Looking to upgrade from ZenCart.

[izilla_pod]

I am currently using ZenCart as my shopping cart and I am looking to upgrade to something with more features. My website can be found at www.izillapod.com. I am looking for a shopping cart or shopping cart service that offers lots of features and is integrated. Right now, I host my ZenCart site on my own server and I only pay for a monthly hosting fee. I was able to create a decent template and I liked how ZenCart was easy to customize. However, I want to move on to a shopping cart that provides features such as:

- Integration with all major shipping carriers (at least get rates and possibly print shipping labels right from my site)
- Integration with major payment processing services such as PayPal Website Payments Pro and Authorize.net
- Offer the option for customers to create an account, but not be required to.
- Have a short and simple checkout process.
- Have the ability to add/remove products from existing orders and tweak prices of shipping and total price if needed.
- Offer promtions like gift vouchers/cards and discount coupons.
- Newsletters and emass mail for previous customers.
- Be able to keep the same theme/template of my old site or create a similar one.
- Have different order fullfillment options (drop-ship, stock, etc.)
- When a customer places an order for a drop-shipped product, I want the customers order information emailed straight to the drop shipper.
- Allow customers to track their orders off of my website.
- Have the tracking number sent to the customer when the shipping label is created from my website.
- Have the ability to integrate with sites like eBay, Shopzilla, Shopping, NexTag, etc.
- Offer an affiliate program.

Again, those are some of the main features that I want on my website. So far, I have looked at Yahoo, Monster Commerce, CoreSense, Zoovy, GoEcart. Again, I want something that is easy customize and has many of the features I listed above, but is still easy to use. I already have ZenCart (a spin-off of osCommerce) and I am looking to take it to the next level. I really liked CoreSense, but their minimum plan was $25,000 (i'm not there yet). CoreSense recommended Zoovy for me sense I was a smaller business. Please let me know if you have any experience with the shopping carts I listed or if you know of any shopping carts that offer the features that I want.

Thanks.

[SG14]

I prefer x cart. But you need to implement some functionality to meet your requirments

[Serrbiz]

We've used x-cart, OsCommerce and are currently exploring Joomla and related ecommerce modules. Both x-cart and OsCommerce are O. However, x-cart is constantly under attack from spammers and is loaded with a bunch of "smarty" tags that junk up the code.
Oscommerce is good, but you need a geek to get it right.

[tcustomgolf]

Yes, Zencart is actually a spin-off of OsCommerce, but where as Os has suffered with upgrades, etc., the ZenCart dev team continually is upgrading their product, and have just released a new version that has implemented many security features, and they have also gone to a tableless design...

What version are you running? As many of the features you ask are in there already...check their site also for their dev plans, as many of the others are on the table..

[jungledsales]

My top 3 suggestions (in order): Americommerce, Volusion, Miva. All 3 have many of the options you are looking for. And they all cost roughly the same amount at about $1000 per site. Americommerce will probably be ideal for you if you want to keep your current design. They quoted me $500 to program my existing site for me.

[ScottishBob]

Your wish list is a subset of our own, and we decided that volusion offered the only cost effective solution which matched our technical requirements. As a UK customer, I do find it a bit too USA-focused, but that's probably not an issue for you.

[wpriley]

I suggest you look at UltraCart (www.ultracart.com (http://www.ultracart.com/)). It's an extremely feature rich hosted shopping cart with I think matches every item on your wish list with the possible exception of "Have the ability to integrate with sites like eBay, Shopzilla, Shopping, NexTag, etc.". UltraCart creates automatic Froogle datafeeds and may integrate with some of your other targets. It can also serve as the checkout engine for an eBay or Yahoo auction or the fulfillment vehicle for Amazon Seller Central sales.

In addition to the features you're looking for, UltraCart offers a number of additional features:
1) Suggested companion products.
2) Embedded catalog search engine.
3) Digital goods support.
4) Multiple tax jurisdiction support (down to individual counties or cities).
5) Gift support including multiple ship to addresses and choice of wrapping paper.
6) Packing support which automatically selects the best shipping box for a single item order or computes the minimum number and optimum size shipping boxes for multiple item orders (this is a great feature).
7) Electronic check support (in addition to PayPal, all major credit cards and all major payment gateways).
8) Volume discounts and contract pricing support.
9) Accounts receivable support for selected customers.
10) QuickBooks integration.
11) Built-in live chat.
12) Search engine friendly pages.
13) Contribution support.
14) Integration with major third-party fulfillment services.
15) Automatic reorder support.
16) SSL certificate included.
17) Custom DNS option.
18) Documented API to allow your own add-ons.
19) Multiple site support through a single back office (including individually branded shopping carts for each site). The user templating function is very powerful and easy to use.

