Which is the Best Shopping cart?

[komlink]

Hi Forum,

I keep seeing so many posts on shopping carts, there is a lot of talk but no clear confirmation as to which is the best shopping cart, irrespective of the price tag.

So I would like to request all of you out there to respond to this post and let us all know, which product you feel is the best for ecommerce and WHY?!

I look forward to hearing from you all.

Regards,
Aditya

[ShoreCon]

That is a great question that I recently was forced to seriously look into. I have found and installed two recently after a lot of research. These are the only two that I can say for certain are truly the best of breed without going over to an Windows Server.

1. Viart.com - This is a truly incredible system. It is and will continue to be my first choice from this point forward. Good support, but it can be delayed a bit with the time difference (but they have always been extremely responsive and even added features to the software at my request).

2. PinnacleCart.com - It has a truly exquisite management side with a lot of goodies. The only thing I don't really like about it is the checkout procedure. It is a little quirky. Good program and decent support but doesn't have nearly the feature set that Viart.com does.

DO NOT go with Miva.

Good luck.

[brentan0]

I don't think I'm authoritative enough to say what is the BEST cart, but it's hard not to like OSCommerce. Here are a few reasons.

It's free.

It's pretty easy to use, and well documented in forums and other support resources

Because it's open source, a number of plugins and additional capabilities are available that are also free

Because it's free, easy to use and well documented, it's easy to find developers who are familiar with it and can customize it to do what you want with a lot less developement time than if they were to start from scratch.

And, did I mention it's free?

[ChiefTutor]

I am in the web development business focused on search engine friendly websites and used a number of e-commerce solutions over the years. Since all of my clients are clients are small businesses, I quickly realized that an ASP(application service provider solution was the only cost effective solution for many if not all of them.)

The problem I found with these ASP solutions is that even though they claim to be search engine friendly, they are not. The only way to get them ranked was through domain name marketing(ie...link marketing). The structure of these sites held back the actual rankings of these sites in the search engines.

About 10 months ago, I read an article on this forum by a guy named Lee Roberts. He has spent years focused on ecommerce search engine friendly websites and everything he said made sense to me.

At the time I met him, we was just received a cease and desist from Apple computer about using the name apple pie shopping cart. This was a true search engine friendly shopping cart.

He then set forward on rebuilding an even better SEO friendly shopping cart under the brand name merchantmetrix.

I have been using this cart for all my clients. It is a great SEO product because it is built from the ground up from an SEO point of view.

I would take a look if you are really interested in SEO shopping carts. It doesn't yet have all the bells and whistles of a monster cart etc.... but even without doing any large scale domain makrketing, my clients are seeing results in the search engines and generating business via the search engine.

That has made me look good and generated more business than I can handle.

Good Luck and thanks for asking the question. I don't do a lot of posting, but in this case, I felt it was worth the time.

[malcolm]

I don't think I'm authoritative enough to say what is the BEST cart, but it's hard not to like OSCommerce. Here are a few reasons.

It's free.

You get what you pay for!

[timmathews.com]

I personally like candypress for the asp cart, and I like x-cart for the php applications.

[covingtonscustoms]

I build my own with flash and asp.

[timmathews.com]

Mr High and Mightey!
Send us a link to your cart then so we can all see it.

[fivetone]

The best carts are custom built. They do exactly what you need them to do, can easily be modified at will, and you own them free and clear without paying monthly charges.

[blueharvest]

We are using www.storesprite.com its a php shopping cart with on-line admin and supports all major payment processors.

[fred!head]

Like most of you, I've looked at a number of carts over the years. The "best" depends on your needs. Here's my experience for what it is worth.

In the past two years, I've found digiShop (http://digishop.sumeffect.com) has the best balance of features, price, and support for my small-ish clients. In addition, it's fairly easy to change and update the page design compared to osCommerce and zencart (in my experience, yours may vary).

In addition, I recently switched a client from zencart to digiShop and, in the process, we discovered that credit card numbers were not encrypted in the database. This seems like a rather obvious thing to check but be sure your testing looks at simple details like encryption. I've not had time to determine whether this is something the person who originally set my client up did or if it's a feature of zencart. I assume the former.

I also put another client into MonsterCommerce which has been a so-so experience. Good/great support, high price, sometimes quirky interface, good/great features, especially the ability to map options to different product IDs. That client wants a name brand ASP rather than the risk of hosting their own cart.

Finally, another client looked at PinnacleCart circa 2004 and while it looked great at that time the support was so-so and the features were good/great. I'm happy to see another poster on this thread speaks highly of them. I'll have to go back and test their product again.

Bottomline, collect as many cart names, URLs, and feature lists as you can then map the features, support quality, and other details to what your client needs today and in the next year. Don't assume free is best. But also don't assume paying through the nose means a better product and better support. And don't assume one cart will work for all clients.

In terms of search optimization, my preference is to create the catalog pages and product detail pages as static pages (either by hand or as static page output from a publishing tool) and use the cart only to process orders. I'm not 100% convinced querystring URLs and URL rewrites are as search friendly as static pages. And I find carts don't let me control absolutely every last detail of a page's underlying html that's useful for search engines.

Also, see if you can set up a trial account or find a demo site and let your client play with the carts that seem most appropriate. For the needs of my clients, as noted, digiShop has worked very well on all fronts (e.g. price, features, responsive support, customization) for the past year or two. Hopefully some of the above is useful detail.

Tim

[topboy]

definitly custom built carts, you can do so much more with them

[satorigirl]

Best is relative. What is best for one is not right for another.

I've used X-cart, ClickCartPro, Zen Cart, Miva, OS Commerce and Virtuemart (a Joomla adaptation of PHP Cart), as well as custom carts, and had modifications done on all the ones I've used, depending on what I needed.

