E-commerce Script Choices

By: Jason Craig on Dec 21, 2010 | 2 Comments

There is absolutely a plethora of e-commerce scripts to choose from.  More than we could even hope to cover in this post.  So what we’ll do is stick to the more popular ones and go over some of their features in order to help you choose the right e-commerce script for your needs.  The order they are listed in no way is a representation of their ranking, we just needed to list them somehow. 

• OsCommerce: A very popular and widely used open source cart.  The good part about this script is that it is completely free.  There is a lot of community support behind this script and many addons you can use to make your cart fit your needs better. Using the addons typically requires modifying PHP files and making it very difficult to keep the cart up-to-date.   In this case the quality of the product you get is equivalent to what you paid for.  Out of all the e-commerce sites we’ve worked on, OsCommerce has been the most hacked and most insecure cart.  Although not very resource intensive, it does you no good if your website is repeatedly hacked or infected with malware.
• Magento: There are several different versions of Magento available.  The Community version, Professional version and Enterprise version.  Today we’ll be focusing only on the Community version which is open source and free to use.  Just as with OsCommerce, Magento is widely used and has a large community support base.  The downside to using Magento is something you’ll notice right from the start.  The size of the script itself and then later on how resource intensive it is.  Magento takes a significant amount of time to simply upload to your server.  Installation is easy and straightforward from there.  One of the great upsides to Magento is it keeps itself healthy.  The cart will alert you if you need to update or if it notices a table that needs to be re-indexed as a result of a table. Magento is probably better suited for those anticipating a high volume of sales.
• OpenCart: Although OpenCart might not be as widely known about as the prior two carts, it has several things going for it.  As with the other carts, OpenCart is open source and free.  It doesn’t have quite the same following as OsCommerce or Magento does, but what it lacks in community usage, it makes up for in functionality and speed.  OpenCart is a very lightweight script.  Very small in size and in resource usage compared to the others.  It brings all the necessary functionality one would need for a standard cart such as product images, options, shipping, coupons and even a small amount of CMS.  If you’re anticipating a small volume of sales and don’t want to overwhelmed with features you may never use, OpenCart might just be a good choice for you.
• Interspire: The creme de la creme of shopping carts.  Just as with Magento, there are several versions of the Interspire shopping cart available.  Unfortunately, they are all paid and rather expensive versions to use.  With a high price tag does come quality though.  Interspire comes packed with a ton of features as well as a decent CMS to help you with your non-cart pages.  Interspire ranks about middle in size and resource usage compared to Magento, OsCommerce and OpenCart.  With a paid product, support is right around the corner for you.  No waiting for answers on the vendor’s forums or elsewhere.  Interspire can handle all of your needs from the smallest of sites to the largest of them.

There are many, many more e-commerce scripts available and new ones being released each day.  There are plugins for WordPress and even themes which turn your website in to a fully functioning e-commerce site.

As with any choices it is best to take a look at your needs and research any script you may consider using.  There is no sense paying $1500 for a script if you only plan on doing minimal sales.  Adversely, you wouldn’t want a smaller, more insecure script if you know the volume of sales you’re anticipating would even catch the eye of Donald Trump himself.

If you need assistance deciding on the proper e-commerce application for your business or need help designing and developing your e-commerce solution please contact us for a free analysis and quote.

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Comments (2)

ecommerce script

Posted at 12:12 pm on March 21st, 2012

For you, what would be the best script of your choice? and Why?

Jason Craig

Posted at 5:08 pm on March 27th, 2012

Depending on your budget I would consider: Interspire, OpenCart or PrestShop.

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