ecommerce merchants -- your favorite shopping cart?

[Greg]

Does anyone here run an online ecommerce store? I'm looking to setup an ecommerce store for a client's retail shop.

Don't say eBay, please. We're already selling on eBay, but want to (a) get away from the high final value fee (FVF), and (b) have more control over our own store (own domain, nice design, etc).

Based on some research, there are like hundreds of seemingly viable carts, but the top 5, based on number of mentions, seems to be....

1. Yahoo
2. Miva Merchant
3. Shopify
4. ProStores
5. osCommerce (specifically, people seem to like the ZenCart version of osCommerce)

Have you used any of these? Would you recommend something else? Why?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and advice. I think this thread could be very useful for others as well.

Thanks in advance!

Greg


PS: I wish there was a comparison engine (that was useful!) for shopping carts. If you know of one, let me know! Please!

[hermione]

I've been using Zen Cart for over 2 1/2 years now, but am seriously considering switching to Magento. Zen Cart was OK for us till we changed web hosting servers and our SEO friendly URLS broke so now our site is extremely search engine unfriendly - and it wasn't that great to begin with.

Magento is supposed to be very SEO friendly, though there are some things I don't like about it. It just came out of beta a couple of months ago and I'm looking forward to improved versions and more features like gift certificates.

If you'd like to see an example of a Zen Cart store, feel free to visit my store:
http://frangadesigns.com

It's not the greatest website in the world; I'm an amateur web designer and learn by trial and error.

I have a Magento test site at:
http://ludwigandwolfgang.com/magento

It's rather slow to load because I have a huge javascript picture thing on the homepage, which I'm not planning on keeping, but you can have a look. The admin is also really slow. I'm hoping they improve that soon.

I tried osCommerce for a few months before switching to Zen Cart - it was awful. We would get payments but no order information, which was really annoying and embarrassing because we'd have to contact the customers to ask what they ordered.

[skeet]

Have you looked at Google checkout? People generally have more trust for places like Google.

[purplefdu]

I tried Zen cart for all of an hour before giving up in frustration. In todays world there are so many easier products it was maddening to try so hard.

I am working on setting up my store with http://www.buyitsellit.com/ which has been so simple and amazingly intuitive I could cry tears of joy. The SEO is built into every item you add. It supports Paypal and Google Checkout and shipping with USPS, UPS, and Fedex. You can check out my store here:
http://hbpuppy.mybisi.com/

My favorite thing: everything you see is from a free account. And it still looks super custom compared to some of the e-commerce stores I've seen.

[hermione]

Oh, I was also quite impressed with Prestashop and was leaning toward it till I found out Media Temple's version of MYSQL isn't compatible as it requires MYSQL 5.

A couple of lists of open source shopping carts (you've probably already seen them if you've done a web search, but they're handy references for anyone else looking for an open source e-commerce solution):

http://webtecker.com/2008/04/22/8-be...art-solutions/
http://www.designvitality.com/blog/2...ce-web-design/

[arkadofbabylon.org]

I feel your pain re: the Zencart issues. I used that for about a month, but was constantly wanting to slam my head against my desk in frustration due to poor functionality.

I switched to Magento and it has been WONDERFUL! So easy to work with! My tests with checkout and order delivery for my products have been seamless and have had zero problems.

[spetracco]

I've used Miva Merchant since 2000. It has come a LONG way and really is a top-notch system. Don't let the price tag scare you; you can get a license through a host much cheaper than the retail price, I think. The templating system lets you design the store exactly the way you want it, whether you're using table-based layouts or CSS positioning. It supports most/all of the major payment gateways, has an active third-party developer market (including my company) that builds add-on "modules" for new features, and an open API if you want to write your own. They are adding a number of new features to the base platform over the next few months, including a 1-page checkout, coupons, gift certificates, etc. It has built-in SEO features as well, including URL rewriting.

[Greg]

Great responses here guys! Thanks!

This will help me narrow down the choices. I've never heard of some of the options mentioned. Looks like I'll have to take a look at Magento.

Anyone here try Shopify? Any thoughts?

Keep your experiences coming!

[redambrosia]

I dunno how relevant this is, but as a customer, I have always liked amazon's shopping cart the best. Easy to use, easy to understand, easy to modify.

[olena99]

You can create and customise your own free e-commerce webstore,
http://www.freewebstore.org/