I also find UltraCart very reasonably priced (up to 50 products is $35 per month, 250 products is $50, 500 products is $65, etc.). There are only a few extra cost add-ons (live chat ($15 month), Froogle datafeed ($1 to $10 month), E-mail marketing ($.0025 per E-mail), and digital content delivery ($6 per GB)).

I've used UltraCart for almost three years on a number of sites and have never had a problem. The support is great. The technical staff is also very receptive to new feature requests.

Hope this helps.

[aadhunik]

My first vote is for x-cart and second for OSCmax. If you compare both carts OSCmax is fully free of charge but it comes with lots of work to do like configurations and security issues where x-cart is kind of a free, except the license fee. But it has lots of features which OSCmax doesn't support specially the Smarty Template System which many programmers like to work with for laying out the web site.
aadhunik[/google]

[orange655321]

All or 90% of the items you list are already done with Zen Cart. It sounds like you have an old zen version or just dont know all of the features on your existing site.

The only real issue is the email to the dropshiper....you really need a solid order automation integration. Most of the real dropship programs will need much more then an auto email to complete the order. You would need to really integrate with their API or integrated better with the order process.

Regardless, you should look at the latest release of Zen. Also, CRE Loaded will do everything you list there as well. You need to install the quickbooks and would still need a real supplier integration, but the rest is there.

"Have the tracking number sent to the customer when the shipping label is created from my website. "
I dont think you would want this. The order isnt shipped from your site so an auto generated shipping ID would not be connected to the shipper. The supplier/dropshipper would need to send you the tracking ID and then you can have it sent to the customer.

[swoopster]

Sounds like you may be in the middle with the success of your site. If you truely feel that by paying 1,000s of dollars for an ecommerce solution would dramatically increase your revenue then by all means purchase the best. But, if that is not the case, then continue to use the free ecommerce packages such as Zen Cart, osCommerce and the like. Make the customizations yourself or contract one of the thousands of php programs out there to make the changes for free or a small fee.

The point here is to be happy with what you have unless you see a huge profit gain by buying a commercial solution. This is why Open Source is great for most small to medium size businesses.

Peace

[krus2378]

Every year I do a round up of top PHP carts but to my dismay they are all pretty bad in their own ways - Xcart, zen cart, and oscommerce seem to be the most popular, but they all pretty much stink falling short on either extendability, customization, and usability. Oscommerce is the only one that that offers a HUGE library of contributions that allows you to extend or write your own extensions which makes it our top off-the-shelf choice. PinnacleCart would be my top hosted choice.

If you want to spend some money (it takes money to make money), then move to ASP - you have way better choices for ecommerce - Storefront is good and ProductCart by Early Impact is also really good.

For us, we have discovered that there is NO one-size-fits-all ecommerce application which is why we write our own custom applications to fit the type of business.

[orange655321]

Well...if you like the oscommerce option they can still be used on CRE and Zen with little issue since they all use the core oscommerce platform.(virtue mart, joomla, etc as well)

Some need small changes to work on CRE or Zen but these changes are often small.

We have many members who use oscommerce add ons for their IventoryStores platform without problems.

[nexternal]

With the exceptions of the customer having to create an account, Nexternal covers all of those. If you'd like more info, please PM me, I can't advertise or describe features here because I'm affiliated.


My top 3 suggestions (in order): Americommerce, Volusion, Miva

How did Miva make that list?

@swoopster

The point here is to be happy with what you have unless you see a huge profit gain by buying a commercial solution. This is why Open Source is great for most small to medium size businesses.

NO, the point of life is to be happy. The point of business is to MAKE MONEY. You say "huge profit gain." You must mean ANY profit gain (after factoring your time, downtime, training, etc.).

Why would you just sit there knowing you could make more but decide not to because it's not "huge?" Maybe you could list some of your clients so we can gauge the caliber of advice your dispensing.

