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Power Your Store with Open-Source Shopping Carts

If you want to sell your own products or services online, then you will need a shopping cart program to facilitate those sales.  The number of available shopping carts is tremendous and even better, some of the best software is of an open-source variety and totally free to use.  Here are some of the most common open-source shopping carts you may encounter on the market.

PrestaShop

PrestaShop is a comprehensive, professional-grade shopping cart that is easy to use and setup.  The software offers a fully featured back-end interface to maintain your inventory, orders, shipping options and customers in real-time.  It is also highly customizable as you can incorporate your own modules.  PrestaShop keeps security in mind but securely transmitting customer payments directly to your bank account.

Magneto

Magneto is a robust e-commerce solution that offers unparalleled flexibility and control.  This software is so well designed and functional that you would never think it came from an open-source project.  Unlike other shopping carts, this one gives you clean URLs and SEO-friendliness right out the box, bypassing the need to make additional configurations.  Magneto has a scalable architecture and seamless integrate with various third-party applications.  Additionally, it gives you the benefit of both community and professional technical support.

CubeCart

CubeCart is one of the most popular shopping carts around.  Although it is free to download and use, you are forced to leave the developer’s copyright notice in your footer.  That disadvantage aside, CubeCart offers a plethora of features with support for most of the major gateways and shipping options.  The software comes with decent support from an active community that regularly contribute plugins to the cart.

Agora

Written in the Perl programming language and driven by a MySQL database, Agora is another popular choice for open-source shopping carts.  Very customizable, it features a built-in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) manager that lets you control the look of the shopping cart as well as setup options ranging from a simple template-based storefront to more complex visual designs.  Agora supports unlimited products, a wealth of shipping and payment options, up to four tax zones at once and much more.

Zen Cart

Zen Cart is a user-friendly shopping cart that caters to beginners.  This is one software that actually focuses on the shoppers and store owners opposed to developers.  Zen Cart is easy to use and supports multiple shipping and payment options.  It also allows you to easily provide discounts and coupons to your customers.

osCommerce

The wide variety of features in osCommerce enables you to set up an online store fairly quickly.  It supports multiple currencies and also lets your customers print their invoices directly from the order screen.  osCommerce gets the backing of a superb community who provide ongoing support and make contributions to the project.

These are just some of your choices for open-source shopping carts.  Rest assured, there are many more to choose from.  While you can probably pay for something better, numerous users are doing just fine running their store with these free versions.

Web Hosting Features – A Necessary Foundation

For a plethora of reasons, millions of customer are motivated to start a website.  Each new hosting acount accompanies a unique set of requirements.  Although price, customer support, and reliability are key points, features also play a major role in making a decision.  Features are often the most attractive part of a web hosting package and thy act as the foundation to any hosting account.   This article will talk about some of the most common features you will encounter when looking for service.

Email Tools

Email is the preferred method of communication for millions of individuals and businesses across the world.  Realizing this, web hosting companies provide all the email features needed to keep base with contacts.  Aside from multiple accounts, you generally get complimentary features such as webmail, autoresponders and forwarders to communicate effectively no matter where you might be.  Because unsolicited mail and virus infected attachments are a tremendous problem, hosting providers help you stay protected with spam filtering applications to dramatically cut down on those potentially dangerous messages.  Often overshadowed by more luxurious offerings, but email remains to be one of the most useful features in any hosting plan.

Shopping Cart Software

E-commerce is a driving force on the web and shopping carts are a big part of what enables this thriving industry.  If you have aspirations of selling your own products or services online, this is the type of software you need to make it happen. Shopping carts often come included in business or e-commerce hosting packages, usually at no additional costs.  In many cases, these programs can be easily installed through your control panel interface.

Programming Languages

Scripting or programming languages, have become common on the web hosting market but these features are geared towards more advanced users.  Some examples are open-source languages such as PHP, Perl and Ruby on Rails and proprietary technologies such as ASP and ASP.NET.  These programming tools serve benefit to developers and webmasters who are proficient at coding and building content from scratch.  A hosting provider that has these software packages installed on their server allow you to diversify your website with dynamic content that stand outs from static HTML pages.

