Simple Shopping Cart?

Hi All, also a newbie. Been reading through the posts &there's great information here.

I'm looking to add just a shopping cart/check out to an HTML website. Any recommendations?

I've looked at SiteLink, Miva, ShopSite, X-Cart, osCommerce, Zen Cart, Cube Cart, etc...but I don't need all the features they offer. I will only be selling 6 products and just need a way to accept orders & track customers (obviously) and would also like UPS/FedEx/USPS shipping rates and the ability to have shoppers register, but not have registration required to place an order.

Is there a stable, secure, simple solution for just adding the order & cart features to a website or do I need to go with a total package and just modify it as needed? I can handle HTML and some PHP/MySQL so modding isn't out of the questions, just prefer not to have to go that route if there is already a simple solution.

I would prefer to handle orders within my site, not have the user pop over to paypal or another payment gateway, if possible.

Thanks!

Obviously to be able to track orders, have shipping solutions and customer information a sql database would be necessary and a gateway like Pay Pal Pro or other merchant solution would be mandatory so processing can take place on your site. My suggestion would be to use one of the free cart systems like Cube Cart version 3, Zen or OSc and don't use the features you don't need. With all the features you say you need, you'll have to compromise.

Thanks for the reply!

I don't mind using any of these solutions, I'm just wondering if one stands out from the rest in simply adding a checkout option to an existing website, rather than having to redesign a bunch of pages. I know ShopSite offers the solution of simply dropping "buy now" and "check out" buttons to any site, but that application is a bit overkill (and expensive) for a handful of products.

Pa Pal and Google Checkout have Buy Buttons as well and with the Pro account, users can stay on your site. How you'll handle shipping rates and registration is another matter.

I don't know if you need this if you already have a website, but the simplest solution I have found, and probably the cheapest, is Econostores.

Take a look at http://www.scsystem.com

Easy to use software that will generate a nice html site. Not for everyone, but I like it. You can do everything on your local drive, preview the site and then do an ftp upload to your host. You don't have to be online to make your site.

Chris
http://hartmannbooks.com

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check them out! Actually starting to look into all-in-one ecom solutions for a client. Trying to research everything from a-z!

Looking through the features you ask for, I instantly remebered Avactis. You should check it out, too - it has a pleasant interface :) And if you already have a site, you can integrate Avactis right into it. You said you know PHP, so you must understand this: when you insert into a page <? NavigationBar(); ?>, it turns to a working one, and this way you can add other parts of the store, too. Very flexible.

I have worked with the different "Free" carts Zen Cart, osCommerce, CRE Loaded and such, we work with those if our clients desire but would rather us ASPDOTNET Store Front. Development time is cut in half!

Michael Covarrubias
CEO & Owner
iC Tek Solutions

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Originally Posted by outofhand

Thanks for the reply!

I don't mind using any of these solutions, I'm just wondering if one stands out from the rest in simply adding a checkout option to an existing website, rather than having to redesign a bunch of pages. I know ShopSite offers the solution of simply dropping "buy now" and "check out" buttons to any site, but that application is a bit overkill (and expensive) for a handful of products.

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Lots of choices here. Buy now buttons are available with Yahoo, Network solutions, CoreCommerce, maybe pinnacle cart and digishop.

There is a small shopping cart ("SunnyShop") offered on our SunnyScript website (@admin: hope that "ad" is okay, but the original poster requested recommendations; if it isn't, remove this part of my post). You may check it out, if you like.

Regarding open source shopping solutions, they can be quite powerful as long as you are willing to spend some time getting familiar with them and also are able to maintain them the long run (applying bug fixes, for example).

If you have no experience overall, I think alternatively one of the ready-to-use shopping cart providers could be a choice.

Personally I have heard good things about KingCart (http://www.kingcart.com), although their website looks a bit outdated (but this may say nothing about their quality of service). Anyway, most of such providers are offering free months or demo accounts, so you can give them a try first before signing a contract.