In different countries, customers prefer different payment options. For example, in the US, customers prefer to pay via credit cards and PayPal. In some countries PayPal is not even available. So, it is critical that the eCommerce solution supports as many payment and shipping options as possible, out of the box. Unfortunately, it is a frequent case that free shopping software is not well-supported and updated. But anyway, keep this in mind and give preference to the online shopping carts that offer support.
Search engine optimization. More than half of the traffic comes to an online store from organic search. Of course, in case your shop is well-optimized for SEO. It would be a great advantage if your online shopping basket software supports basic SEO tools to help you enhance your SEO. Business models. Before starting an online store, you should decide in what segment you will work: B2C, B2B, or both.
Usually, best free shopping carts for small businesses are for B2C-stores only. To sell in the B2B segment, you will need a special website builder with an eCommerce functionality that supports specialized B2B functionality. Multiple languages and currencies. To sell internationally, make sure the best free shopping cart that you can find supports multiple languages and works with several currencies that can be selected on the storefront.
Multi-channel commerce. Some free shopping carts offer you the ability to synchronize your product catalog with large product aggregators and recommendation websites such as Google Shopping. Some open source shopping carts like CS-Cart also allow you to export your products to eBay. This way you will get more customers from these extra sales channels and a larger coverage for your online business.
While using the CS-Cart affordable PHP online shopping cart system , you can easily take advantage of all eCommerce features it offers: Convenient Admin Panel: the solution features a straightforward admin panel. All the menus are conveniently placed and any setting is maximum 3 clicks away.
Promotions: In the Promotions section of the admin panel, you can construct promotions with lots of different conditions. Set the conditions a customer must meet to get a bonus, and the promotion is ready. CS-Cart has a built-in loyalty system—Reward points. Give your customers points for purchases and they will return to your store again to spend them. Visual Layout Editor: What if you want to rearrange information blocks on your store pages: move product filters to the right, add banners to the top, or show product reviews at the bottom?
Not in this case. Experiment with layouts and save money. Add extra storefronts and manage them all as separate shops from a single admin panel. It means you can adapt this platform to any needs: develop more features, your own storefront theme, integrate with new payment and shipping services, and more.
Supported and Frequently Updated: 6 upgrades are released per year in average. Patch releases fix issues and minor or major releases both fix issues and add new features. We keep CS-Cart up to date, protected from hackers, and compatible with the latest server technologies.
You own it like you own a house and a car. No monthly payments. You have access to all the functionality: turn it off and on when you need it, add more features, and decide when to upgrade. Customizable checkout page: Create a checkout page that will work best for your business. Shopify Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce systems in the world. Shopify is quite feature-rich out of the box and includes all the essential features for electronic commerce: Multiple sales channel: you can sell via an eCommerce store, social media, and online marketplaces Built-in reports and analyzing tools to analyze campaigns on Facebook and Google A single backend panel to manage orders, shipping, payments, and customers.
And of course, all the necessary functions to manage the catalog and marketing campaigns. X-Cart X-Cart is another standalone online shopping cart script that is not totally free but gives you free access to its source code.
Nopcommerce Alright, now we move from shareware eCommerce software to free shopping cart solutions. The standard set of features includes the following: Responsive admin panel and storefront, which allows you to manage the online shop from a mobile device.
You customers can also checkout on the go. A large number of product properties, which allows you to flexibly configure your product listings. Has a partly customizable checkout and offers a one-page checkout and anonymous checkout. Features built-in marketing tools and analytics Supports multi vendor functionality Supports multiple storefronts WooCommerce WooCommerce is an online shopping cart plugin for Wordpress. Here are the key points: Powerful SEO Easy to install and use Convenient product management system Simple but working marketing features Great content management system Huge community of users and WordPress-savvy developers OpenCart OpenCart is a free online shopping cart with open source code.
Anyways, OpenCart is a great choice if you want a small to medium online store with built-in features, user-friendly interface, and flexibility: User-friendly admin interface Multi-store feature Open source code for extra development flexibility Built-in payment and shipping methods Lots of ready-made extensions Supports both physical and downloadable products Magento Magento is the real king of the online shopping cart solutions.