Site Builders

Almost all web hosting plans come equipped with utilities that provide you the ability to create your site.  With most tools, you can choose from a nice selection of pre-designed templates and basically create your website in easy drag-and-drop fashion.  These utilities typically do not call for you to have any knowledge in client-side programming languages such as HTML or even server-side variations like Python or PHP.  In addition to integrated building tools, many host also offer support for standalone web design applications such as Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage. These programs allow you to create your site offline and upload it to the server without the use of an FTP client.

Conclusion

The list of web hosting features is huge and seems to expand every year.  Others you might find interesting include support for multimedia applications, web stat applications and databases among others.  To each its own in this regard because everyone has that dynamic tool set they just can’t do without.

Factors to Consider for E-commerce Hosting

Before opening up your store online, it is important to know that e-commerce hosting is a complex undertaking filled with confusing terminology and many types of services.  Aside from figuring out that products or services you want to market, you must also determine how much disk space and transfer you need as well as what type of hosting solution can meet those requirements.  It is a lot to process your first time around.  This article will discuss some of the complicated factors that must be considered when shopping for an e-commerce hosting plan.

Disk Space and Transfer

Whether it is a blog, community or e-commerce site, disk space and bandwidth are the core elements of any hosting solution.  It is these two resources that will ultimately determine what size package you need.  Though making this determination can be difficult, it should help to know that most e-commerce sites require a little more than others.  This is because you have to factor in product images, shopping cart applications and hopefully, frequent customers.  Regardless of how much disk space and bandwidth you start out with, make sure you choose a service that has the future in mind with a path to easy upgrades.

Payment Options

The multitude of payment options is enough to keep you up for nights but this is a bridge that must be crossed.  Fortunately, the preferred method of payment online is by credit card and there are several ways to meet this need.  Services such as PayPal make a nice option for small start up stores that don’t have a need to sell a large number of products.  The service is free, very secure and virtually anyone can get an account.  The downside is the hefty transaction fees attached to every sale you make.  At the end of the month, you might notice that these fees are taking a sizable chunk out of your bottom line.  An alternative would be a merchant account as it shows more credibility and has considerably lower transaction fees.  The problem here is a strenuous review process in which only a select few qualify.  It would be wise to compare a few carts so you can make an informed decision on which method works best.

Shopping Carts

After getting your payment options together, you must then figure out how those transactions will be facilitated.  The answer here is an aptly named piece of software known as a shopping cart.  These days, hosting providers offer a wide variety of shopping carts to choose from, many of which come free in e-commerce hosting packages.  While the software is a matter of preference, it is best to choose one that has your customers’ best interests in mind.  The shopping cart should be simple for you to set up and easy for your customers to use. You can learn more about what’s available by reading shopping cart reviews as they generally give you a good idea of what to expect.

Conclusion

There is so much that goes into e-commerce hosting and most of it has to do with your personal requirements.  Aside from the factors mentioned here, you will need a special set of management tools, security features and an overall reliable service.  These are easily obtainable when purchasing service from a reputable provider.

Open-source Shopping Cart Options

If you are looking to get up and running with your own online store, then a shopping cart is what you need to make it happen.  A shopping cart is a type of software application that allows you to incorporate a storefront into your e-commerce website.  This software can help you customize your store with tons of products attached with thumbnails, multiple shipping methods and payment options.  With a good program, you can start selling products immediately by accepting payments via credit card or popular alternatives such as PayPal.  Some of the most popular shopping carts are open-source programs and this article will introduce you to several popular choices.

osCommerce

As open-source software, the osCommerce shopping cart is free to use.  The program is integrated with a number of features that can easily be enabled and configured.  The osCommerce shopping cart gives you the ability to add multiple items to your store, organize them in categories, give out discounts, run special promotions and much more.  It also offers built-in shipping and tax capabilities to ensure accuracy.  With this shopping cart, you can set prices in different currencies and accept payment through methods such as credit cards, Payal and e-checks.  osCommerce is extremely popular and currently powers a large number of stores on the web.

