Today webmasters have a wide choice of shopping cart scripts to choose from. OsCommerce, X-Cart, CubeCart, Zen Cart, Agora - these are only a small faction of what is offered these days. Free or commercial? Easy integration or extended features? Let's see what we have here.
OsCommerce is an open source software to create online shops. Many hosting providers include osCommerce into their Fantastico bundle. Even the default version is full of various features while add-ons may expand the script abilities to an enormous extent. While osCommerce is positioned as easy to install and configure, this is not always true. In order to utilize all the advantages of osCommerce you'd better find a qualified integrator of this product who will tune everything the way you need it.
OsCommerce shopping cart allow you to add multiple products and organize them, run discounts and promotions, set prices in different currencies and accept payments through all most popular methods.
X-Cart is another popular and powerful solution. This shopping cart script has more than 100 features and it has a very demanded module that allows to deliver software products online.
X-Cart payment gateway supports over 60 different methods and the cart itself is very comfortable and easy to configure. The developers of the script offer installation and configuration services so that you can have a turn-key project in the end.
X-Cart is a commercial script offered in two varieties - Pro and Gold. The only difference between them is that the Pro version allows you to set up unique accounts for different merchants.
CubeCart is an open source script which is very similar to osCom
merce and other shopping cart solutions alike. CubeCart needs your hosting to support PHP and MySQL. The script has extended configuration capabilities and can be connected to different payment gateways including PayPal and VeriSign.
Zen Cart is an open source product developed by a group of shop owners who know what they need in product implementing this into Zen Cart. Designers, programmers and ecommerce consultants help them on the way. This is probably one of the most user-friendly shopping cart scripts, though the functionality is still to be extended.
Shopping cart script named Agora is also quite a popular solution which is like osCommerce is often bundled into hosting providers' Fantastico installation packs. It is one of the best shopping carts for beginners and has enough features to satisfy advanced users as well. Agora is famous for the excellent tutorials and support forums. Even if your HTML knowledge is not your strong side, it is quite possible you'll be able to set up a nice online shop if you use Agora.
Of course, it's up to you what to choose. It could be a wise decision to try all of the products described above and maybe some else to understand which of them offers the features you really need to create the online shop you think will be fantastic. Sometimes open source projects are more suitable than commercial ones. Sometimes it's the other way round.
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