Besides SEO and basic eCommerce tools, Magento features many other functions: Integrates with major payment and shipping services Optimized for mobile devices Multiple currencies and languages Advanced catalog management Fast checkout The ability to be converted to a multi-vendor marketplace via an extension Advanced site search that helps to convert customers Hundreds of more features Of course, because of its flexibility, scalability, and complexity, Magento has some downsides.
Zen Cart Zen Cart was developed in by a group of like-minded people—online entrepreneurs, developers and designers. Agoracart Agoracart is a community-driven eCommerce platform built with Perl.
CGI Commerce. Try CS-Cart for free. What is CS-Cart? Catalog management. Powerful designing tools. What PrestaShop lacks in support, it makes up for with an active community forum and the knowledge base. It is rich with guides and training courses. Asking someone experienced for advice can help with the addons. Otherwise, you might have to pay to fix everything.
All things considered, PrestaShop offers great features. It can be the best free shopping cart, but, ironically, you need good budgeting. Famed as the first PHP e-commerce software and the fastest shopping cart, X-Cart has quite a reputation to live up to.
Plus, the base version is completely open-source. You can check out the full list on their website. Features are abundant, and they showcase real quality. X-Cart gives you everything you need to design a high-level store. X-Cart might be one of the best open-source shopping carts, but open-source still means less invested developers and a somewhat quirky product.
Installing it or connecting it to your site does require technical expertise. The latter is probably safer. From there, the visual interface is actually remarkably user-friendly. Despite the sea of features, even first-timers can navigate the dashboard easily. Just keep in mind open-source storefront software can get messy. You can customize the themes with the drag and drop editor.
This offers some customizability, but for a unique appearance, you need to edit the CSS. X-Cart offers 67 payment gateways, 36 of which come out of the box.
The rest are available as paid apps. X-Cart also offers an X-Payments package, which adds 55 more gateway providers. It is PCI-Compliant and ensures the security of transactions and customer data. Still, you can easily ensure PCI-compliance with it. Plus, it makes you nearly invulnerable to fraud. The free version is, well, free. Its features are nevertheless everything a medium-sized business can ask for. Of course, you still have to pay for a theme, apps, and other services.
All things considered, X-Cart will always cost more than the average cart software. Luckily, you can pay for some. The price is at the high end, but the service is top-shelf. It is one of the most praised features among X-Cart users. Just read the terms before purchasing support.
X-Cart gets positive reviews from experienced coders and non-technical users alike. They mostly praise the great features and consistent updates. Users almost unanimously agree the software has scaled amazingly over the years. There are astonishingly few negative reviews. The more common complaints are that X-Cart is expensive and highly demanding on the servers. Both are true. For a free shopping cart software, X-Cart can be expensive. Seeing that X-Cart caters to larger businesses, though, higher costs are understandable.
All in all, X-Cart is a fantastic solution for those who can afford it. This usually means large retailers exclusively. Today, you can use it as a regular website builder, or you can integrate the storefront into your existing website. No wonder it considered one the best shopping cart software for international stores.
A few important ones are the SEO Tools, analytics, one-page checkout, guest checkout, excellent multilingual and multi-currency features, tax and vat calculators. It also offers a plethora of in-depth features. You can ask CoreCommerce support for the full list of features. The offer is fairly comprehensive and can accommodate even large businesses just fine. Mind that, unlike other shopping carts in these reviews, CoreCommerce is primarily intended as a SaaS solution.
This option is definitely more convenient for beginners. Still, you do have to sacrifice more control than with typical shopping cart solutions. This makes setting everything up reasonably straightforward. The visual interface itself got a recent upgrade. The admin dashboard is among the simpler ones.
You can also hover over question mark symbols that explain what each feature does. With that said, there are a lot of features. That, in and of itself, entails a bit of a learning curve. All in all, CoreCommerce is simple, but not as simple as, for instance, Square. You get 18 free responsive themes. There are two more unresponsive themes, but responsive design is a must-have.
