Shopping Carts

[ecomnewbie]

Paypal has a list of 6 shopping carts as their "featured solutions"

ProStores
Shopsite
PDG
Mal's e-commerce
Storefront
Americart

My questions are these.

Are these truly good shopping systems or are they just paying to be featured?

Of these systems has anyone used them and what do you think?

Out of the bunch which do you think is the best?

[HighConversions]

They're most likely companies which beta tested the PayPal integration prior to release.

PayPal's just used to process transactions. They have nothing to do with shopping carts or anything like that. At the bottom of PayPal's Featured Developers page it clearly states that PayPal does not endorse or support 3rd-party solutions.

[ecomnewbie]

Thanks for the info.

However, have you used any of these shopping carts?

[HighConversions]

No, I haven't. You could contact their customers to see if they like the carts and what not.

[jsinger]

We use Shopsite which is excellent. I'm familiar with Mals and Americart. All are good. Mals is free and limited. Americart was pretty dated when I looked at it last.

Which is the best? That's like asking which car is the best.

[Patrick Taylor]

I use Mal's e-commerce in combination with PayPal. This works okay for a small online shop that sells a handful of items per day. The advantage of Mal's e-commerce for me is that I can design all the product pages myself - just normal web design - and place ADD TO CART buttons wherever I choose. Using the remote callback feature, I can also manage my inventory.

[ecomnewbie]

Do your Add to Cart buttons than take you to a checkout form that looks like your site? What I mean to say is can you make Mal's credit card processing area look like your site?

[Patrick Taylor]

Do your Add to Cart buttons than take you to a checkout form that looks like your site? What I mean to say is can you make Mal's credit card processing area look like your site?

The ADD TO CART buttons go from my own product pages to a cart on Mal's, which is customised to look very much like my pages. The cart does the calculations, shipping, and customer address, etc. Then there's a GO TO PAYMENTS button that takes the customer to PayPal where the credit card payment is made.

It's not perfect but it's simple, it works, it's cheap, and it means my own product pages are exactly how I want them. As I say, it's okay for a small online shop.

[royburns]

PayPal's page for compatible carts is very old and outdated. There are quite a few links that are dead and they've been saying for months now that "they're working on it".

We looked at all the carts on that page (well at least the one's that we could find) and settled on one that, again, their link is broken. SurfShopCart has a PayPal version of their cart for a reasonable price that may suit your needs. We use the Pro version ourselves.

Hope that helps,
Roy

[Reflect]

I have used Store Front with and without Pay Pal. I also have used Ecommercetemplates cart with Pay Pal also.

The later was much easier to setup and had a good feature set. However it all comes down to what langauge you are comfortable with, what amount of traffic you get, and what level your budget is. If you could define those I think you will see what your choices are.

Take care,

Brian

[ecomnewbie]

Thanks for the information guys.