scriptygoddess

258 Responses to “Cube Cart vs. Zen Cart”

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   Tony Miceli:
   December 30th, 2006 at 8:41 pm

   i'm struggling with a store. had the os commerce up and that was a drag. my site was hacked into. i'm sure it was my old version of phbb but i wasn't sure so everything came down. i'm dying for a good store. i'd pay money for the software as long as it did what i wanted and let me change easily what i wanted to change.

   man i'm going to keep an eye on your post to see what you find. you know more about all this than me!!!

   thanks for your blog!

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   fatmanslimming:
   January 5th, 2007 at 6:57 am

   I have played with Zen cart, cube cart, and oscommerce and finally settled with the blank template from ecommercetemplates.com, its css driven. has a nice hackable php/sql backbone and is cheap at $120.

   Have a search around there forums and developers and see if it meets your needs.

   keep up the great blogging!

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   Kevin:
   January 5th, 2007 at 4:48 pm

   I've used oscommerce and x-cart. Both are a nightmare, but x-cart is by far the most difficult to figure out. The smarty templating system seems to have been a bit overused. There's just way to may included files for each page. Some have 20 or 30 included files. Figuring out which one you need is a real pain. It can take hours to make small changes. Oscommerce was easier and didn't cost anything. Still, not so happy with either. I'm going to take a look at your list.

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   AjnabiZ:
   January 6th, 2007 at 6:21 am

   Hi

   I am using Oscommerce for the moment.
   Everytime, i decide to use Zencart, i drop it because they dont have a payment module for 2Checkout.

   And the one from the contributions does not work properly.

   I think the only solution left would be to go for http://www.1shoppingcart.com

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   Tony Miceli:
   January 6th, 2007 at 8:10 am

   i'm afriad to use open source php apps. i love php but after a horrible experience with phpbb i'm nervous.

   1shoppingcart.com looks really good. i saw http://www.king-cart.com/. i like it because if i didn't sell anything for the month i didn't pay anything. then the monthly fee was 10 bucks.

   if anybody checks it out, i'd curious to see what you think. i'm not too experienced here and would love to pro opinions!

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   AjnabiZ:
   January 6th, 2007 at 10:15 am

   Hi

   There is also one more which practically outweighs all the other shopping carts. But the only problem is the Hefty Price they charge $1599/YR.

   They have compared their cart with others.
   http://www.goecart.com/shopping_cart_software_comparison.asp

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   Lana:
   January 8th, 2007 at 12:37 pm

   Hi,

   I'm X-Cart sales manager, and I'm sorry to read that there are some IonCube issues on your webserver. Let me give a piece of advise how to fix it:

   1. Create text file in your web directory named test.php
   2. Fill the file with the following text

   3. Open the file in your browser by typing the URL like http:///test.php
   4. Find line starting with safe_mode and make sure it is Off
   5. Find line starting with enable_dl and make sure it is On
   If the variables not set the required values, please consult with your sysem administrator about how to alter this.

   If everything is fine
   6. Open in your browser URL like http:////ioncube/ioncube-install-assistant.php and read the instructions shown.
   7. Find line starting with "Configuration File (php.ini) Path" and edit the file specified on the right: add to the top of this file the line specifyed by the script (i.e. /ioncube/ioncube-install-assistant.php).
   8. Restart your web server. After this things should work fine.

   If this doesn't help, you can apply for my further help. Our pre-sale help is free of charge, of course. Together we can solve this problem and you'll test X-Cart then.

   I hope to hear from you again soon.

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   Shirley:
   January 9th, 2007 at 11:29 am

   We use http://www.storesprite.com ecommerce which is really easy to customise and has a wicked control panel.

   No need to know php - just html.

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   FreeBigBoy2007:
   January 11th, 2007 at 12:56 pm

   Hi,

   I've used Avactis Shopping Cart to develop my store for selling jewellery. And as I found Avactis (http://www.avactis.com) is very easy for the design customization. And I like their backend. Earlier I tried to use OSCommerce but it requires PHP skills for the design customization. With Avactis I had no problems with design even with my basic skills in HTML and CSS.

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    AjnabiZ:
    January 11th, 2007 at 4:47 pm

    Hi

    I have found a site which has reviews of all the famous shopping carts and they have a forum as well.

    http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/all-shopping-carts.aspx

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    marvin:
    January 12th, 2007 at 11:37 am

    check out http://www.phpcart.net

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    AjnabiZ:
    January 14th, 2007 at 9:14 am

    I think the two good shopping carts are cs-cart.com and zencart.com.

    The problem with zencart is that they dont support 2Checkout.

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    cploonker:
    January 14th, 2007 at 6:23 pm

    Here are my 2 cents based upon my research.
    Shopping Carts

    * http://www.squirrelcart.com
    o No latest products in the center of the page
    o No support for multi-currency
    o Different hierarchical view for Category/products editing.
    o Only cart which has a server license. $1000 we can have infinite stores on a single server.
    o Very intuitive interface especially for admin
    o Very simple code and good design
    o Can easily be maintained with single copy of store.
    o Support unregistered purchase
    * http://www.cubecart.com/
    o WILL BECOME PAID SHOPPING CART FROM V3.1.0 EXPECTED IN 2007
    o No breadcrumb navigation
    o No advanced search. ie. Search within a category
    o No latest products in the centre of the page
    o No hierarchical view for Category/products editing.
    o Specifying the order of category list not allowed
    o Smarty template
    o Googlebase feed available
    o Search stats
    o Various admin permissions
    o Multi-currency
    o Support unregistered purchase
    * http://www.creloaded.com/
    o No latest products in the center of the page
    o Multi-currency
    o Support unregistered purchase
    * http://www.zencart.com/
    o Template folder is spread out in various directories of the store.
    o Does not support unregistered purchase
    o unregistered purchase will have to be developed
    o Much better help and guide than CREloaded
    o Simpler than CRELoaded but not as simple as we want it to be.
    o Categorywise latest product in the centre of the page.
    o Multi-currency