The number of themes is fine, but not amazing. As for customization, you can use the drag-and-drop editor to move around page elements. This can be annoying. CoreCommerce does lower the CorePayments transaction fee to 2. It can be a very lucrative payment processor. The plans mostly differ only in the sales cap. The personal plan is relatively limited—you can only sell three products, and you get 1Gb of storage and 2Gb of bandwidth.
Most other plans remove these limitations. However, I do recommend at least checking out the features of each plan carefully before going with one. All in all, the pricing is in the low-end of shopping cart software. Fortunately, the support makes up for it. The technical team is available through phone, email, and chat.
It is fast and resolves all problems quickly. Seeing as your store on their servers, though, you have little choice if you need custom features. A few users complain that CoreCommerce has increased the prices without prior notification. CoreCommerce did upgrade its system massively, so the price increase seems justified. It is somewhat neglectful if the existing customers went unnotified, though. Still, reviews like these are best taken with a grain of salt.
They can point out crucial factors about the service but tend to be very subjective nevertheless. CoreCommrece has plenty of attractive features and is reasonably priced as well. As the name suggests, OpenCart is an open-source shopping cart. You can do easy product management, sell physical and digital products, calculate tax and shipping rates automatically, view reports and analytics, and enable one-page and guest checkout. Visitors can also filter products, leave reviews, take advantage of discounts and coupons, sign up for your newsletter, and much more.
The digital shopping cart also has solid multilingual and multi-currency support. Different currencies update automatically, and OpenCart already supports various languages, including LTR ones.
You can easily set up a store that caters to an international audience. There is even an affiliate system built-in. You can get others to promote your products without going through the trouble of plugging in a separate solution. If you need something more, the plugin library contains several comprehensive SEO add-ons.
Like WooCommerce and Magento, the ecommerce shopping cart software strives to be lightweight. Over 13, extensions are available, covering all sorts of possibilities, from simple widgets to PCI compliance tools. You can find pretty much anything in the marketplace, though some extensions may be paid. This is a bit of a blessing and a curse.
Relying on plugins this way makes the software leaner, so you can expect fast load times. Making everything work might require some coding skills, though. For starters, you can usually install the cart in one click via Softaculous. The dashboard is also uncluttered and very intuitive.
You should have zero issues handling day-to-day operations like adding products, managing shipping rates, or configuring emailing. That said, a few online shopping cart reviews out there praise OpenCart for being beginner-friendly. This is misleading. OpenCart helpfully suggests a few PHP developers on its site.
Hiring a dev to do maintenance is a cost you will have to take into account, though. OpenCart runs a variety of themes, some free and some paid. You can even get themes from third-party vendors like ThemeForest.
For instance, more premium themes can include a design-free page builder and a ton of unique widgets. In contrast, more affordable themes usually leave it at the core functionality. You can also install an editor plugin for the default theme. This expands the tools to edit aspects of the shopping cart app, like styling.
In such cases, you would have to edit the code yourself and build what you need. By default, OpenCart supports 36 payment gateway providers. In addition to this, over 1. Some of these are paid, though, so you should check the pricing for your preferred gateway beforehand. Still, you get plenty of ways to capture payment information than with OpenCart. OpenCart is free to download, use, and modify.
You can create as many websites as you want with no restrictions. That said, there are still costs to consider with the shopping software.
You might want specific themes or extensions, which are sometimes paid. You also get a guarantee the team will fix the issue if it recurs within 30 days.
This is excellent insurance in case of emergencies. This covers bug fixes, installation service, and consultations about modules. A lot of users adore OpenCart. They love how straightforward the admin dashboard is and how fast and effective the solution is. A few store owners did complain about the solution lacking support. The software has been around for 11 years, and it has amassed quite a user base, including companies like Volvo, Lacoste, and Casio.
After all, most websites are hosted on Linux. Yet, it would be unfair not to mention any alternatives. As for the features, nopCommerce gives you all you need to set up a midrange or large store. You can even run multiple stores from one admin or set up a robust online marketplace and let internet merchants sell on your platform.
You have a ton of options for adding products, and you can easily create dozens of product variants by mixing different attributes. You can also calculate shipping rates, access multiple shipping carriers, configure taxes by country, state, or zip code, and a bunch of other options. The checkout features are rather robust as well. Aside from the usual, you can enable advanced shopping cart options like one-page checkout or displaying a mini shopping cart while your clients are browsing.
