: Well designed and
developed Catalog Management system is an integral
part of open source shopping cart system. It helps the admin
to manage products easily and efficiently.
- Catalog Browsing: Finding the products
in products is very important. It comes with good search
functionality to find the products and catalogue easily.
- Product Browsing: Good product browsing
is developed and included in open source shopping cart
system.
- Mobile Commerce: These days people are using mobile
devices for internet access and also for e-commerce
purchase. So, its important to have mobile commerce support
in the open source shopping cart solutions. Mobile commerce
module is also available with major open source shopping
cart solutions.
- International language modules: Many
shopping cart software provides many language support.
- Checkout and Payment: The Checkout
module is will developed and supports multiple payment
methods.
- Shipping: The shipping module
automatically calculates the shipping price based on the
shipping zip code.
- Customer Service: This modules is
important and major open source shopping cart provides this
module.
- Order Management: We designed and developed order management system enhances the productivity of the staff.
General features of open source shopping cart
Front Office:
The font office is used to manage the products that will be displayed on the portal.
- Special deals (price reductions, gift vouchers)
E-commerce webmaster can display the special deals on premium location of the website. This will increase the sales of the product. This feature is one of the most used on different e-commerce portals.
- Featured products on homepage
This feature can be used to promote featured products for increasing the sales.
- Top sellers on homepage
Application identifies the top selling products and displays on the home page.
- New items on homepage
Most of the e-commerce shopping cart portal displays new products on the homepage of shopping portal.
- 'Free shipping' offers
You can display the free shipping offers on the premium location of the website. It also also allows the users to find the products with free shipping.
- Cross-selling (Accessories)
The cross-selling module is also an important feature of many open source shopping cart software.
- Product image zoom
Providing different images sizes in the system and then allow the users to zoom the product image is also very interesting feature of the system.
- Order out-of-stock items
If the items are not in stock, e-commerce shopping cart software display the message to the user.
- Customer subscription & user accounts
E-commerce shopping cart software should allow the users to create user account.
- Unlimited payment methods
E-commerce shopping application should provide integration with almost all the available online payment system.
- Payment by bank wire
The payment by bank wire transfer feature is also a good feature.
- Googleâ?¢ Checkout module
E-commerce shopping portal should provide support for Googleâ?¢ Checkout.
- Cash-On-Delivery (COD)
This can be another optional feature.
- Preconfigured for Paypalâ?¢
Almost all the open source shopping cart system provides Preconfigured for Paypalâ?¢ payment module.
- Multiple-recipient contact form
This allows the uses to send product to different address.
- Product tagging & tag cloud
This feature is a must have feature of any shopping cart portal.
- Search
Must have module for searching the products.
- Order tracking
Customers should be able to track the status of the order.
- Loyal customer program
Good module
- Affiliate program
Can be useful if store owner is taking part in Affiliate programs.
- Customer product reviews
This will allow the customers to post the products reviews.
Back Office features
The back office of the e-commerce shopping portal should be fast and easy to use. It should have tools to increase the productivity of the employees of the e-commerce portal.
- Unlimited categories & subcategories
E-commerce admin module should allow the admin to add unlimited categories & subcategories.
- Full-featured WYSIWYG text editor
Not all employees are aware of HTML, so Full-featured WYSIWYG text editor is very useful. It increases the productivity of the employees.
- Unlimited product attribute combinations
Good feature to manage and display the product on the portal.
- Unlimited product specs
Most of the open source shopping cart software supports Unlimited product specs.
- Unlimited images with automatic resizing & file optimization
Automatic image resizing is another good feature of e-commerce system.
- Unlimited currencies
It should at least support 36 language motioned below.
- Unlimited tax settings
Every country have different rules for tax, e-commerce shopping cart software should support unlimited tax settings.
- It should also provide support for setting tax by state, country, both, zones, or no taxes
- Digressive pricing (Quantity discounts)
Digressive pricing or Quantity discounts is an important feature of e-commerce shopping portal.
- Real-time currency exchange rates
This is another good feature which can display the real-time currency exchange rates.
- Inventory management
Shopping cart system must have Inventory management modules.
- SMS/Text-message alerts
This very good module which can increase customer loyalty.