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    marvin:
    January 14th, 2007 at 8:30 pm

    Again,

    i say look at http://www.phpcart.net. Like you I looked at a MILLION carts. All the ones you mentioned and more. They all suck!! I haven't purchased it yet, but it appears to be very simple to use and easy to customize. it basically just a cart and an order backend. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, like cross-sell and stuff, but a CMS like Expression Engine can handle all of that. It works with authorize.net and a number of other gateways. I'll be very interested in finding out how you feel about the cart. I sell soft products —i.e. whitepapers, reports; so I'm very interested in their download manager. Also look at http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/. I can't remember why I decided not to use them, but everyone I emailed from their community really liked it. Please continue to keep us informed of your search.

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    AjnabiZ:
    January 15th, 2007 at 2:36 am

    Check the Feature Comparison between Squirrel Cart, Zencart and CubeCart.

    http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/compare/Cubecart-and-Squirrel-Cart-and-Zen-Cart.aspx

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    AjnabiZ:
    January 15th, 2007 at 2:38 am

    Squirrel Cart certainly lacks many features which are not present in Zencart or even CubeCart.

    But the good one i think is http://www.pinnaclecart.com/

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    DianeV:
    January 16th, 2007 at 4:29 am

    Hi, ScriptyGoddess.

    I wanted to say that, for the most part, I do really like Sunshop (which one must pay for; it's not free).

    That said, Sunshop 4 is in beta testing (beta 2), and I believe is implementing a huge number of elements and changes requested by customers (among them, me) — including securing the complete login/checkout process. I've taken a (brief) look at the beta files and was delighted to discover that they've implemented the ability to edit-and-FTP templates (like WordPress does) and you can still edit templates through the admin section (I dislike having to click through a control panel to update templates). And, from what I saw of the templates, it's pretty much all tableless CSS. Plus, if you don't need the currency conversion or the mini what's-in-your-shopping-cart thingy, Sunshop can convert .php pages to static HTML files (this isn't a new feature). I'm really looking forward to it.

    To be honest, we've done a bit of customization on Sunshop here and there, where clients needed something not immediately included in Sunshop. That said, most of the features I'd need seem to be included in Sunshop 4, so I'm happy. I'd had a fair bit of discussion with our programmer person; his take on it was that nothing's perfect, and that most software might have to be tweaked here and there, but that, of all, Sunshop had the best set of features that would work for us.

    Anyway … I wanted to say the above, since my review apparently put you off Sunshop. As well, I'm happy to have read what you had to say about other shopping carts — and I love that you appended your updates to the original post, rather than strewing them throughout the site.

    Thanks again.

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    DianeV:
    January 16th, 2007 at 4:30 am

    Oh — one more thing: it's Diane from developedtraffic.com, which I guess was not too clear!

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    Jennifer:
    January 16th, 2007 at 9:05 am

    Hi Diane,
    Yeah, I will probably look at Sunshop again should the need come up. There was something else I hadn't liked about them - but after all the carts I've tried, they've all started to blend together. Some of them I actually had to try twice because after dismissing one I couldn't remember why. LOL! In any case, I can't remember what the other issue was. But good to hear they are fixing the security issue! (That was probably a big reason I dismissed them before)

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    DianeV:
    January 16th, 2007 at 5:13 pm

    I know what you mean; at one point, I kept a list of shopping carts, and went through them one by one. Some got crossed off because they didn't have one thing or another — but, unfortunately, I didn't keep the list, nor the reasons I crossed them off.

    Not saying that one is "the best"; it's just that I'm looking for specific elements.

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    Rick:
    January 26th, 2007 at 9:52 pm

    I ran across this relatively fresh post while searching for a cart myself.

    LiteCommerce: I have it on another site. Somewhat difficult to fully customize and the support forums are worthless… but the direct company support has been top notch.

    CubeCart: I'm testing it now on my site –> the checkout process is HORRIBLE. It takes 8 cumbersome and confusing (even for me a bit and it's MY store!) steps for a new user to make a purchase. User registration is also required which I hate.

    Ideally, I would love to find a great cart with a single page or two-step checkout process. Something like http://www.volusion.com/one-page-checkout-benefits.asp but not in a hosted solution.

    Good luck. Hopefully I too will settle on a solution soon!

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    Frederik:
    January 27th, 2007 at 5:31 pm

    Give Quixpo (http://www.quixpo.com) a try, if you can find the time. There is an online demo available.

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    Chandraprakash Loonker:
    January 27th, 2007 at 7:44 pm

    I finally made my decision. I picked Zencart. I am using it to provide a hosted ecommerce solution to our customers.

    Reasons for selecting Zencart was feature rich as compared to cubecart and squirrelcart. Phenomenally better code quality than it's nearest competitor CRELoaded.

    Code quality rankings : Squirrelcart(best), cubecart, zencart, CRELoaded
    Features rankings : Zencart & CRELoaded tie(Very good), Cubecart & Squirrelcart tie

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    Doug:
    January 28th, 2007 at 8:46 am

    We have been using Litecommerce (from the same outfit as X-Cart) and been reasonably happy with it.

    So far I have not found anything about the interface that I could not somehow modify to suit my purpose. As someone mentioned above LiteCommerce (and, I believe, X-Cart) default to requiring that a customer register with the cart (i.e. set up an account) which a lot of customers balk at. But I was able to change this to allow customers to buy without registering.

