2009 Brings Explosion of Free, Cheap E-commerce Programs
Small business owners, rejoice! Last year while the Big Three — osCommerce, Zen Cart, & CRE Loaded — open source commerce teams made mega-blunders or didn't do anything noteworthy, dozens of smaller teams were hard at work taking advantage. The difference between open source and proprietary became almost indistinguishable except to developers, with some open source programs now selling for more money than proprietary programs.
We recap the year for the biggies and review a dozen newer, up-and-coming e-commerce programs.
The Big Three: "Our Bad"
All of the Big Three — osCommerce, Zen Cart, and CRE Loaded — stumbled last year. The maker of industry giant, non-progressing osCommerce disappeared for most of the year, finally to have a fresh and enthusiastic new osCommerce Project team pop up and complete the milestone their way in record time. Likewise, the Zen Cart team announced a new version for launch in February 2008 that never appeared. In December, the team dusted off the announcement and re-posted it as new news by giving it a new version number and some new features.
Of the Big Three, only the CRE Loaded team made it to market with a new version last year. However, a shocking new annual pricing scheme alienated much of their market of developers and online store owners. The CRE team rectified many of their errors, returning to a more sane marketing plan and once again making the Standard Version free, but market enthusiasm never returned to previous levels.
Surging Interest in Alternative E-Commerce Programs
The void of leadership in the industry allowed new entrants to steal mega market share with fresh, new Open Source and low cost proprietary e-commerce programs, most notably the recently-reviewed Magento, PrestaShop and Ubercart, but also many newer or lesser-known programs.
Many of these newer programs are bursting with beautiful, Web 2.0 style features and new ways of thinking. There are even a few ASP carts (one reviewed below) and one written in Java (not JavaScript). These new programs can start fresh with the newest versions of operating systems and software programs, and take advantage of the latest and greatest features that the Big Three cannot — or at least cannot do quickly. This gives the nimble newcomers a head start.
E-Commerce Programs to Watch: The Best of the Rest
There are now dozens more free or cheap e-commerce projects out there to surprise and delight the ready market. Remember that the term "open source" doesn't necessarily mean that must be free, it is only free for developers to look at and modify the source code so it's easy for them to customize. Because more and more open source programs are being sold now in the $100-$500 range, unheard of only a few years ago, we've reviewed a few low-priced proprietary programs that are in the same price range as the open source programs.
Even when open source programs remain free of charge, the cost of templates and/or customization starts in the hundreds of dollars. Why not try a proprietary program in the same price range if it has the features you want? Most have free 30-day trials, whether open source or proprietary, so there is little risk.
I've installed and set up an armload of these programs and played with each of them to give you these first-looks. We'll be watching and reviewing these programs throughout the coming year. These are sorted in order of Google popularity, and I note the unusual or striking features of each program. You can try demos of nearly all of these programs and more on my Web site listed at the end of this article.
1. X-Cart
X-Cart.com
Moderately priced, popular, full-featured proprietary cart with strong security features. Can export orders to QuickBooks format.
- PROS: W3C XHTML 1.0 standards-compliant code, configurable contact form, printable versions of pages, import and export of store data, customer-defined prices, extensive sales analysis & tracking. Uses Smarty Template System. Some support is included in purchase price, includes free access to ALL future releases.
- CONS: Installation and setup is not very user friendly. Payment processing is possible in one currency only.
- Current version: 4.2
- License and pricing: Proprietary, first copy is $229, subsequent licenses range from $115 to $90 with no features installed. Each add-on feature ranges from $29-109.
2. Virtuemart
www.virtuemart.com
A plug-in for Jooma! or Mambo Content Management System. Uses Joomlab's admin interface for store administration, so if you know Joomla it's easy. Nice Web 2.0 style. Best suited for store owners who need to manage a large number of documents in addition to products who also have a technical pro to maintain and update the two systems.
- PROS: Ajax Product Overview page, vendor tracking of product sources, and product availability or when customer can expect delivery.
- CONS: Stiff learning curve to run both systems, and double maintenance: both Joomla! and VirtueMart must be upgraded separately each time there is a new release.
- Current version: 1.1.3.
- License and pricing: GPL, free.
3. XT-Commerce
XT-Commerce.com
A powerful cart for small, medium or large merchants and wholesalers. The most-used cart in Europe.
- PROS: Automatic thumbnail image creation, digital product sales, import/export products as CSV data, product data export to price search engines, HTML templates and email templates can be edited with Dreamweaver, conversion statistics.
- CONS: German/English included in standard package, but much supporting documentation is in German.
- Current version: 3.04.
- License and pricing: GNU/GPL, approx. $107, priced in Euros.
4. Open Freeway
www.openfreeway.org
Plug-in for Joomla Content Management System. Sells products, events, services and subscriptions. Appointments and time based bookings to event ticketing and subscriptions. AJAX-driven Admin tool. Uses Simple Template System (STS), a template system that is easy for designers to use. Best suited for store owners who need to manage a large number of documents in addition to products, who also have a technical pro to maintain and update the two systems.
- PROS: Single page checkout, SEO friendly URLs, Joomla CMS integration
- CONS: Requires Joomla CMS installation and maintenance.
- Current version: 1.4.3.210
- License and pricing: GPL, free.
5. CubeCart
www.cubecart.com
Easy and professional shopping cart with many payment methods, "professionally security audited" and 100-percent template-driven (HTML is completely separate from PHP code). Over 30 languages, many support plans available. Free version 3, but NOT open source.
- PROS: Both versions handle digital products like downloadable software, ebooks, music. Spambot flood protection. Copyright may be removed from either version with payment of $89.95. Three free templates included. Paid version also includes: SEO, bulk product management, "lightbox" product images, easy logo uploader, hide prices for unauthenticated guests. Free 30-day trial and 30 days free technical support, languages are "professionally translated" and access to 99% of source files for easy modification, full license never expires.
- CONS: Best features are packed into paid version. Admin very word-intense, not as graphical as other programs.
- Current version: Version 4.3.0 and 3.0.18.
- License and pricing: Version 3 is free but NOT OPEN SOURCE 100 percent source code available. Version 4 is $129 NOT OPEN SOURCE but 99 percent source code available with two Files Zend/IonCube Encoded. Either version remove "Powered by CubeCart" for $69.
6. Quick.Cart
opensolution.org
European-developed small, stable, standards-based, easy to customize, fast program that uses secure flat files rather than a database. Free and Pro versions. Not to be confused with "quickcart.com"
- PROS: Compliant with Web Accessibility Initiative for handicapped users, Google sitemaps, SEO friendly links, RSS, Poll, update contact page via Admin, comparison shopping sites shopping.com and froogle, No SQL database required.
- CONS: More popular in Europe than US. To remove "powered by Quick.Cart" must pay EU 62 (US $81).
- Current version: 3.2 Oct. 08
- License and pricing: Creative Commons 2.5, about US $170, priced in Euros.
(Please Continue to Page 2 for Six More Reviews)
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