- Bar codes
Should support bar codes.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO module helps the webmasters to increase search engine ranking.
- Content Management System (CMS)
A good CMS is necessary for adding pages to the website.
- Reports
Should provide different types of report.
Support for different Languages
A good open source shopping cart software must support following languages:
- Arabic
- Argentina
- Bulgarian
- Catalan
- Simplified Chinese
- Traditional Chinese
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- Estonian
- English
- Finnish
- French
- Galician
- Georgian
- German
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
- Iranian
- Italian
- Latvia
- Lithuanian
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Portuguese-Brasilian
- Romanian
- Russian
- Slovak
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Thaï
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
Here is the list of best open source shopping cart software:
1. Magento
Magento is open source e-commerce shopping cart developed in PHP programming language. It is modular and very extensible. It provides a lot of flexibility. The magento is available in community edition, professional edition 1.8.0.0 and enterprise edition. Community edition is free while enterprise edition is targeted for big online stores. Magento comes with many features and it is SEO friendly. It also provides webservices for accessing the data from another programs.
2. osCommerce
osCommerce is another open source shopping cart software powering more than
244,800 online stores. It is developed in PHP can be easily installed on PHP
enabled Apache web server. It is easy to install and comes with many plugins.
You can download and install plugins available for osCommerce. The osCommerce
open source shopping cart software supports multiple currencies. It also allows
the users to print invoice from the order screen. It also provides database
backup utility for easily backing up the valuable data.
3. Prestashop
The PrestaShop is another Open-Source e-commerce shopping cart that can be downloaded from it official website. It is multilingual and any number of languages can be added to the system. It is based on Web 2.0 design principals. It is based on template and many companies are developing good design for PrestaShop store. The PrestaShop shopping cart supports 38 languages.
4. OpenCart
Opencart is an open source shopping cart solution developed in PHP and runs on PHP enabled Apache server. It is feature rich, very easy to install, easy to use and SEO friendly e-commerce shopping cart solution. It provides support for unlimited categories, products and supports 20+ payment methods. It it Templatable which means many different kinds of designed templates can be developed and can switch to any design template. Many companies are developing designing templates for opencart e-commerce solution. It also supports 8+ Shipping Methods.
5. AgoraCart
The AgroCart is another open source, feature rich e-commerce software system for running online shopping store. It is very powerful, customizable shopping cart software which allows the users to edit the design by changing the headers, footers, product layout, email templates etc.. It provides limitless flexibility as far as design is concerned. You can implement any time of type of design asked by your client. Supports real-time shipping rates calculation for USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, Canada Post, AUS Post FedEx, DHL, Canada Post and AUS Post.
6. Zen Cart
Zen Cart is free, user friendly open source shopping cart system developed in PHP. MySQL database is used as backend for Zen Cart e-commerce solution. Zen Cart also support multiple payment methods, discounts and coupons. It is also very easy to install on the PHP enabled Apache server.
