Due to the length of this thread, I've both closed comments on this thread and opened up a seperate forum so that discussion can continue. Shopping Cart specific forums are here. (I created a number of other forum topics close to my heart as well)

I've read this (brilliant!) thread and a thousand others and all I can find is e-commerce packages that DON'T allow more than one fulfillment warehouse -like Zen, here: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=593093

Has anybody found one that will allow orders (or parts thereof) to be sent to different agents depending on the content of the cart?

Keep up the good blogging!

I've heard too many times, OS commerce is a nightmare to configure just right, and get the template looking and functioning just the way you want.

I'm still trying to decide on a proper solution.

I did notice, someone made a comment that Cubecart 4.0 can't function without javascript/ cookies. I would hope I could find a PHP based cart that does not require any of this to function. At least for me, forcing customer registration is a major issue as well. Some customers just don't want to register and you will lose them if you try to force it. I noticed Zen Cart by default forces registration, and requires an edit or a module to allow this.

I want a sharp, cutting edge look to my store, and I'm going to have probably 10,000 to 50,000+ SKUs.

I need an admin panel that will let me edit a few hundred prices at a time by category/ subcategory.

I'm willing to pay more for a superior solution; however, (as ironic as it may seem) some of the most superior solutions are not expensive at all. (e.g. Pinnacle doesn't seem superior at all-yet they demand a much higher price than cubecart, cs-cart, or squirrelcart.

I'm still debating which cart is best for my situation.
1-CS-Cart $265
2-eCommerceTemplates $150
3-Squirrelcart $115
4-Zen Cart (free)
5-Cube Cart 4 $179

For me theres a few critical concerns, and I'm not sure if any single cart address all these well:
1-I need to manage thousands of SKUs and I want to be able to do quick price updates: The ability to make price changes on at least 50-100 items at once by category/ subcategory then update (I really don't want to be on a spreadsheet, I want to do it through an admin panel). I dont mind if the admin panel itself is sloppy, as long as it's easy to do updates.
2-order process management:
maybe this is just assumed, but having a good system that makes it easy to manage orders is important.
2-Easily customizable template: I want to make my template look exactly how I want, cutting edge, professional–so I can exert all my CSS/ HTML skills.
3-I think it's important for pages to validate/ be W3C compliant… I know this effects SEO ranking of pages
4-SEO friendly URLS are critical (one reason I love wordpress)
5-built in anti fraud measures would be nice (CRE loaded had a nice module for this–too bad the software was just too sloppy for me/ not user oriented enough). e.g. an automatic link to a service like 'maxmind' anti-fraud. any good system will log user IPs as well, for anti-fraud purposes. the particular industry the site will be built for is prone to fraud, so anti-fraud/ order screening measures must be taken…
6-decent security: I don't want a cart that fails to quickly patch much needed security updates
7-upgrades/ updates: i want a cart, which can be updated without bringing the store down for an extended period of time & without requiring tons of re-working/ rebuilding (some carts require the store to be re-built just to get the latest update).

I've noticed no one else has mentioned anti-fraud measures on this blog, which is fine. Perhaps you're lucky enough to never see fraud, or manage this issue.

Anyway, for someone like me, with a 'big' store, quick, easy price updates are critical. I like to price things myself at times & not always just have employees do it… But I can't commit to spend a few days a month changing 1 price at a time on 1,000's of SKUs. I really only have a few hours a month for this.

Jennifer I'm glad you finally came round to CubeCart (v4), it's my personal favourite right now. And you found the contShop=true parameter for going back to a *full* cart rather than an empty one, good. Just a little more PHP probing and you'd find out how to avoid the orders from building up in the customer's order history with 'payment pending' status. But let's stick to comparing and choosing a cart.

One thing this post has revealed for sure, there are many options available and nothing is perfect. The key is getting the right solution for you personally.

If you are looking to sell on the net and want everything free to set up and working smoothly but are inexperienced then please just bite that 3% (typical sales commission for hosted solution) bullet and go for a good hosted solution such as Shopify. Other options might include Big Cartel (good but it's for only for creative types) and Moonfruit, although from what I've heard from friends, the latter is far from ideal although it does allow for flash. Why not just add some PayPal buttons to a plain html site to get started?

If you want everything to be free and to run smoothly and have lots of features and you want to run (set up, host, customise, test, fix, maintain, develop) a website yourself because the hosted cart commission or designer-developer fee is too much. Then be prepared to spend months if not years banging your head against the wall / desk / monitor. Be ready to say goodbye to any hope of a social life, to lose your family and friends and to become a proper blind, RSI-suffering geek in the process. Even after all that you'll probably still find that every tenth customer can't order for some mysterious reason.

If however you have planned your new business well, saved some cash for the big push and are ready for some proper e-commerce action with the help of an experienced specialist then I definitely think CubeCart is a winner. Ok the checkout process is not ideal for everyone, since orders are created before the transaction is complete, but it can be easily customised (by a good developer) to be (in most cases) however you want it.

But like many of the good e-commerce platforms you need to have the proper skills to really make the thing sing for you.

I'm a front end developer so it for me CubeCart is an absolute cinch to 're-skin'. I code all my (clients') sites to XHTML strict standards and build my own DHTML features where necessary.

Yes the folks at CubeCart are very helpful and things do get fixed very quickly. The community forums are also very helpful.

Re-iterating; if you have little experience with coding (HTML & CSS) complex dynamic websites then you will always be stuck with something very close to the default look with virtually any packaged shopping cart.

If you are hiring a developer who knows what they are doing – check for a list of live websites by that developer – then when it comes to features I believe the 3rd party modification system for CubeCart is fantastic. Typically we're talking around $10 – $20 for fairly hefty pieces of functionality such as an extension to the shipping system that allows for any rule(s) you can imagine or a 'shop by brand' section.