You can take advantage of many marketing tools, including emailing features, an affiliate system, a reward point system, upsell features, discounts and coupons, and a lot more. A comprehensive SEO suite is in the mix too, with features like microdata and breadcrumbs support.
If something you need is missing, nopCommerce has a massive library with 1, plugins. You can find tools for improving page load times, managing popups, providing customer support via live chat, and a whole lot more. Many providers let you set it up in a few clicks via Plesk. If you use Microsoft Azure, you can also have it preinstalled on a server instance. Configuring the shopping cart program, however, can be tough. Once you do set up the store according to your specifications, you get to enjoy a very well-designed dashboard.
Even though it features hundreds of options, all the menu tabs are neatly categorized and laid out clearly. A nice detail is that you can collapse the controls sidebar to get an even better view of the main screen. You can use 7 free themes with nopCommerce 4. All are well-designed, though you could get more variety. The themes all use Bootstrap, though, meaning they are fully responsive, and they implement commonly used styling features like Font Awesome icons.
These usually integrate paid plugins, feature a professional design, and are meant for easy modification by developers. Some even add features like image zoom that can be helpful for specific industries.
Your options are to either purchase a theme editor plugin or hire a developer to get you a unique look. Do the latter if your business can afford it. While using a plugin is definitely cheaper, it might get you mixed results. The extension library has more modules that enable processors like AliPay and Apple Pay. The software is free to download, use, and modify. It basically lets nopCommerce siphon away a part of your traffic through a link in the footer. However, removing or modifying the link yourself would be a copyright violation.
You should also consider how much you would have to spend on premium templates, a theme, and a developer who will set it all up. Like a few other open-source shopping cart apps, nopCommerce offers a premium support service. The support is only available on business days, and it offers a 1-day response time guarantee and a 5-day bug fix guarantee. They will help you fix any bugs with the core software and answer questions about customizing it.
They do not, however, include support for any third-party themes or plugins or customizing the software for you. Many users adore nopCommerce. They love how scalable and stable the platform is and how powerful it becomes when you customize it properly. It is widely regarded as the best ASP. NET shopping cart. Unsurprisingly, a few users are upset by the copyright footer text. The solution can help you scale well into six or seven-figure earnings, and it will not leave you wanting for features.
NET-based carts out there. Spree Commerce is one of the most popular open-source ecommerce projects in the world. The software has 1. Unlike most shopping carts that you can set up in a few clicks, Spree Commerce is more like a collection of Ruby code modules. The solution requires someone at least semi-fluent in code to put it all together. Spree Commerce is more geared toward developers, startups, and other businesses that need to quickly deploy highly customizable online stores.
If you do decide for Spree Commerce, the platform has plenty of handy features integrated into its code. The storefront can also be integrated into an already-existing website. Spree Commerce is also cloud-ready. There are also about 60 native integrations, covering things like Elasticsearch and various payment processors.
You can also find a bunch of third-party extensions. The idea is to let developers build fully custom stores within days, so everything is geared towards fast web development.
Spree Commerce users have created everything from custom user authentications to robust B2B stores and online marketplaces. Despite requiring developer attention, Spree Commerce has a rather well-designed client area. The navigation is straightforward, and all the key features are very obvious. Even complete beginners can easily handle day-to-day activities once the store is live.
Of course, some of the client areas will depend on how you or your developer customize the software. One of the principles of this shopping cart service is letting all users design their own frontend. The developer just needs to build the design you choose. The software is also built with reusing code in mind, which can cut down on the time it takes to develop your application.
This includes big ones like Stripe and PayPal and dozens of country-specific gateways. You can also gain access to a few extra gateways like Apple Pay through integrations. All in all, you get a decent choice of payment providers, and you will be able to cover over countries with an international store. Spree Commerce is a completely free online shopping cart system.
You can download the source code from GitHub. The solution runs almost entirely on community support, so all the plugins are free as well. You still have to account for the price of developing your store with Spree Commerce if you run a business.