7. StoreSprite
The StoreSprite is e-commerce solution for the web designers. It is developed in PHP and can run on PHP enabled web servers. It is open source, highly customizable e-commerce shopping cart solutions for running web store. It provides features such as automatic tax calculation, customer reviews and delivery cost calculation. 0
8. Ubercart
Ubercart is another open source e-commerce solution for running online e-commerce store developed in PHP programming language. It also provides paid file download support. It can also be integrated with Drupal, which is leading open source CMS (content management system) software. It comes with lot of features inluding configurable product catalog, Flexible product creation system, Flexible product attributes system, Single page checkout and Simple order processing. 1
9. Open For Business â?? Apache
The Apache OFBiz is advanced e-commerce, catalog management, order management, CRM, Stock management, Accounting, Manufacturing management, CMS and POS software system. That can be used in big enterprise for running all the business process on this software system. The OFBiz is and open source enterprise automation software which is licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0. It is developed in Java and can run on any Java enabled servers. It includes Party, Product, Order, Facility, Shipment, Accounting, Marketing, Work Effort and Human Resources management components. Its huge system which can be used in enterprise for managing their businesses. 2
10. ZenMagick
ZenMagick is yet another very powerful open source e-commerce solution with many professional features such as unlimited products/categories, multi currency, multi lingual etc.. It is PHP 5.3 ready software which takes full advantage of PHP 5.3 features. It is originally based on Zen cart software and now evolved into robust e-commerce system. It also supports theme/templating system which makes it more developer friendly due to separation of code and design. 3
11. nopCommerce
The nopCommerce is another open source e-commerce shopping cart software with store front and administrative panel. It is developed in ASP.NET 4.0 and runs on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. It requires MS SQL Server 2005 or above as back end database server. It has everything for running online shopping portal. 4
12. TomatoCart
TomatoCart is another open source shopping cart solution which is originated from osCommerce 3 as a separate project. It is full featured, lightweight, easy to use, easy to administrate shopping cart solution. The TomatoCart provides support for social networking sites. It integrates with various Social Network Sites like Twitter, Facebook and Book Marking Sites. This helps the shopping cart owners to increase sales from social networking websites. 5
13. Digistore
Digistore Ecommerce is free, full featured open source shopping cart system developed in PHP. It is highly customizable shopping cart solution. It includes WSIWYG editor to create HTML pages without any knowledge of HTML and CSS. It provides addressbook for multiple shipping and billing addresses while ordering a product. Digistore Ecommerce has Multilingual and Multicurrency support. 6
14. Spree Commerce
Spree Commerce is cloud ready open source e-commerce software with many features such as customized logic for taxation, shipping, discounts and coupon. 7
15. Zeuscart
Zeuscart is one source shopping cart software that supports multiple payment gateways and many more advantageous features. It is very user friendly and allows a non-technical person to create own online shopping portal with minimal efforts. Its features includes Attribute Driven Product Catalog , Comparision Shopping , SEO Friendly URLs, Google Base Integration Gift Cards, Coupons & Guest Checkout and much more. It very good shopping cart software for non technical guys. 8
16. Jadasite
Jadasite is open source e-commerce solutions that supports BIRT reporting, products import/export etc. JadaSite is released under GNU General Public License (GPL) V3. It can be downloaded from its official website and installed on any J2EE enabled application servers. It is developed in Java programming language and provides good performance benefits. Its source code is bundled with the download file. 9
17. Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software
Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software is developed in PHP and runs of PHP enabled server. It requires MySQL database server. Its features includes Basic Store Settings, Advanced Store Settings, Searchable Customer Detail Collection, Shipping & Packing Options, Product Listing Options, Inventory / Stock Settings etc.. This software can be easily installed and used on any PHP enabled server. 0
18. VirtueMart
VirtueMart is another Open Source E-Commerce solution which can be integrated with Joomla CMS. It is high performance, highly usable and secure e-commerce shopping cart solution. 1
19. jCart
The jCart is free open source shopping cart software based on jQuery and PHP programming languages. It is easy to install and use shopping cart application. It integrates with the paypal payment system. It can be easily customized with css and text. 2
20. CREloaded
CREloaded is open source, secure e-commerce shopping cart software which is fully compliant with all Payment Card Industry (PCI) security rules. 3
21. closedShop - The Open Source Shopping Cart
The closed Shop, an open source shopping cart. Over the past three years, there have been over 13,000 downloads spread across 9 releases. Basically, closed Shop is a free shopping cart written in Perl, using the mySQL database as a back-end, that allows anyone to set up shop with no online credit card processing necessary. They can process the credit cards manually, as most businesses already have a manual credit card processor. After downloading, unzip the contents into your cgi-bin directory. Make sure the all the files have 755 permissions (closedShop doesn't work very well on Windows-based servers, only *nix types). Most FTP programs allow you to change permissions (via the 'chmod' command). You'll want to make all the files read-write-execute for the owner, read-execute for the group, and read-execute for everyone else. 4
closedShop is an open source, free shopping cart. Based on Perl and MySQL, its aim is to provide all the features a commercial shopping cart offers at no cost. It is easy to setup, use and
manage. Many months after the last release, version 2.2 comes out with much better shipping support and some other options built in.
1. confirm deletion for admin things with javascript
2. receipt printing when viewing orders
3. can choose if you want search results in thumbnail form or not
4. merchant gets an email with order details for each new order