In the process of launching an e-store, when it comes to choosing the right solution, you will get puzzled by the hundreds of solutions available. The options range from simple and free shopping cart systems to complex and paid e-commerce software which can charge you for both getting and “keeping” your shop online. When we talk about open source eCommerce platforms, there are myriad of to choose from.
Here, we take a close look at the 15 best available, which should help guide you in the right direction. Each one has its own features and functions and has been designed with a slightly different user in mind. Uploading products and customizing your store can be very time consuming, so make sure you have given several platforms a try before you make that final decision and integrate one into your site.
1. Lite Cart
LiteCart is a free and open source shopping cart application that is built with PHP-MySQL. It is light, not in means of features but for the usage (less clicks, improved usability..) and for development. All the main features of an e-store is offered as a standard and more stuff exist like: product groups, different prices per currency, automatic backups and more. And, there is an easy-to-use control panel for setting up the store and managing everything about it.
2. UnieCart
Uni-eCart is an open source e-commerce application that is bundled with all the major features expected. It is built with PHP and available in several versions where the free one is almost as complete as the others. Besides a standard e-commerce store, it is capable of running daily-deals and auctions too. The application supports multiple payment gateways, can display related-items, allows users to discuss + comment and share items on social networks. On the marketing side, Uni-eCart is again powerful with a mailing list feature and affiliate system.
3. Sylius
Sylius is an open source and free e-commerce solution for PHP (and based on Symfony2). It is capable of managing stores of any size and having complex products + categories. Products can have different tax rates, many shipping methods are supported and it is integrated with Omnipay (multi-gateway payment processing library).
4. ZeusCart
The best thing about Zeuscart is its user interface, which is rich, attractive, user-friendly and generally less boring than most of the open-source UIs that I have to look at on a daily basis. Designed with small and medium businesses in mind, users can make the most of SEO friendly URLs, gift cards, discounts, email templates and tier-pricing, which makes it possible to decrease prices for bulk orders.
5. Forward
Forward is a fresh e-commerce application (that is in the alpha stage) built with PHP and using MongoDB for storing data. The application is free, open source and built with developers in mind makes with easy custom coding, powerful templates and expressive syntax. It has a REST-like API for interacting with every feature from orders to customers or products.
6. Presta Shop
PrestaShop is one of the top e-commerce opportunities online. Many people are looking to be able to sell products online and this is one of the most convenient means of accomplishing such a goal. PrestaShop can be downloaded for free and there is a lot of different themes that can be chosen, allowing people to create the best look for their online store.
7. Virtual Mart
VirtueMart, which has been designed to work alongside Joomla!, is a really neat cart which customers feel instantly comfortable with. Not only does it let customers buy things, it lets them create an account, add addresses and access their order history.
8. Lemon Stand
LemonStand is a professional PHP shopping cart application that allows anyone to create a fully-functional store. It has support for featuring any number of products within an unlimited category structure. Actually, customizability is baked into LemonStand’s DNA, it starts with the theming where any HTML-CSS_JS can be used and goes with the features integrated.
9. Stripe Checkout
Stripe Checkout is an embeddable payment form for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. It works within your site—customers can pay instantly, without being redirected away to complete the transaction. You can integrate Checkout in as little as a single line of client-side code.
10. TinyPass
Tinypass is a powerful e-commerce platform that helps sites charge for access to content. Tinypass makes it easy to build a revenue stream based on access to paid content, not just on how many eyeballs you attract. It’s the same kind of technology behind The New York Times paywall and iTunes and give it to you in a simple, beautiful package.
11. ASPX Commerce
AspxCommerce is an open e-commerce system that is built with ASP.NETand uses MSSQL for storing the data. The application is built on top of SageFrame (the open source CMS) and comes with a single-click installation. It has an easy-to-use admin panel for creating and managing categories, products, users, orders and the settings provided.
12. Ubercart
Ubercart is specifically designed for people selling things like file downloads, event registrations, website access passes and event tickets, rather than physical products. Like VirtueMart, which must be integrated with Joomla!, Ubercart must be integrated with Drupal.
13. Gocart
GoCart is an open source e-commerce application which is focused on offering an easy to use/customize solution and not having a huge number of features but only the important ones. It can have unlimited categories, tiered categories with any depth, unlimited products-product images-options and can display related items. The built-in shipping methods include a flat or table rate, USPS, FedEx + UPS and has support for Paypal, Authorize.net and “COD (collect on delivery)” payment methods.
14. Live Cart
LiveCart is a PHP-MySQL-powered open source shopping cart application that comes with many features to create simple-to-advanced e-commerce websites. The application is developed with usability in mind, has a distraction free clean page flow and offers an intuitive shopping experience. Its navigation is very flexible with powerful product searching and filtering capabilities that enables users to easily drill-down to the level they want.
15. OpenCart
Not only does OpenCart look great, it’s extremely scalable. You can create an unlimited number of categories, sell an unlimited number of products, accept multiple currencies, use multiple languages, and choose from over 20 payment and 8 shipping methods. It’s user-friendly and search-engine-friendly too, so will help your prominence in Google.