The development with this software usually goes very quickly, though, so you can expect to have your store online in no time.
That said, the Spree Commerce community is massive and very loyal. Spree Commerce is one of the most loved open-source projects out there. Hundreds of online shopping cart reviews praise how easy it is to quickly deploy a fully custom and highly scalable application. There are few negative reviews to speak of. Spree Commerce gives its target audience just what they expect, so there are no surprises there. Spree Commerce falls somewhere between an ecommerce framework and a shopping cart solution.
Before becoming a separate solution, Zen Cart was a part of osCommerce, making it 20 years old today. Now, it is one of the most-used shopping carts on the web and sports a massive community. Zen Cart is typically used as software that you plug into an existing website to add ecommerce functionality.
This depends on the theme, though—some might let you design a fully-fledged website with an online store. Be that as it may, the online shopping cart software lacks strong features for standard website building. Zen Cart covers all the basics like inventory, order, and shipping management, product categories and attributes, basic speed optimization and SEO, etc.
You also get a decent number of features to engage and secure customers. This includes tools for email marketing, discounts, coupons, gift certificates, and a bunch of other options. Zen Cart also has decent multi-language support. You can pick from 65 language packs, which is impressive. Still, you should really go through the translated text yourself and fix any mistakes. This covers additional admin tools, international shipping carrier integrations, sidebar modules and widgets, and a lot more.
In short, Zen Cart has all the critical functionality users look for in online shopping cart services. You may want to hire a developer to design something truly unique down the road, but you get more than enough tools to start with.
For starters, the installation requires some effort. The backend looks a bit dated, and it is definitely designed for users comfortable with tech. Finally, you might need a developer to handle more in-depth customization.
Your best bet is to go for a premium template since many of those are much more modern. An alternative is to go with a free theme and customize it yourself or hire someone to do it for you.
This is a valid option if you have a specific design in mind and want to get it just right, though you could do the same with just about any open-source cart. Once you pick out a theme, you can do some simple editing. This includes things like basic layout changes rearranging and resizing text boxes , editing the CSS styling, adding custom fonts, etc.
The exact layout and styling features do somewhat depend on your theme, so choose wisely. Zen Cart is a completely free shopping cart software. Its 2, plugins are all community-generated, so you can download them for free as well. Unlike a few providers looking at you, nopCommerce , it lets you remove this for free. The only caveat is that Zen Cart will not feature your store on its website, but this is just a minor detail. Third-party themes may be paid.
ZenCart is free, but there is no support. If you need help with something, you can always ask a question in the forums. Depending on your hosting provider, you might get some basic assistance. The cart is built on the standard LAMP stack, so finding a qualified dev should be a walk in the park.
Many website owners have built amazing stores with Zen Cart. Some users did complain about trying to set up Zen Cart via Softaculous and it breaking immediately. Zen Cart is a solid choice if you run a midrange business and want to add a custom-tailored storefront to your website. It takes quite a solution to stay relevant in ecommerce for that long. I will focus on the latter since hosted solutions deserve their own article.
It also includes a few advanced options to help you maximize conversion rates, like abandoned shopping cart auto-recovery and upsells. The online shopping cart system also has an integrated affiliate platform. You can have users sign up and promote products for you. If you prefer, you can also make products available on Amazon, eBay, and Google Products.
You can easily sell across multiple channels and get more exposure for your business. UltraCart strives to make as much functionality as possible available out-of-the-box. While it does succeed at this, there are few extensions to speak of. The cart only has eight notable integrations, which only cover the essential functions. No extensions really distinguish UltraCart from all other shopping carts. UltraCart is pretty easy to set up and integrate with your website.
All the retail management features are well-designed and intuitive, and all you really need to do is copy short snippets of code onto your site. You can just install the UltraCart plugin and feature products or groups of products on your website in only a few clicks. Most of the popular processors are supported, so you should have no trouble finding the right one for you. The solution also integrates its own processor, called UltraCart Payments.
The gateway supports all major credit cards. The rates depend on your plan, with the higher tiers offering more favorable deals than most processors. The smallest plan is somewhat limited. Despite this, the support team is rather decent. The longest I waited for an email response was 20 minutes. And did I mention you can reach the support team on Skype?