    My main issue with the LiteCommerce cart at present is that it doesn't produce W3C compliant HTML and it does not use mod-rewrite to produce search-engine-friendly URL's. In that respect CubeCart is already better (the current version is supposed to produce compliant XHTML) and the next 3.1 version is supposed to use mod-rewrite to be more search engine friendly. If anyone else is aware of a cart that currently uses mod-rewrite, I appreciate their posting the name and link.

    Currently LiteCommerce, and I am finding, most other carts rely on producing a parallel static html equivalent of every dynamic page in your shopping cart. This parallel site has to be rebuilt every time you change anything (new product, changing prices, etc.) and seems amazingly clumsy and inelegant.

    Particularly as a lot of other PHP app's have long since added mod-rewrite type links (e.g. Word Press, Menalto Gallery2, etc.).

    Thanks for starting this blog posting. There are obviously a lot of us out here with the same problems.

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    DianeV:
    January 28th, 2007 at 10:25 am

    That's good data, Doug.

    With respect to shopping carts converting .php pages to static HTML, this can be a good thing *if* you don't add products on an ongoing basis (which means the server doesn't need to pull from the database), and *if* you don't need ancillary functionality, such as those little "you have 1 item in your shopping cart" things.

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    Andy:
    January 30th, 2007 at 8:38 am

    I am developer and have experience with a lot of shopping carts. Personally I would recommend LiteCommerce because it is very easy to use and you can purchase as much functionality as you need. Also a lot of my clients does not have any programming experience and prefer to edit templates with some Design software like Dreamwaver or FrontPage.

    So LiteCommerce will be the best solution for small and medium-size projects.

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    Craig:
    January 30th, 2007 at 5:40 pm

    I'm the product development manager at http://www.pinnaclecart.com. I invite all of you to take a look at our product. It's very easy to customize, supports all major gateways, source code is available. To address some specific concerns I see on this board:

    Our cart is built on a template system that allows you to completely manage the look and feel of the site without HTML, but if you want to get a unique look and feel, you can get into the HTML code you will find it very easy to change.

    Our cart does use mod-rewrite to produce SE friendly URL's and ranks very well.

    We are going to be launching a "true" one-page checkout within the next couple of weeks, it will be the fastest possible checkout process on any cart.

    The cart is developed using PHP / mySQL.. The code is well laid out, and easy to understand and modify.

    We have both ioncube and Zend available.

    Our cart have one of the easiest to use admin areas of any cart in the market. I invite everyone to take a look at our demo.

    We support multi- currency, multi-language.

    While we do have a few add-ons to the cart that have been developed by third-party developers, we try to integrate most features into the cart itself.

    Froogle, Shopzilla, Bizrate, Shop.com, Google site map feeds are all part of the core product, no add-ons needed.

    Needless to say, we have much, much more to offer.

    There are many great carts out there, I recommend doing your homework and make sure you compare solutions before you make a decision. If you have any questions regarding our product, I welcome anyone to call our toll-free number and we would be more than happy to assist.

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    Andrew Migliore:
    February 3rd, 2007 at 9:17 am

    I have used Zen Cart and OS Commerce. I believe Zen Cart to be much better and actively worked on. With 1.3.7 theyhave PayPal express checkout which is nice. The code is not perfect for example adding third party modules is very clunky but they have a way of adding things in extra folders that allow you to add menus etc. without changing the main code.

    The templating system is not perfect but all of the css, images, and English text definitions can be overridden fairly easily.

    When I am creating a new template I do the following in the root directory of Zen Cart installation (example is unix shell Linux or Mac OS X):

    for i in `find . -name classic -print`; do
    dirpath=`dirname $i`;
    cp -r $i my_new_template_name
    done

    Then I do:

    find . -name my_new_template_name -print

    find all the directory that have overrides and start making changes.

    See http://www.arkhambazaar.com for an example.

    Hope that helps.

    cheers

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    AjnabiZ:
    February 4th, 2007 at 3:42 am

    Hi

    I really liked PinnacleCart from the rest, it does have features which others cant even come near but the only let down for me was the Price Tag.

    $597.00 One-time license fee

    While the other carts range under $200

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    Alon:
    February 4th, 2007 at 3:44 pm

    Hi,

    Excellent Blog!

    Im facing the same and another problem regarding the carts, as im also looking for the ultimate customizable cart, but it seems that WE need to be more flexible then what the cart developers promise by saying `fully customizable` etc..

    Does anyone up here, thought about the carts sql exported databases? the reason im bringing this isssue its because i found out that it will not be so easy to move a `house` without concidering all the info(products) you uploaded to the cart which probably takes ages!

    For example, imported databases of x-cart will not work with zen cart or osCommerce or creloaded or vise versa, so what you do for example if you got around 1000 products of database include pix, images, categories etc? and just want to move a cart?

    For me the store front is very important, so lets say that i got a site already with around 1000 products(cre loaded), all is set up, but im not satisfied with the storefront or cart, and really want to try some other cart that ill be able to customize easily, how ill take all the info (database) and connect it with the new cart i wanna try or like?

    Sounds pretty easy, well its NOT, you should concider twice as much before you even starting to upload products into the cart and play with the skins, as it will NOT be so easy to move a cart.

    If you got comments regarding this issue, i will be more then happy to hear, as im really looking for the right solution.

    Cheers
    Alon

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    DianeV:
    February 5th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    You have a point, Alon.

    There's a difference between just moving a website with a shopping cart, and switching to a new shopping cart, whether you move it or not. But you're right — there may be some issues to take up if you are switching carts.

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    KiddChaos:
    February 5th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    http://www.phpshop.org/
    Works, and is free. Uses Php4 and Mysql.
    I can't say I like the look of it.

    Things I had to do with it.
    Customer shipping changes.
    Some tweaks in setup needed.
    Authorize.net, got it to work. (See their aim guide).