Still with CubeCart, I find the PHP all very neat, tidy, sensible and easy to modify. The speed of the site is superb, especially when you un-include unused functionality, which is also incredibly easy.

There was mention of knowing what dynamic tags to use in the HTML templates – just check the php file of the same name within the includes folder. Ok not quite as good as a index sheet but hey, I'm sure that'll turn up in the community documentation at some point soon.

Magento, now there's a beast, a very beautiful beast, but will I make it through the maze? Let's say the jury is still out on that one as far as fully customised solutions are concerned. The potential is definitely there though for this to become the e-commerce staple.

Jshop, I tried this a while back and couldn't stand the code – messy, difficult to work with. Looking again at the current demo, I'm seeing a horribly busy site with divs, nested in divs, ad infinitum (almost). But at least it validates as XHTML transitional. It's been around a while and has had good reviews. Sorry I can't be more useful there.

In the past I have also tried osCommerce, Zen Cart and StoreSprite but didn't like any of them nearly as much as CubeCart. Either because the code code was heavy and complex, the style templates were not properly separated from the PHP code, the features were lacking or I simply didn't trust it or it seemed glitchy.

Pinnacle (I see Craig has been back again trying to save face but failing – Craig, if it's really as simple as putting up an index.html page up then surely a system as robust, feature-packed and pricey as Pinnacle would be able to cope with that?? But no, the administrator has to learn HTML. When it comes to talking about how Pinnacle might handle this feature it is by disabling the site completely. Oh dear. (May be take a look at how CubeCart handles this nicely via the admin)), partly from Craig's own responses here and also because the demo home page has 124 validation errors, is something I would not trust for a second, let alone pay $600? dollars for.

Viart, as for Pinnacle, is something I've not used and so cannot judge but when I go to the demo and click on any category I get a blank page. Poof! there goes my faith in that one.

I realise I have not really catered for those who have some HTML & CSS experience, and a fair idea of working with MySQL databases and PHP but are still pretty green. I guess I would still recommend CubeCart just don't set your sights too high straight away. It's a good package to learn on because it is coded with clarity.

Lastly, when it comes to the decision between free open source (eg. osCommerce) packages or community driven, centrally managed and licensed software (eg. CubeCart), I will nearly always, go for the centrally managed solution because of the of support for and integrity of the product.

ok, here are a few sites I've built using CubeCart:
http://www.lenstore.co.uk (v4)
http://www.oyster-pearl-jewellery.co.uk (v4)
http://www.boejumpsuits.co.uk (v3)
http://www.shankari.co.uk (v3)

I'm the product manager here at Pinnacle Cart. I wanted to comment on your post as it may help others who use the cart or any cart for that matter. You are correct, at this time we don't have a global "disable" feature on the cart as we don't believe this is the best way to temporarily shut down the application. Doing so may risk search engine positioning and back links to your site. My recommendation is simply put up an index.html page stating the cart is temporarily not taking orders, hide your payment methods and post a comment on the site, all of which can be done very easily from the admin area. This way you can maintain your existing links without losing valuable positioning.

Every feature we add into the cart comes from your valuable feedback and if there is something we can add or make better, please let us know and we will work to get it in.

As far as not getting e-mail through the cart, I would suggest contacting us directly so we make sure everything is set up correctly and you’re getting all the orders placed on the site.

Pinnacle cart may be all that, but what good is it, if you are not able to disable your cart when you are on vacation. After spending $600 for a license, I should not have to spend hundreds more to have this simple function programmed into the software.

I mean, rent a shop, but the landlord won't let you have a door to it. Duh!

Sunshop is far ahead of Pinnacle cart in many senses, wish list (pinnacle cart just released a new version with this in it), gift registry, can close your shop when you wish etc., however I personally had easier time skinning Pinnacle Cart.

I dislike using Ioncube – orders mysteriously vanish from Pinnacle Cart here and there, there is no way you can re-email yourself a copy of the order when the cart fails to e-mail it to you. I was not able to get updates via the cart had to manually try, which did not work. Admin section really needs work, my Authorize.net key code is not encrypted when entered. Most other carts I used always encrypt this! So, for $600, I got a so so cart, sure it is better than some, but if I had known what I know now, I'd just get two licenses for Sunshop, much cheaper and it works.

I am going to probably try to sell my Pinnacle Cart license (if that is possible) and just get another Sunshop.

Very frustrating learning new software only to find out something as simple as being able to disable the cart when in need is not even implemented in it.

Hope this helps someone like me.

Kay

Anyway, as a designer/developer myself, i disagree with john patrick. I understand his position, but $600 for a good (note! GOOD) shopping cart is worth well it's money. You have to understand in 80% on the online business there's already a succesful company with plenty of money. Now, having a solid and reliable base is something most companies are willing to pay for.

It doesn't mean, the more expensive the better, ofcourse not. You must be mad to pay for something that's even worse than another system half the price, or free even.

Anyway, to come back on webshops. I'm about to finish my first Cube Cart webshop. I must admit, it's a solid and good featured package. Not everything is great, but it did have the best match with the requirements of my client. That's always my point of view. What does my client want/need and select a package that suits that need.

I still think Cube could win more souls if their backend was a little better designed and better structured. Especially the backend code is a mess and not easy to work with.

I want to invest my time in getting to know Magento. I believe it's very clean and solid built. I think this might become THE shop for the future, and it's free

It's the first time in a long time i've heard a good experience with Pineaple Shop. I found the support/service (a year ago) very poor which made me choose other packages. Might be something to try again … because i really liked the visuals and clean structure of the shop.