The agents do a superb job of answering all questions and helping you make your store work. They are a delight to work with.
UltraCart gets plenty of praise for being robust and highly scalable. Many users effectively sell products through it. A few users did complain UltraCart can feel a bit clunky, and features like reporting could be more customizable.
Those are fair points; UltraCart definitely has room for improvement. UltraCart is one of the best online shopping carts if your website is already doing well, and you want to use that popularity to sell a few products.
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, meaning you can use it to equip a WordPress website with a shopping cart. WooCommerce comes with all the necessary functions like inventory management, selling physical or digital products, managing shipping and tax options, etc.
You can also upload nearly unlimited product categories, let users leave product reviews, run affiliate campaigns, and a whole slew of other options. Speaking of plugins, WooCommerce has an expandable architecture. This means the core storefront software is lightweight, and you can pick and choose which features to add on top of it. This way, everyone can install what they need and avoid wasting server resources on non-essential features. WooCommerce has nearly official plugins you can integrate into your store.
Some of the notable ones include plugins for booking, subscription-based services, and enabling product add-ons like gift wrapping. All sorts of features are in the mix, making WooCommerce one of the most customizable shopping cart solutions in the industry. Also, check that the plugins you install are compatible with WooCommerce, or it might be difficult to do software updates. WooCommerce is easy to set up.
Enabling it on your WordPress installation is as easy as typing its name in the plugin repository. Some hosts even let you preinstall WordPress and WooCommerce when picking out a hosting plan. Once you do install it, WooCommerce gives you a quick tour to help you find all the key features. Using the plugin is pretty similar to navigating WordPress. The dashboard makes it easy to find all the options and handle basic retail management activities.
Of course, this will depend on the theme. Some premium themes, like Astra, add a bunch of design features and even let you fully customize the layout of your website. Alternatively, you can go for a builder plugin like the Elementor WooCommerce Builder.
Unlike other shopping carts that require you to have a bit of knowledge in servers and coding, LiteCart can be installed automatically on your server. If you have cPanel, just look for Softaculous and you can find it featured there. It caters to both beginners and established businesses with all of its comprehensive features. Zen Cart is another open-source shopping cart that you can literally download and patch up on your existing website to turn it into an online store.
Like other shopping cart plugins, Zen Cart allows its users to fully customize the checkout process, integrate with several payment processors , as well as integrate with other third-party applications for a more functional online store. Spree Commerce is yet another open-source shopping cart that you can use to build an online store.
It features a really good admin dashboard that is perfectly suited for beginners as well as advanced users. Spree Commerce documentation is robust and if you are still confused about anything, there is a huge community of users out there who can help you. The only downside I can see here is if you need technical support and you are in a hurry, you have a better chance of getting help if you hire someone to work on your issue, rather than fully rely on the community for help.
But that said, you can integrate a bunch of third-party applications with Spree Commerce, and it also works with dozens of payment gateways. Mailchimp is a well-known brand in the online world, so once Mailchimp adopted Reaction Commerce and renamed it Mailchimp Open Commerce , the open-source development of this eCommerce platform has just become better. Mailchimp Open Commerce has an extensive documentation that beginners and experts can follow to install, customize, and launch an online store.
It features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved. CRE Loaded is much more than your average shopping cart. Organize, manage, and ship your products from your online store.
Accept credit card transactions safely. The Zeuscart shopping cart is based on PHP application, and it is used as a scripting language, which facilitates the developer in making d ynamically driven websites.
It is very facile to learn and understand. Offers an extensive range of features that allow you to set up an online storefront or shop ranging from a simple template-based store for novices to the integration of complex web design concepts created by your web designer. The complete e-commerce shopping cart solution for Joomla! It can be run in Store- and Catalog-Mode. VirtueMart works for both Joomla and Mambo. RokQuickCart is a simple shopping cart for Joomla.
It takes a simple, yet elegant, shopping cart script and integrates directly into Joomla. It allows you to showcase products, inclusive of images, descriptions, and additional options, and purchase these items, with support for shipping and tax calculation. Integrate a simple shopping cart into your content.
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