free eCommerce with features

[Tabi]

I'm seeking an eCommerce solution with the following features:

• bulk load of products
  
• customizable product characteristics (color, ingredients, speed ranges and whatever else man can think of)
  

So far I've been studying ZenCart but it looks like to create customizable product characteristics requires advanced programming skills and I think is difficult to maintain during updates.

Having custom product characteristics is a must for me and I plan to add a lot of them for many product types. So before I continue with ZenCart I'd like to know if some other ecommerce has a more user friendly solution for this.

[Propools]

Tabi,
welcome to WebmasterWorld.
I'm not sure but you may want to try Google Checkout [checkout.google.com]

[Jon_King]

My newest open source ecomm love ... Prestashop. Simple and loads of features.

If you use Joomla you may want to peak at VirtueMart. Almost any product characteristic you would need.

[CraigatTrinity]

Without a doubt go with Magento. Need to have the code base optimized though to make sure speed is adaquate. Has built in modules for multivariate testing...

[edited by: lorax at 3:57 am (utc) on Aug 9, 2010]
[edit reason] no self promos please [/edit]

[morehawes]

Without a doubt go with Magento

I would be wary of Magento as an entry level cart. I have a long background in osCommerce and about a year ago I looked into Magento as a possible alternative. Things may have changed since then but I found it over complicated alot of things and was poorly supported. There are some great features but I think getting the most out of it would require a considerable time investment.

As your requirements seem pretty basic I would try a few out and see which suits. I came across jCart recently which was too basic for anything I needed but looked pretty neat and should fulfil your requirements. At the end of the day with so many options out there it is down to personal preference so fire up a LAMP on your computer and have a play!

[enigma1]

So far I've been studying ZenCart but it looks like to create customizable product characteristics requires advanced programming skills and I think is difficult to maintain during updates.

Depends what you're after. Do you want someone else to maintain the cart for you? If so you will have invest money for support either periodically or on demand. Otherwise you will need to invest time and effort to learn the basics at least of the cart. Sooner or later you will need to do changes to your site.

The thing is the more complex the cart is the harder for novices to jump-in and do even minor code modifications. And if you are a beginner and you want to learn, stay away from complex carts. The less code you need to go through, the better.

As far I know all the osCommerce derivatives including zen have contributions for bulk updates and custom fields for products in many different ways. If you can follow documentation instructions for plugins, updates, patches etc, you shouldn't have problems.