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    Ben Moffett:
    February 8th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    I have had pretty good success with Cube Cart in the Past. I am definately going to check out the Squirrel Cart.
    I noticed some of you were looking for definations for the CSS on Cube Cart. Here they are. It took me some time to find them….
    .searchBtn — The "GO" button for your search box.
    .searchBox — box that you write in for search
    .textbox– The number that shows up in the quantity box from the view cart page
    .submit — The "Join Now" button for mailing list, and the "Add" button for adding product codes to shopping cart.
    li.bullet– little bullets that show up for the catagories
    li.bulletLrg — bullet for "tell a friend"
    li.num — numbers for products in sale and popular products
    .txtSession — text for "Search for" "Welcome Guest" and brackets
    .txtCopy– text in info box "products 2, catagories 1, prices: US dollars"
    .txtSiteDocs– text "subscribe to our mailing list" and "Email"
    a.txtSession, a.txtSiteDocs– "Login" and "Register"
    a.txtSession:hover, a.txtSiteDocs:hover– mouse over for "Login" and "Register"
    a.txtButton– "add to basket" button on product pages, and "buy" and "More" butttons on Catagory pages
    a.txtButton:hover– rollover for "add to basket" button on product pages, and "buy" and "More" butttons on Catagory pages
    .txtOldPrice– This is the price which by default appears with a line struck through when the item is on sale.
    .txtSale– Price that shows on Catagory Page and product page
    .txtOutOfStock– Text that tells a product is out of stock.
    .txtSiteDocs, a.txtSiteDocs — links at bottom of page"about us, contact us . . ."
    a.txtSiteDocs:hover– rollover for links at bottom of page"about us, contact us . . ."
    a.txtDefault– text for categories box "Homepage, sale items", text for products names in Popular Products box and Sale Items box
    a.txtDefault:hover, a.txtLink:hover, a.txtLocation:hover — rollover text for categories box "Homepage, sale items", text for products names in Popular Products box and Sale Items box
    .txtContentTitle– Main Titles like "Welcome to Cube Cart" and Catagory Titles
    .txtBoxSave– color of the text in the Sale box that says how much they save
    .tblList– main area on catagory pages where the list of products is
    .tdListTitle– text inside the main area "Image Description Price"
    .tdEven– background color for the first product listed then every other one
    .tdOdd– background color for the second product listed then every other one
    .txtCartPrice– text for dollar amounts that show up in cart box on homepage- per item, items in cart and total prices-
    .txtCart — Text "items in cart" and "Total" in cart box on homepage
    .cartTotal– included dashed line that appears in cart box on homepage
    a.txtCartProduct:active, a.txtCartProduct:link, a.txtCartProduct:visited– text for Products in cart box on home page
    a.txtCartProduct:hover– roll over for text for Products in cart box on home page
    a.txtviewCart:active, a.txtviewCart:link, a.txtviewCart:visited — text for "veiw basket" button in cart box on homepage
    a.txtviewCart:hover — roll over for text for "veiw basket" button in cart box on homepage
    .cartProgress — text inside cart that progresses as you go through check out "Cart— Address— Payment — Complete"
    .txtcartProgressCurrent — this is the text color that shows up for the page that you are on in the progression of the cart, for example when you are on the address page, address is this color and the rest are the color you specified for .cartProgress
    .quickBuy– Inside cart txt that asks " Want to add more items? Enter the Product Code:"
    .tdcartTitle — txt Inside Cart at the top "Qty, Product, Code, Stock, Price, Line Price"
    .tdcartEven– background color for second product inside cart and every other one
    .tdcartOdd — background color for the first product inside cart and every other one
    .tdCartSubTotal– includes line above subtotal
    a.txtCheckout– text and box for "continue" button on cart pages
    a.txtUpdate — text and box for "update cart" button on cart pages
    .txtStockWarn– text for when an item is out of stock
    .txtError — text for when someone messes up while filling out information during cart process
    .txtCopyright, a.txtCopyright — text for Copywrite info at bottom of page
    a.txtCopyright:hover– roll over for Copywrite info at bottom of page
    .dropDown– width of drop downs

    Layout.CSS for Classic Skin
    body — entire window attributes
    #pageSurround– large floating window inside window
    #topHeader– top section of page surround
    .boxTitleLeft, .boxTitleRight — top area of boxes in left and right columns where title appears
    .boxContentLeft, .boxContentRight– main area of boxes in left and right columns
    .colLeft — left column attributes or positioning
    .colMid — middle large column attributes or positioning
    .colRight– right column attributes or positioning
    .boxContent– middle columns box (where to change colors, background, borders, and some text)
    .colLeftCheckout — check out pages positioning for left column
    .colMainCheckout — checkout pages positioning for main column
    .siteDocs — positioning and attributes for box at bottom that contains "About Us | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions"
    .pagination — main large box on catagory pages
    .regSep– the "need to register?" box in checkout

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    Chad Crenshaw:
    February 12th, 2007 at 2:40 am

    I think you should stick with a single shopping for a job you set out to do. Changing them in the middle of a project definitely hurts your deadline severely. I researched thoroughly before choosing a cart. At first I wanted to use 1shoppingcart.com for several different reasons. I don't recall all of them right now, but the 30-day guarantee was enticing along with inherent support for a number of things (mainly comissions from any registered affiliates I might get along the way).
    I decided to go with Zen Cart because it's free (all the time) and open source (I wanted to support the open source community). I also liked the initial look enough to settle for it while I spent a couple of days making a template. Getting use to the way the Zen Cart is set up took a bit of research and work, but it was all worth it. It wasn't difficult at all; I mean it's made to be extended and personally I think the designers did a fairly good job given the complexity of all the logic that goes into it.
    I intend to try another shopping cart as soon as I'm completely satisfied with my current site enough to leave it alone for a few weeks. I would greatly appreciate it if you'd give my current site a look-over and tell me what you think: http://www.AudienceTechnologies.com. Other than the lack of products, I am satisfied with the site as a whole (look and feel included). But mine is just one opinion, and is likely biased.

