Best of Free Carts

Based on requirements, any good contenders?

[mida68]

Hello, I've been a long time user of Lite Commerce and now X-Cart. We tried PDG Commerce a few times as well as Magento. I can't seem to find a cart that is feature-rich yet easy to template and easy for the client to manage.

My main requirements:
- Decent code, easy to template
- Easy for client's to manage products (X-Cart is good for this Magento is not - too cumbersome)
- WYSIWYG editor for static areas of pages and static pages would be great
- Feature rich: Sale prices, coupons, shipping integration, gift registry, lots of supported gateways, image zoom features, ability to add multiple groups of categories (not just sub-categories)

X-Cart and Lite Commerce are nice but can get pricey with all the add-ons that one needs to purchase to make it feature rich.

Magento was a pleasure to code but SLOW and hard to manage for the client.

What about:
Zen Cart
Cube Cart
OSC (I hear the code is horrible)
Volusion (should I consider it even though it's not free - let the client pay hosting and we would template it?)
Any other decent carts?

[thetmz]

What do you mean by decent cart?

None of the carts is great unless you customize it. I have used and still using Zen cart for many online shops, but it's only the core of Zen Cart if you look at it that way.

[edited by: lorax at 5:10 pm (utc) on Nov. 12, 2008]

[mida68]

I guess by decent code I meant it's not a nightmare to work with - I've heard some comments that OSC is horrible, just trying to get a few opinions to consider....

[simonuk]

Used a number of carts over the last 10 years and Zencart is by far the easiest to setup and customise. I currently have 5 running zencart, 2 running xcart and 2 running OS. Zencart gets 10/10 from me.

[madk]

Don't even look at OSCommerce. Zencart all the way.

[pbradish]

Zencart. But If I could - I'd advise you against the free carts. Typically, you get what you pay for.

I had high hopes for Magento (smaller side projects)... but still haven't tested it out.

[Essex_boy]

Isnt ZEN cart a clone of OSC ?

[enigma1]

Isnt ZEN cart a clone of OSC

yes it is.

As mentioned no matter what cart you use you have to customize it. The good thing with the popular open source carts is that many developers are involved for various plugins which a merchant could utilize for his store or easily find someone who can do the job for him.

In any case horrible coding or not, is maybe irrelevant (unless you're a programmer/developer and even so is subjective) as the objective of an e-commerce store is to create sales for the products carried.

[D_Blackwell]

I'm a big fan of Mal's, and I wouldn't allow a client to use the free version. It's too good for a small to mid-size business that wants something bulletproof, and I don't want a client so cheap that they won't pop for the paid version. It's such a bargain that it is not optional. Required.

Zencart is good. Don't use it on my own sites, but have set up a couple of times for others for the experience of playing with it.

osCommerce is way too much trouble for what you describe.

[mvander]

Cube Cart 4 comes pretty close to your list

It is very easy to manage, has WYSIWYG for products and pages. It is almost all template based layout.
Has different gateways, google checkout, paypal, USPS api integration, etc.. and fairly cheap

It does not have an image zoom, or a gift registry, but they can be purchased by 3rd party coders as "mods".