If you plan to sell products on your site – either tangible goods or downloadable goods – you need a shopping cart. Deciding which cart to use is, in my opinion, as fun as pulling out your own hair, one clump at a instance. Choosing the right cart is extremely hard, and frankly, it’s impossible to list all the choices out there. There are far too many; just run a search whether you don’t believe me. It is additionally impossible for me to recommend one specific shopping cart since every situation tends to require specific features. Keeping all that in mind, I’ve only listed a few of my favorites that I think will probably work best for at least a majority of you.
My Top Picks: 3 Free, Open Source eCommerce Shopping Carts
OpenCart – Free, open source, great features
Zen Cart – Free, open source, great features
PrestaShop – Free, open source, great features
There’s nothing more for me to say about the choices I listed above. Each has a load of great features, but you’ll need to look at each one to see which might be the best fit for you.
Free Cart That Works Either Standalone or as WordPress Plugin
FatFreeCart is free and very basic, but plus offers a pro version (E-junkie) for more features. FatFreeCart is pretty much just copy/paste (with a little editing to fill in the product info), and it can either be used as a standalone cart on just about any site, or you can download the WordPress plugin to easily add the cart to your WordPress blog. that one is great for the small site that doesn’t need a full-blown ecommerce solution. whether you’re just looking to sell the occasional ebook, for instance, that qualifies as quick and easy.
WordPress eCommerce Shopping Cart Plugins or Themes
If you want a more full-featured cart for your WordPress blog than FatFreeCart gives you, here are my top picks for shopping cart WordPress plugins/themes.
eShop is a popular free plugin. It’s a good middle-of-the-road solution, in that it has decent features, but comes with less documentation and help than the other choices below.
YAK is another free WordPress plugin that comes with free basic documentation, but you’ll need to pay a little additional whether you want the detailed installation and configuration directions available in the YAK Handbook.
WP e-Commerce is free for its basic module but additionally offers premium extensions and themes that each cost additional. that is the WordPress cart that started the whole movement.
PhPurchase isn’t free, but at the current cost of $49, that’s affordable ample for me to think it worth including here, particularly since it comes with a robust set of features.
Other CMS-Specific Carts
Sorry, you’re out of luck whether you’re hoping I’ll be listing carts for other non-WordPress CMS systems such as Drupal or Joomla. I’m not knowledgeable adequate about those systems to form a list, so you’ll have to rely on someone else’s research for those.
Why The Short List?
I know many folks will wonder why I didn’t include that or that cart in the list (I know some will be asking why I didn’t mention Magento and osCommerce, for instance). I left many carts off the list on purpose considering I find them to be too complicated or too old to produce my top picks list. That doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t absolutely perfect for some humans; I’m certain they are. And of course, there are lots of great but costly choices tht I could have included as well. But I love free or extremely affordable options when available, so that’s what I chose to focus on.
Disclosure: Affiliate urls may be used within that post for products I recommend. They in no way affect my judgement of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.
© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. |
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Original post by Donna