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    Rudy:
    February 12th, 2007 at 5:42 am

    As an osCommerce nerd since many years I would always recommend to use osC but the learning curve is pretty steep. But maybe the concept of http://www.shopify.com is of interest for you. It's template-driven (very nice shops can be seen on their homepage), has many nice functions and an interesting pricing concept. You don't have to pay anything for the shop but they ask for 3% comission for things you sell.

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    Jennifer:
    February 12th, 2007 at 9:10 am

    Actually - when there are so many reasonably priced shopping carts out there, and many free ones too - I can't think of one client of mine that would be willing to pay a 3% commission fee on every sale to the shopping cart software. Next thing you know all our software will be requesting a cut of the money we make from using their product. I'm thinking they're marketing that more for the "I need to set up a cart for my own store but am completely clueless how to do it" crowd. (And with my clients - isn't that what they're paying me to do?) I don't think a 3% commission needs to be paid just to get a decent shopping cart package.

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    Doug:
    February 13th, 2007 at 7:59 am

    I don't happen to like the 3% charge per item sold model either, particularly has one is usually paying 2% to 5% for each credit card transaction. But the developers can charge whatever the market will bear. The 3% charge may work for some customers.

    In an earlier comment, someone was complaining about pinnaclecart costing $600 compared to $200 (or free) for some of the others. If pinnacle really does have things like XHMTL/W3C compliant page generation and mod_rewrite links then it may be worth 3x to the shop owner.

    The challenge for a lot of folks is to prove that they can sell enough through their online store to justify their effort and investment. We started out with LiteCommerce (total cost with modules, etc. was about $200 with a bid of configuration effort on top). If our online sales this year are high enough, I think switching to something like pinnaclecart for the $600 may be justified. I do think having W3C-compliant pages and mod_rewrite links are very helpful with the search engines.

    –Doug

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    Cliff Hirsch:
    February 20th, 2007 at 9:36 am

    I am going through the same exercise now. I have installed litecommerce and find modifying the templates to be fairly easy. But deciphering the code is impossible. I need to perform heavy customization and am very comfortable hacking PHP. But trying to understand someone elses code and thought process is maddening.

    Plus — a warning to those of you that like to debug — any cart/code that uses ioncube (like litecommerce and apparently X-cart according to the comments above) CAN NOT use Zend remote debugging, which I consider essential for fast PHP development.

    At this point, I'd take a simpler cart that has really well documented code, over a bloated impossible to understand cart. While complex plugin architectures and APIs are great for the core developers, for anyone else they just add confusion, unless that are well documented.

    Any thoughts on a cart with a solid core, and great code that can be easily modified?

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    Craig:
    February 20th, 2007 at 11:50 am

    Hello,

    Take a look at Pinnacle Cart. The code is very well laid out; we intentionally use only one developer on the main code base for this exact reason. You'll notice it's MUCH easier to understand.

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    40
    AjnabiZ:
    February 21st, 2007 at 2:57 am

    Pinnacle Cart is good but its price it too high.

    You can get other carts under $200.

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    41
    Cliff Hirsch:
    February 21st, 2007 at 7:22 am

    The price for any of these cars is trivial compared to the cost of custom programming. It's the total solution cost that is a killer, not just the cart. Factor in the hours required for skinning, custom coding, etc. and the $ add up quickly.

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    42
    Doug:
    February 21st, 2007 at 7:35 am

    In an sense, both Cliff and AjnabiZ are correct. If pinnacle has the features claimed then (having wrestled with the lower-priced LiteCommerce cart) the $600 pricetag isn't excessive.

    Equally well, for anyone just getting there feet wet with ecommerce and unsure whether there is a market for their products; $200 and some sweat equity is easier to justify than $600.. Especially when you are trusting that the cart is as good and easy to setup as is advertised *and* you are hoping that you will sell enough products to make it all work.

    The pinnaclecart product only comes with a 30 day money-back guarantee which doesn't really seem long enough particularly for someone building their first cart.

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    43
    Cliff Hirsch:
    February 22nd, 2007 at 7:12 am

    I am going to abandon litecommerce and will probably switch to cubecart or squirrelcart. Any thoughts from people in here regarding features of one versus the other, support, code quality, extensibility, etc?

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    44
    Patrick:
    February 22nd, 2007 at 4:01 pm

    use zen cart with ZenMagick : http://zenmagick.radebatz.net/

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    45
    Spark Digital:
    February 23rd, 2007 at 3:46 am

    Seems like we all go through the same process! I have created websites using the following:

    eCommerceTemplates: easy to redesign but if you want to redesign the table structure of the products and cats then you have to do this deep within the php files - not great. This is also the case with the CSS version (it has tables!) so I moved on after doing one site.

    Then I moved to CubCart which I do like but the CSS is quite heavy and redesigning from scratch can be hard work. I might be easier to use one of the templates as a base and design from there.

    For a really easy CSS shopping cart you might want to try Quickcart from http://www.opensolution.org.

    I'm now looking at http://www.tradingeye.com which I think is beautiful and just about affordable but it won't run on my Zeus server so some mod is neccesary if you don't use Apache with mod rewrite.

    So I might look at some of your great suggestions too!

    Thanks,

    Konrad

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    46
    Mark Edmondson:
    April 4th, 2007 at 11:58 am

    It sounds like you need personal help and support which is something that the larger commercial (or free open source) carts don't provide.

    I've been working with my shopping cart application for several years now, providing one on one support with all clients from installation, customization and additional features, it's just proving terribly difficult to drag people away from the big horrible existing carts!

    Anyway, check us out next time!

