osCommerce

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Well Oscommerce what can I say its the no1 shopping cart. I have to say it was good when it first came out but it really is showing it's age now. While I do keep an eye on development it just isn't happening very fast I just wish it gets updated sometimes soon with a real features update.

My main complaint is that it embarrasing lack of features out of the box and still uses tables for design, which means you can't edit the look without going into the code itself. Which leaves most people dependant on a developer or premade templates

It's strength lies in the great community it has and the developers that offer Oscommerce as a solution almost completely rewritten to make various open source contributions work together nicely.

If you do insist on Oscommerce anymore please don't go with a default installation for your own sake. It'll be more headache than its worth having to deal with php files to install contributions. Try Creloaded or Zencart as they have a faster development cycle and many contributions preinstalled all working together nicely

I also read that it's free. Well it's not really free as if you really want to be successful using Oscommerce you will definitely need modifications of some sort and probably a developer to help you with things when it all goes wrong.
Even if you become Oscommerce savvy the true cost for you would be time you spend installing contributions as with better solutions that time could be better spent adding products or creating promotions

I think mainly Oscommerce just hasn't kept up with the times and these days there are better free solutions available for those that think of cost as a factor.
However those of you that are really serious about your online business please do yourself a favour and dig deep invest in your business online =)

Author: Parker

Full-featured and free. I usually use it for my clients who need an ecommerce website. However, customizing the look is a chore. Also, contributions can be a pain to install (3 or more are required to get osCommerce working the way you like). Overall, it's a great piece of software with great features although, it definitely needs some improvements to make it easier for us web developers!

Author: Simon

While oscommerce is certainly a fully functional out-of-the-box eshop with many attractive features, it is not a professional solution. aside from the issues with credit cards & image processing which have already been mentioned, there are some serious issues which anybody considering oscommerce should be aware of. firstly, there is no templating system for oscommerce. if you want to go along with default layout, fine. your webdesigner however will likely die from shame. Secondly and more important the coding is very messy. if you browse the oscommerce site you might get the impression that adding to or extending the functionality should be fairly easy based on the number of available 'modifications'. these modifications however rely on changing the core code, i.e. change line soandso in file soandso &c. in short a customised shop will require a lot of digging around in the core code which is further confounded by the fact that there is no clear distinction between layout & functionality.

Author:

This is a do-it-all program. So many features for an e-commerce enabled site - there are almost too many! Great support from the community, and it's stable. I've barely had to touch my store for maintenance since I set it up 6 months ago. Thumbs up!

Author:

This is a great program that can be easily set up and extensively customized. The community is great and helpful. The fourm on the OSCommerce site is great and there are hundreds of people offering their support - reviewing code, looking at design, lending set up support. It's a GREAT product that continues to evolve with a great community willing to support it.

Author: mehdi

I believe it would be enough for eveyone which needs a website relied on ecommerce.

Author:

An excellent and comprehensive program. Yes, the documentation is weak, but the community forum is GREAT for answering specific questions. There is also a lot of collaborative effort to create new functionality and new modifications. It does take time to learn and customize, but it's well worth it. The price can't be beat, the functionality is excellent but it is the community is what makes it stand apart from the rest.

Author:

I used to do some testings on 2.1 version, it was good, easy to use< but still there were some lacks. But 2.2ms1 is something realy cool! there are a lot of contributions. They are easy to install, and make your shop realy powerful and flexible! I also made my own contribution. So, I do recomend this one. I believe that with the official release of 2.2 version this script will be the best in the net!

Author:

Soory, but no. i tried out this shopping cart. looks good at the beginning. but at a closer look some real heavy problems appeard. image upload - when you upload an image with the name of another older one - this one will be overriden - no unique id fot the image names!!! preview and storing of the product - when do don't provide an image right at the beginning a broken image link is displayed. products statistic - is linked with the product-database, when you delete a product - broken image an no infos in the statistic image is display. at this point - i stopped.

Author:

Lots of glowing reviews here, so thought I'd add a not-so-glowing review. Yes it is free, and it has a lot of features. It is definitely a big time-saver. However, for any serious professional shopping cart use, it has some serious oversights that require a lot of coding to overcome. For example, it allows you to use real-time card processing OR to store the credit cards. It doesn't allow for both. To make matters worse, when it DOES store the card info, it's stored unencrypted. ;P It has no interface for the user to manage any credit cards they want to use. Adding an interface for this is possible, but there is very little documentation on how to add functionality. It also has very limited pricing options for items in stock. I'd say it's a good free shopping cart, but if you are planning on using it, spend some time with it. Make sure to factor in any changes you'll need to make.

Author:

Oscommerce has to be the best cart software on the web at the moment, the best thing is that with minimal setup 2 config files you can get it running on the web and locally with seperate config files ! With a bit of tweaking tweaking from files created (MODS) by the large community it has built up, you can be online and selling within about 1/2hr seriously ! I have used and modified PHPSHOP and i have found that oscommerce is a far better package out of the box. One word of warning go to the site and download and install the SNAPSHOT v2.2 and not the last stable release 2.1 ! Thanks HLDP ! :)

Author: Sam

I'm really surprised by some of these reviews. Although I did manage to get this up and running within an hour, errors started developing left and right and I found myself looking to the support board for answers. It turns out that certain permissions had to be set. NO MENTION anywhere in the short install docs. I overcame that, and now I'm stuck at some of the configuration options because documentation and/or faqs do not exist on the meanings (i.e. A section asks "Display Product Price >" and in the field is the numeral "2"... what does THAT mean?!?) Aside from that, I'd say the thing has fantastic potential. If they could just get a grip on the documentation, I think it would deserve 5 stars.

Author:

This is the most comprehensive eCommerce software I have ever seen in the public domain. It is incredibly easy to install and configure. I had it running within one hour. It also comes with an administration tool that is just as easy to setup and use. I only had one problem with a minor php configuration which took about 5 minutes to fix. It even comes with a PayPal module which I thought I would have to write myself. This thing is GREAT!

Author:

I knew nothing about PHP and shopping carts but this was so easy to use and setup. Creates beautiful professional sites in no time. Easily modifiable with tons of features. I am completely amazed at how such a good product can be free. The website also provides extensie support for any problems. I am in the process of making http://www.satellitestuff.ca/ with this package right now.

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The Exchange Project supports different languages. It's easy to use for customers and admins. Best for use with many products.

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I had been searching for a shopping cart program for my site recently. There were a couple of other carts written in php that I was interested in, but none of them were complete in my view. This cart has everything you could ask for in a cart. And is very customizable. I give it high marks, and recommend it to anyone.