Alternative to Zencart?

[lookout]

Hi all, I am supposed to be launching my retail business online soon and the plan was to use zencart but I am not confident that software will fulfill my needs.

What other _good_ alternatives are out there? It doesn't have to be free, but I don't want to pay through my nose either. I don't want a hosted solution because I already have my hosting sorted out.

I was investigating xcart at one point. Are they any good?

I'm really disappointed because I thought that zencart was the way to go but it doesn't appear to be the case.

Thanks in advance.

[cinnamon9691]

Some good non-hosted shopping carts:

CS-Cart
Cube Cart
J-Shop
Avactis

The list could continue on for a pretty long time, but I'll stop there. I'd recommend testing out all these carts a little and making sure you get the one that will work best with your business.

Some general features that you might look for:

Ease of use -When you start spending hours of time using the admin panel this is important.
Import/Export features -Good to keep in mind if you plan on expanding your product database or moving away from the shopping cart in the future.
Support listens -This is important because you will have speed bumps with any solution. Also, this will impact how often updates are done and if your feature requests get developed and implemented into the software.

I hope this provides a little direction. Good luck finding your solution. When you do please come back and post how it's progressing.

[lookout]

Out of those, and from the little research I have done so far, CS Cart and Avactis appeal to me...

Thanks for the tips.

I gather Volusion is a hosted solution yes?

And what do people make of Magento? I didn't realise it was open source.

[roban]

I use Cs-cart and never heard of Magento but after visiting their site I am impressed. I have downloaded it.

[lookout]

I have read one bad thing about Magento and that is that it's not easy to customise the template/the look of the store. Apparently there are files in multiple locations that have to be edited -- xml files or something. Sounds tedious, if you ask me.

[cinnamon9691]

I've never worked with Magento myself, but I've heard what others in the field have said about it. Most agree that given a bit more time and work it will be a wonderful ecommerce tool, but currently it has problems. Some of the problems I've discussed with others include: extreme slowness unless loaded on a dedicated server, no digital delivery features, and the add to cart/checkout buttons won't work AT ALL with javascript disabled. I'd personally say give Magento a few more years to work out some major issues.

To answer your previous question yes, Volusion is a hosted ecommerce solution. Awhile ago you could buy their full source code, but I don't think that is an option for them anymore.

[roban]

I have an instance of this at www.vitaminlink.net/cart. It is not a very intuitive system. I will keep working at it but I agree with cinnamon. It is not ready for prime time IMO.

[lookout]

That was quick!

To be honest, I think CS Cart is the way to go for me. I researched all weekend and it seems to be an excellent offering. (IMO)

What exactly are smarty templates though? Should I be worried about them? Hehe. If I can customise zencart templates easily, will I be able to get my head around CS Cart templates?

[Lesya]

so many different opinions here. Really it's hard to advise something that will work efficiently for everybody. Among the most used now - X-Cart, Magento, Zen Cart. Cubecart proved to be not a bad choice either.

All i can say if you want to upgrade your current shopping cart to some better one you will need assistance. Just check cart2cart in google and your data will be moved safe.

[tyroneshum]

Hi Lookout,

Great question and I know a lot of people out there are either love or hate Zencart. I'm a user of Zencart and have stuck with it for almost 3 years now. Though from personal experience I have been looking around for a new platform and the one I recommend is Magento Commerce. The reason why I don't continue to recommend Zencart is because of it's lack of friendliness for upgrades and installs. You will definitely need to know a bit of PHP and MySQL to get the most out of it, which is why I guess you have asked the question in this forum.

Anyway if you want to read more about what I think about Magento, check out my biased review: http://www.internetbusinesspath.com/...ommerce-review. I know a lot of people has being saying it's new and it's slow, but I haven't had too many problems with it so far on the sites I've been running. I am gradually migrating my e-commerce websites to Magento Commerce and it has improved the site's look and feel. At the end of the day try something that is easy to use and will be professional to your customer.

Hope that helps.

[jacksan]

Now days Zeuscart is booming in eCommerce world. It's a great alternative of Zencart.

[eCommerceDude]

Well the top two for free open source shopping carts are
Prestashop.com and Magento.com

Magento is for professionals, really, it is complicated,bloated and crashes very easily
I use Prestashop and I love it, i have a couple site on the net using that and i teach people to use it very efficiently, every happy customers.

Good luck