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    47
    Dan:
    April 19th, 2007 at 8:31 am

    I set up Zen cart for my new web company 1 year ago. It took me 3 months of tweaking and adding my own CSS classes but the result is I now have a template which is so flexible I can make it look exactly the way I want. I created a guide whilst I did it showing exactly what style and what PHP file does what so I will never forget.

    I can now rattle out professional shopping carts at super fast speed.

    In my view, Zen Cart is definitely the best mainly because of all the information and tutorials available.

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    48
    Ed Maurina:
    April 19th, 2007 at 9:14 pm

    First, I want to say thanks for posting this blog and eanabling all these great responses.

    I'll keep this short, since i'm looking for help. I need to find an ecommerce solution that can do all of the following:
    - handle digitial content
    - provide download link security (time based expire, or other)
    - enable user accounts such that users can log in and re-download their content at a later date (downlods may be limitted to n-downloads, or non-expiring.)
    - Handle multiple currencies (I have a large non-US customer base).

    So, if anyone reading this has suggestions I'm very open to them. In fact, I'm hoping that someone out there has dealt with a similar requirements list.

    Thanks again!

    Ed M.

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    49
    Doug:
    April 20th, 2007 at 5:23 am

    I don't sell digital content but I do *buy* software online and I have noticed two ecommerce solutions that folks are using:

    If you haven't already, check out kagi.com and esellerate.net

    I have purchased and downloaded software using both and they seemed well designed and easy to use.

    –Doug

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    50
    valerie:
    April 20th, 2007 at 6:31 am

    I ended up going with Sunshop - before the recent price-hike - for my site and then again for a friend's site I'm doing. It is a little much to style (I'm running 3.5.1 or whatever it is, not the new betas) but only, I think, because it's done in an unconventional way. It's one big template file and you can either do each little piece in the admin panel or do the whole thing on your site and upload it when you're ready. But once I got the hang of a few things, it wasn't too bad. That would - so far - be my only complaint about the program, besides price. I have a third site I would love to use it on, but the girl I'm doing the site for is just starting out and cannot afford that at all.

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    51
    DianeV:
    April 20th, 2007 at 6:58 am

    I know what you mean about the Sunshop templates; I've felt the same way.

    I also pestered TurnkeyWebTools about it, particularly in one long, elegant plea in their forums where I suggested that clicking around in the Templates area of the admin panel wasn't the best use of anyone's time — and suggested that they look at the way WordPress treats templates — a folder of files that you edit and FTP onto the server (no clicking through any admin panels). So, from what I can tell from inspecting the files in Sunshop 4 (which is currently out of beta and into the Release Candidates), they've done just that.

    They've also addressed a long list of customer "wishes", so it's looking pretty good — including the fact that it's gone to (mostly) table-less CSS code. From what I understand, the Sunshop 4 upgrade function is also working now, although I'm not exactly looking forward to updating old templates to the new version (just like I had to take time to update old WordPress templates to the new templating thing in WordPress 1.5).

    Just to note: I have no interest in Sunshop other than as a designer/user, but if you want to see the Sunshop 4 demo, it's here (don't know how much they've updated it, though):
    turnkeywebtools.com/products.php?p=ss-shopping-cart-software&s=new

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    52
    Cliff:
    April 20th, 2007 at 7:16 am

    Sunshop: "Software with 98% open source code".

    I abandoned a cart — not Sunshop — after spending a lot of time and money that was also "98% open source code". Be careful when selected carts that encode source. I have nothing against companies that want to protect their IP — only natural. But encoders generally conflict with debuggers. So if you intend to heavily modify your cart and it uses something like the Ioncube encoder, you will not be able to use the Zend Studio server-side debugger, which I find invaluable.

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    53
    Alon:
    April 20th, 2007 at 7:51 am

    Hi,

    I have recently checked the official website of a brand im selling, and saw that they rebuild it. I was quite impressed from the results, and because they have their online store in it, i tried to look for traces of the cart they are using, you can check the site over here http://www.chammyz.com . and the cart they use is actually "Virtumart" which can be found here http://virtuemart.net .

    Its free, and if this is kind of results you can get, and it looks working with CSS, then it should be alright, i still didnt test it or review all of what it offering, but i will like to hear your comments regarding it.

    Cheers
    Alon

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    54
    DianeV:
    April 20th, 2007 at 8:02 am

    That is a good point, Cliff — and an issue we've run into before. Thanks.

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    55
    cploonker:
    April 20th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

    I see a lot of zen cart fans on this site. For those non-technical folks who want to use zen cart there is a hosted solution http://easystorehosting.com
    My top 3 favorite shopping carts are
    Pinnacle cart
    Zen cart
    Squirrel cart

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    56
    Bird Oasis:
    April 25th, 2007 at 12:19 pm

    I don't know how long it's been since this article has been written but Zen Cart 1.3.7 is not using table based templates. If you look at my site you'll see that it's all css.

    I feel that the author should at least update the story since it's incorrect and has actually just become a haven for people marketing other shopping carts and hosting programs.

    visit http://www.zencart.com and see for yourself. None of the other suggestions have a better community of support and users.

    John Patrick,
    http://www.birdoasis.com

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    57
    Jennifer:
    April 25th, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    John - the article was originally written in december of 2006 as is noted in the info box at the bottom of the article. I made a few updates during the time that I was making my decision as to what shopping cart I should use for a particular project. At that time, Zen Cart was still table based. I don't feel this has become a "haven for people marketing other shopping carts and hosting programs" - I am and still interested in alternatives. I tend not to drastically update existing articles, as this is a snapshot of what my review was at that time. Thank you for updating us that zen cart is now CSS based. I will have to take a look at it again… I am certainly open to the idea of writing a *new* article reviewing the latest version.

