[Dave_Webb]

Im looking to spend some time making a few ecommerce websites.
Which one do you think is the best?
I'm thinking about Magento, Zen cart and osCommerce are there any others that are free and good?

[Stevo]

I'm building a site with osCommerce at the mo,

its a bit of a pig to style as almost all the widths and dimensions etc are on inline tables rather than on a style sheet, but its easy to use and has pretty good forum support. I installed it through Fantastico on the web host in a few minutes, so its dead easy to get it in the right directory etc.

Cubecart is easier to style i think, but doesnt have as many forums etc to help out.


Stevo

[Peartree]

Magento is by far the best free solution.

Trading Eye is also pretty cool but it costs £200

[SandersDesign]

Magento is very comprehensive but offers quite a learning curve and the developers are becoming more focused on large paying clients rather than the Open Source community.

Foxycart is ideal if your already familiar with a CMS and wish to extend its core functionality. Shopify also looks good. Both Shopify and Foxycart host the e-commerce interface for you so you can rest in the knowledge that its all secure.

[Dave_Webb]

Yer thanks guys I think I'll prob go for Magento which I've been playing with for the past few weeks anyway.

[sunwukung]

Dave_Webb, on 01 September 2009 - 03:34 PM, said:

Yer thanks guys I think I'll prob go for Magento which I've been playing with for the past few weeks anyway.

For the sake of ponying up a couple of hundred quid, you'll save yourself a lot of heartache if you go commercial...especially if it's for a client. You should be able to recoup the cost from the commission, and you'll likely get it done faster. E-commerce can be mind-bending at times, personally I'd be very wary of using a free cart. That's my opinion though...
With that in mind, I'd recommend TradingEye or JShop, with a look at FoxyCart (though they have limited support for UK payment gateways last time I looked.)

[BlueDreamer]

Dave_Webb, on 01 September 2009 - 02:07 PM, said:

Im looking to spend some time making a few ecommerce websites.
Which one do you think is the best?
I'm thinking about Magento, Zen cart and osCommerce are there any others that are free and good?

There is no "best" shopping cart!

Every shopping cart system has it's strengths and weaknesses so it's advisable to choose the right one for the job in hand. Whether free, opensource or commercial is really immaterial.

To choose the right cart for the job you'll need a comprehensive understanding of your clients business, what they want to achieve with their online shop, and most importantly how they want the cart to work for them - not just now, but in say 24/36 months time. The more detail you have the better solution you can provide them with.

[jyotitis]

Prestashop is the best. However you can also consult web development consultants and they can guide the right platform as per your business needs.

[Richard King BWP]

BlueDreamer, on 01 September 2009 - 05:58 PM, said:

There is no "best" shopping cart!

Every shopping cart system has it's strengths and weaknesses so it's advisable to choose the right one for the job in hand. Whether free, opensource or commercial is really immaterial.

To choose the right cart for the job you'll need a comprehensive understanding of your clients business, what they want to achieve with their online shop, and most importantly how they want the cart to work for them - not just now, but in say 24/36 months time. The more detail you have the better solution you can provide them with.

bang on post

[darrenbale]

BlueDreamer, on 01 September 2009 - 05:58 PM, said:

There is no "best" shopping cart!

Every shopping cart system has it's strengths and weaknesses so it's advisable to choose the right one for the job in hand. Whether free, opensource or commercial is really immaterial.

To choose the right cart for the job you'll need a comprehensive understanding of your clients business, what they want to achieve with their online shop, and most importantly how they want the cart to work for them - not just now, but in say 24/36 months time. The more detail you have the better solution you can provide them with.

Definitely, no one systems does everything. Its the same with CMS' you can't just use the same one everytime. Whatever you use needs to match the needs of the client.

[Shane Barrett]

In terms of styling, whats the best shopping cart?

[darrenbale]

Again, thats a tricky one to answer.

Everybody finds different systems easy. I quite like CubeCart for styling as it uses a fairly simple template system. Unfortunately if you go with the version3 system (the free one) You need to do LOTS of work to make it do things that clients expect as standard.