[Volusion]

- Integration with all major shipping carriers (at least get rates and possibly print shipping labels right from my site)
- Integration with major payment processing services such as PayPal Website Payments Pro and Authorize.net
- Offer the option for customers to create an account, but not be required to.
- Have a short and simple checkout process.
- Have the ability to add/remove products from existing orders and tweak prices of shipping and total price if needed.
- Offer promtions like gift vouchers/cards and discount coupons.
- Newsletters and emass mail for previous customers.
- Be able to keep the same theme/template of my old site or create a similar one.
- Have different order fullfillment options (drop-ship, stock, etc.)
- When a customer places an order for a drop-shipped product, I want the customers order information emailed straight to the drop shipper.
- Allow customers to track their orders off of my website.
- Have the tracking number sent to the customer when the shipping label is created from my website.
- Have the ability to integrate with sites like eBay, Shopzilla, Shopping, NexTag, etc.
- Offer an affiliate program

Our software has all of this.

[SG14]

By the way, just heard X-cart released a new version, so it seems to be a nice option for those who would like to switch from ZenCart or osCommerce. Nothing against free solutions personally however I myself prefer companies that provide official support service and update their software as X-cart does.

The description is here if anyone is interested:
Qualiteam Software announces release of X-Cart 4.1.9 (http://www.x-cart.com/news/4.1.9_released.html)

Cheers!

[nategeeze]

Order fulfillment can be painful. So if your thinking you may want to outsource that in the future, look for cart compatibility with U.S., Canadian and International order fulfillment houses/warehouses.

[mailor]

I am currently using ZenCart as my shopping cart and I am looking to upgrade to something with more features. My website can be found at iZilla Pod - Everything for your iPod & MP3 Player (http://www.izillapod.com). I am looking for a shopping cart or shopping cart service that offers lots of features and is integrated. Right now, I host my ZenCart site on my own server and I only pay for a monthly hosting fee. I was able to create a decent template and I liked how ZenCart was easy to customize. However, I want to move on to a shopping cart that provides features such as:

- Integration with all major shipping carriers (at least get rates and possibly print shipping labels right from my site)
- Integration with major payment processing services such as PayPal Website Payments Pro and Authorize.net
- Offer the option for customers to create an account, but not be required to.
- Have a short and simple checkout process.
- Have the ability to add/remove products from existing orders and tweak prices of shipping and total price if needed.
- Offer promtions like gift vouchers/cards and discount coupons.
- Newsletters and emass mail for previous customers.
- Be able to keep the same theme/template of my old site or create a similar one.
- Have different order fullfillment options (drop-ship, stock, etc.)
- When a customer places an order for a drop-shipped product, I want the customers order information emailed straight to the drop shipper.
- Allow customers to track their orders off of my website.
- Have the tracking number sent to the customer when the shipping label is created from my website.
- Have the ability to integrate with sites like eBay, Shopzilla, Shopping, NexTag, etc.
- Offer an affiliate program.
Thanks.

I've got pretty the same list of features for myself:)
As many in this thread, I'd vote for XCart.
They do lack one thing - dropshipping. But the code is customizable 100%. My friend uses another store from the same producer, and he visits their forum. He says there are quite a lot php coders on those forums, all willing to modify php carts like X-Cart. So, if you don't like customization prices for XCart team, you could just set a bid for 3rd party coders and choose the cheapest offer.

P.S. Personally, I don't feel like dropship customization. I probably will just increase the price of dropshipper's products.

[pixma85]

checkout volusion.com, great software , a little bit costly but if your serious about business, i would def. check them out

[lesya]

Wonder why noone here talks about Magento. It seems to be quite promising and already proved to be reliable.

Easy way to switch to magento not having to deal with manual migration is to use web services available (e.g. cart2cart) which will ensure accurate migration and no data loss.

[sujancsecuet]

I prefer x cart. But you need to implement some functionality to meet your requirments

I also prefer x-cart and most of functionalities are integrated there.

[sujancsecuet]

I prefer x cart. But you need to implement some functionality to meet your requirments

I also like x-cart but do not agree with you. Most of major functionalities are build in with x-cart.

[orangegirl]

The post went on top, while it was started long ago... Izilla_pod, what was your final choice?