IMHO, there is no *best* cart. What is best at the time depends on what you need, and what your customer needs.

I'll tell you what though, so far *none* that I've looked at (that cost less than thousands of dollars) has a decent drop-shipping function. Some will allow multiple drop ship vendors, some allow multiple ship-from locations, and some handle concatenating multiple shipping methods (since 3 different drop-ship vendors might use 3 different shipping methods), but not a single one will do it all.

[deirion]

I think the GoDaddy shopping cart works great and is very economical.

[Conficio]

I guess the reason, why you won't find an answer, is, there is no BEST for everything.

It all depends on what your needs are. What kind of shopping do you need? Do you need a simple shopping cart, with a few products available? Do you need integration into a particular CMS? Do you need a whole site builder? Do you need merchant account support? Do you need multi vendor portals? Do you sell downloadable products? Do you need a shopping cart that can customize products, such as size M, L, XL? Do you need international taxes? Do you need international shipping? do you need shipping wizards? Do you need integration in your shipping/billing/CRM system?

If you tell us what your needs are, we might be able to make better suggestions.

K<o>

[weslinda]

Of course, "best" is purely subjective. As many have mentioned, there are some free carts out there, but you do get what you pay for.

I've found good success with PinnacleCart myself. While some people have seen some ups and downs, the product has really come a long way, and over the next 6 months, this cart will do leaps and bounds in quality and features. I honestly have not seen a backend management side so easy to use for a client.

I have found their support to be quite helpful, and they are more than willing to work with people who want to develop for the cart. It's easy to do mods and updgrades with.

Only issue is that if a version changes, make sure that you client knows what mods you have completed and they do not try and upgrade.

THeir support has been very reliable over the last year since I've started working with them. Very timely, with an answer usually in hours, unless you send them an email Saturday evening, they are unlikely to get back to you till open of business on Monday.

Of course, it's all what you make of the cart, and that's the biggest piece.

http://www.passionspice.com is a site I did a while back with the PinnacleCart and while I would say it has a lot of work to be done to be improved from a site standpoint, the cart works well and they put through a few hundred orders a month without any hicups.

[ShoreCon]

I posted earlier about ViArt and Pinnacle Cart.

Frankly, regarding the OS software, it is just too problematic. OSCommerce is free, but has come a remarkably short way in the years since it was released. I do agree with the comment, "you get what you pay for."

While I cannot yet show you what can be done with ViArt.com at this point (and it will be better), this is a shop (not yet live, but will be in the next day or two) I just finished with Pinnacle Cart:

http://70.87.239.92/

I found the ASP and windows platform just too big a learning curve for me.

As for custom aps, come on! Be realistic. They are in most cases, simply unwarranted. With good, affordable shopping cart software (not free), you can almost always get really close to what you need and expect.

[weslinda]

IP Doesn't appear to work...very interested in seeing what you've done with Pinnacle.

[malcolm]

When Ampalian Jewellery was started over 3 years ago it was impossible to truly predict the level of success (or otherwise) that we'd experience so it was based on free OScommerce software. It's been hacked around an awful lot and the code is a real mess. Nevertheless Ampalian is page 1 on Google for most jewellery related terms and business is very good indeed.

Over a year ago the decision was made to re-develop Ampalian from the ground up with bespoke written software, coded by a highly talented programmer, backed by 3 years live trading experience in this fiercely competitive market. Ampalian is certainly a top 5 online jeweller and we are now just a few weeks away from having cleanly coded, intuitive software that we intend to make commercially available to other eTailers (but not competitors, sorry . We are not ecommerce theorists who are creating software that we think will work. We are eTailers creating software from live and ongoing ecommerce experience that we know works.

We will be continuously developing and improving as technology allows and there will be some key principles maintained as standard:
Code will validate to all standards
SEO built in from the ground up
Admin sales statistics as standard
Ability to operate with all payment gateways
Constant user exposure to product with buy now always available
Simple navigation with blistering speed for both browse and search
Fast product filters to drill down to what you're looking for at astonishing speed
I'll keep this thread up to date as we approach a launch date. I'm sure it'll be interesting.

[danners02]

We use www.cubecart.com - one of a few that has standards compliant HTML. Wth a fair bit of tweaking we got a decent result that ranks very well for its main keywords.
http://www.cribonline.co.uk
.. although this www.viart.com looks pretty good - will take a peak at it later.

[malcolm]

That's a great looking site.

[brucet]

There is no such thing as the 'best' shopping cart - it depends what your particular requirements are.

Some of the things to consider are:

- Specifically what features do you require - eg do you want personalised accounts for your customers?
- Do you just want to add a shopping cart to existing product pages, or do you need a complete store-building solution?
- Do you need a system that includes order-processing and reporting facilities?
- How will it perform with the search engines? Search Google for something like 'ecommerce software', and you will find the providers who know enough about search engines to make products that perform well out of the box.
- Do you want to completely customise your design? Or are you happy to choose from a selection of predefined layouts, and just change basic things like the colour scheme and images?
- What payment gateway do you intend to use? You will need to choose a shopping cart that integrates with it.
- Do you want a hosted system that runs everything from the server? (Generally you pay monthly, and you can manage the store from any location through a web browser; but the functionality is usually quite basic, all your data is held by a third party, it's hard to change provider and you lose everything if they go bust) Or do you want to hold all your data locally and upload to the internet? (Using desktop software that you pay for up-front and then own outright)

Your budget will almost certainly require you to make some compromises, but you shouldn't let the choice of technology itself constrain you - which it will, if you pick a cart first before speccing out what you want from it. Decide what you want, then look for the most reputable and best-value cart that provides it.