CREloaded

The CREloaded shopping cart is a fork built on the source code of osCommerce.  This feature-rich platform caters to beginners and professionals alike, offering the ability to process credit card payments via PayPal or Authorize.net.  You can list a large number of products, set discounts and shipping costs.  CREloaded’s greatest attribute is the wide variety of themes that allow you to customize the look of your storefront.  This software is tailored to help you create a store that fully brands your identity and enhances the customer’s shopping experience.

Zen Cart

Zen Cart is another open-source shopping cart freely distributed under the GNU General Public License.  This software was designed with simplicity in mind but offers some very powerful features.  Zen Cart lets you set up an unlimited amount of products and organize them in numerous categories.  The program supports multiple payment options and different currencies as well as top-notch security mechanisms such as SSL certificates.  The built-in control panel allows you to mange products and all related items from a centralized area.

Magento

Magento is one of the latest open-source shopping cart applications.  This e-commerce platform offers a lot exclusive features geared towards managing customer relations and marketing your store.  The user-friendly interface allows you to control virtually every aspect of the store from listing and organizing products to setting up browser options and special promotions.   This shopping cart software sets itself a part from the competition with built-in analytics, reporting and promotion tools.  Magento is completely scalable and backed by an extensive support team.  Though cost effective in comparison to premium shopping carts, Magento isn’t free like the other software mentioned in this article.

Conclusion

These are just a few of several highly functional open-source shopping carts.  Like most open-source technologies, these programs can be easily incorporated into your existing e-commerce site.

Popular Shopping Cart Scripts

The very core of any e-commerce website is the shopping cart.  These programs are aptly named after the shopping baskets commonly used in supermarkets and retail stores.  Conventional shopping carts allow customers to walk through the aisles and select the items they want to purchase.  We all know it is a simple process as you can add and remove products without much thought or effort.  Shopping cart software offers functionality that translates the control and ease of purchasing items in the real world to the electronic world of e-commerce.  In this regard, a shopping cart is merely an extension of the basic order form, allowing customers to select certain products and choose from various options.

There are numerous shopping carts available, most of which are created by different programming technologies.  This article will introduce you to some of the most common and detail their advantages and disadvantages.

ASP Shopping Carts

Short for Active Server Pages, ASP is a server-side programming language developed by Microsoft.  ASP is quite advantageous in the e-commerce field and shopping carts are no different.  The power of the language makes an ASP shopping cart easy to develop and maintain.  Most software scripted in this language gives you a comprehensive back office to easily manage all the components of your online business.  Like most technologies created by Microsoft, ASP shopping carts tend to be more expensive than those scripted in other languages.

CGI Shopping Carts

CGI is one of the oldest development tools and responsible for powering many of today’s active shopping carts.  The biggest advantage of CGI shopping carts is that they are compatible with all major web browsers.  The downside is that they can be difficult to maintain, sluggish and consume precious system resources.

Cookie Shopping Carts

Cookie shopping carts are both easy to setup and manage.  They tend to be faster than CGI shopping carts and consume fewer system resources.  The major disadvantage is that they are not compatible with web browsers that do not support cookies.  This makes a CGI shopping cart useless for customers who disable cookies in their browsers.

Java Shopping Carts

Many shopping carts are scripted in Java, a client-side language that offers advanced functionality beyond HTML.  Java shopping carts are feature-rich and visually appealing.  Because this type of software calls for you to build your online store inside of an applet, it is generally slower and more difficult to customize.

Javascript Shopping Carts

Javascript shopping carts are fast, easy to set up and manage.  They are also easy to customize and light on critical system features.  The major drawback is that they are not compatible with web browsers that do not support Javascript or cookies.  Additionally, a Javascript shopping cart is not equipped to handle larger e-commerce stores.

These are just a few of the many types of shopping carts on the market.  Regardless of the programming technologies behind the software, it is always best to choose a shopping cart that offers the features you need and supports the number of products you want to sell.