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    58
    Doug:
    April 25th, 2007 at 5:34 pm

    I second Jennifer's comments. If you look at the number of comments attached to this blog entry, you'll find that the entry has struck a chord with a lot of us who are trying to figure out which shopping carts to consider.

    It would have been helpful to point out that ZenCart has been upgraded to use CSS instead of tables. The criticism and the demand that the entry be rewritten seem unwarranted.

    If John is an expert on the latest version of ZenCart perhaps he will tell us whether ZenCart now supports mod_rewrite and SE-friendly URLs. And does it produce W3C compliant XHTML?

    I just ran a validation check against http://www.birdoasis.com and it didn't validate (64 errors), see:

    http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.birdoasis.com%2F

    I didn't check the errors in any detail… But some are clearly pilot error on John's part but some also appear to be invalid code being generated by zencart.

    –Doug

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    59
    valerie:
    April 29th, 2007 at 4:54 pm

    DianeV, thank you, it's good to know. I do a lot with WordPress, so I'm very comfortable with that type of thing. But I am not looking forward to upgrading the two sites either, ick.

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    60
    Andy:
    April 30th, 2007 at 4:25 am

    Hello all.

    Unfortunately most of free shopping carts have limited SEO capabilities "out-of-the-box". It takes considerable amount of time to get it to standard (imho).

    Among paid carts I would like to select X-Cart, because of clear XHTML Transitional compliant nesting. I am talking about 4.1.x branch.

    BTW, they have issued a new version.

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    61
    Cliff:
    April 30th, 2007 at 6:32 am

    X-Cart is what I finally ended up with. I think the code is really ugly. Not a class in sight. And clearly a lot of overhead associated with making it work on many version of PHP, shared hosting, different browsers etc. But it works and is very easy to hack. Unlike some solutions that have elegant code, but are impossible to understand.

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    62
    Luigi:
    May 1st, 2007 at 4:56 pm

    I'm considering X-Cart as a choice, but what concerns me most is the "security" side of the business.
    While most of you seem (reasonably) involved in the design issue, I'm instead trying to give more weight to the reliability of the code.
    I've read dreadful things about X-Cart on the internet: db problems, security holes,…
    Also, in their site there is no sign of patches, closed bugs,…

    By showing his wounds, a soldier also witnesses his strenght and survival skills.
    Internet is not a placid sea to navigate, and trusting a ship which has no history/experience of storms…
    Sadly, X-Cart site shows an immacolate picture of the cart, which is unbelievable.
    What is hidden behind the curtain? Is it really (why not) that trustable?
    Does anybody have something to suggest on the matter?

    By the way, X-Cart is 100% open-source (they encode just the trial version). And, Jennifer, they also offer a 30-day moneyback policy: just like you bought Squirrelcart…

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    63
    Cliff:
    May 1st, 2007 at 5:40 pm

    Unfortunately, you can't view the X-Cart forums until after you buy it. The forums are pretty active, albeit way more questions than answers. There are some pretty good security threads and I think the code is probably fairly well secured. Issues I've had so far: the session ID can be exposed in the URL. Code folders live below root, but they have pretty good .htaccess rules in place.

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    64
    Luigi:
    May 2nd, 2007 at 3:11 am

    One of the good points in X-Cart **could be** the rich features that are available in the core; I mean that the less you have to customize the core (and/or add modules), the easier it is to upgrade and/or apply security patches (which recalls my previous post…).

    Thoughts about it…?

    As for the modules/customizations being not cheap, I would suggest to give a look at things like http://www.scriptlance.com/
    Useful also for other carts, as well…
    

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    65
    AjnabiZ:
    May 2nd, 2007 at 6:53 pm

    I have tried many carts. I think the two which come out are cs-cart and pinnaclecart(too high price)

    Has anyone tried out cs-cart ?

    Zencart is plain useless for me since it does not support 2Checkout, the most famous 3rd party processor for INternational Merchants.

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    66
    Luigi:
    May 4th, 2007 at 1:55 pm

    CS-Cart now has SEO Urls and Mod_Rewrite.
    Thanks AjnabiZ for pointing to it…
    Looks quite interesting, overall…

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    67
    Cliff:
    May 4th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

    CS-Cart is really, really feature rich, and like X-Cart, it uses Smarty templates, which I love. It's like a well-designed, OOP version of X-Cart. I though it was pretty darn slick, but the issues I had were:

    1. I didn't need most of the features. If you do, it's a bargin.
    2. It is still fairly young and the forums are a bit thin, so you might be going it alone at times.
    3. It requires JavaScript. The AJAX features are cool, but I like a non-JS fallback.

    The CS-Cart people do seem responsive and custom mod pricing was very attractive.

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    68
    Jason Fuhrman:
    May 7th, 2007 at 10:37 pm

    I'm putting together a store for the first time and have been looking at many carts as well, but it's tough to pick as many have already stated.

    Has anyone used Cartweaver at all? I'm really looking for something that I can drop into my existing site rather than manipulating templates. It seems many of the cart programs out there rely on templates.

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    69
    Chris Williams:
    May 13th, 2007 at 7:02 pm

    X-Cart did a lot of really great things–things I looked for in a shopping solution, however managing a 70k+ items database isn't one of them. 40 seconds per page? The slowness in running general browsing forced me to modify the SQL used on some pages. Even then, between the over all slowness and the poor flexibility to work with existing tables proved fruitless.

    Ultimately, I use ShopScript plus supplementary pages written in lasso. I'd be interested in finding out about feature rich shopping solutions that manage large databases successfully.

    Still haven't found what I'm looking for.

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    70
    David:
    May 15th, 2007 at 6:20 am

    Do anyone know of a shopping cart solution that has some sort of product customization module?

    For example, if someone wanted to customize a computer?

    Any responses are very much appreciated!

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    71
    Andy:
    May 16th, 2007 at 7:20 am

    2Cliff: Are you kidding? X-cart code is not ideal (just because it is a commercial product not academical software) but it is far better then most others. X-cart code is divided into specialized modules which execute only when needed almost without redundancy.

    For comparison: CS-Cart have suspicious combination of OOP and plain code.

    Finally,about features, to my mind, Xcart is rapidly developing software and always provides latest features required for successful project. So I use X-cart as main solution for most projects.

    Hope this helps

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    72
    Lenny:
    May 16th, 2007 at 11:58 am

    I believe that any software seems to be quite 'perfect' at the beginning, however, later you may find some shortcomings.

    If to consider my experience, X-cart didn't disappoint me at all, it justified all my hopes, thus I can say that you can trust the company.

    Also, for Luigi, I would like to mention that they provide professional support service and help you without delays. When you become their customer, you can get all information about their patches/upgrade kits, etc (however, yes, this information is not displayed on their sitem but to my mind it is not a point for doubts).

    It's just my positive opinion I wanted to share with you.

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    73
    SmocknMama:
    May 16th, 2007 at 6:04 pm

    Just curious, and I realize your post was originally quite a while ago, but have you looked at ClickCartPro or Joomla CMS with its shopping cart addition? I like ClickCartPro alot and am very curious about the Joomla option as well for a full featured CMS.

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    Kit:
    May 20th, 2007 at 8:08 am

    I've used x-cart for years, and I'm completely fed up with it. So much so, I'm in the process of rolling my own for the day job. From getting credit cards stolen due to an extremely stupid vulnerability to an exceedingly slow and byzantine database structure to practically being forced to pay for the upgrade service they offer due to the many customizations I've created, we've run the gamut of issues with x-cart.

    That said, it was the best solution for us at the time when we started using it four years ago. It was easy enough to hack to make it do what we needed it to do — watermarking pdf sales online, for instance, but we've outgrown it. Hence rolling my own.

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    75
    Douglas:
    May 20th, 2007 at 1:07 pm

    This is a reply for David who was looking for a Cart with a customization module. Quite a few of the ones discussed here have them. If you do a google on "litecommerce product options" you will find a description of LiteCommerce's module. I am not in love with LiteCommerce but it works and, with the modules I have purchased, cost about $250.

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    76
    SmocknMama:
    May 20th, 2007 at 1:18 pm

    Also a reply for david who was looking for customizatin. SunShop will let you do that. I am currently using sunshop and like how it works, but it does not integrate well with Quickbooks so I am switching to ClickcartPro and I can everything with it that I could with Sunshop plus better integration with QuickBooks and PeachTree.

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    77
    Luigi:
    May 20th, 2007 at 3:24 pm

    Kit, thanks for your contribution.
    Just to try and bring this thread to the next level, are you willing/ready to share some of your knowledge (at your ow website, maybe)?
    I guess it would be most welcome and useful to the whole community, here and beyond.

    Could "rolling my own" also mean that you have some amount of code to share?
    And, when reporting "an exceedingly slow and byzantine database structure", do you also have more specific and in-depth comments and advices about the matter?

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    Jeff:
    May 20th, 2007 at 5:35 pm

    POP QUIZ ~

    You are a broke idiot still trying to earn more than .99 cents to cover your hosting account. You know that you will hafe to settle for a free shopping cart, but you want one that is not to difficult to switch in case things go wrong, and of course gives you the most control without having to spend to much of your family time trying to learn it.

    What would you choose?

    and do you mind if I ask whats wrong with OScommerce.

    Thanks

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    AjnabiZ:
    May 20th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

    Hello

    After having struggled with the question of which Cart to use.

    I am opting for CS-Cart, it has the most features and it has some very nice reviews. I have checked their forums and the team is very responsive.

    You might want to try it out

    http://www.cs-cart.com

    Their template system is based on Smarty.

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    80
    AjnabiZ:
    May 22nd, 2007 at 3:02 am

    Hello,

    To the Blog Owner, my post on Zencart's non-availability of 2Checkout module holds true till today.

    If you go and search on their forums, you will find 2checkout module problems. The only module which was released was by a third party and it was for a very old version of Zencart and the original author is not supporting any upgrade of it.

    So there is not 2Checkout Module which works with Present Zencart version. You can read all the horror stories with the 2checkout module, which is NOT released by Zencart Team. And for that matter, Zencart team was stated in the forums, that they will NOT create any official module for 2Checkout. They have a grudge against them.

    This made me go away from Zencart to CS-Cart.

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    81
    steve:
    May 23rd, 2007 at 9:48 am

    @jeff: What's wrong with osCommerce? Are you kidding? Has anybody ever had a pleasurable experience customizing OSC? I tend to avoid views showing nested tables, nested within other nested tables.

    Anyway, CS Cart does look appealing, and I have spent much time customizing Zen Cart. Once you get into it and fully understand its templating system, it's really not too difficult. There's a tool kit for developers in the admin area that allows one to search through all the source code files. This makes it a little easier to track down the code bit of interest. Still, though, it is based on OSC… which many may want to avoid.

    The biggest problem with many e-commerce scripts is due to their attempting to meet the needs of every store. A developer can easily end up spending way too much time trying to work around the script and fit her site into the script, rather than focusing on developing a quality, coherent site.

    There's no winning script, and there's no loser. Just make sure to use a script that fits your site; don't fit your site into a script.

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    valerie:
    May 23rd, 2007 at 9:57 am

    Whoops, in regard to my first comment where I said: "It’s one big template file and you can either do each little piece in the admin panel or do the whole thing on your site and upload it when you’re ready."

    I meant that you can do the whole thing on your computer and then upload it.

    Just needed to clarify there; if you get a chance, Jennifer, could you please edit the comment here and on your new cart post to reflect that change? I don't want to confuse anyone. Thanks!

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