eCommerce recommendations?

[Bob Barr]

A website client of mine wants to add internet ordering to her site. I anticipate a fairly low level of transactions, probably in the range of dozens of orders per month but possibly higher.

The problem that I'm having at this point is narrowing down my selection among the seven ecommerce packages that my hosting company provides. Rather than spending a lot of time to research all seven packages, I was wondering if I could get some general recommendations regarding them. Are any of them particularly easy to learn? (I've never dealt with ecommerce before.) Should any of them be avoided like the plague?

Once I've narrowed down the list to two or three candidates, I'll be in a much better position to do the necessary digging to make my final choice. I'd just like a little help whittling down the list.

The seven packages I have available are:

Paymerica Merchant Services

ShopSite

Magento

CubeCart

ZenCart

OSCommerce

OpenCart

[iamyri]

OSCommerce is very powerful tool

[Bob Barr]

Thanks for the suggestion. So far, the only recommendations that I have gotten are for ZenCart and OSCommerce.

[suzjor]

OK...I LOVE Magento. I currently have a store that runs on this and am also designing a website for a client using Magento. I mean...come on some fairly large companies are using Magento. I would recommend you make sure your host really can handle it though.

[Bob Barr]

Originally Posted by suzjor

OK...I LOVE Magento. I currently have a store that runs on this and am also designing a website for a client using Magento. I mean...come on some fairly large companies are using Magento. I would recommend you make sure your host really can handle it though.

Thanks for the suggestion. So far, I've gotten one recommendation each for ZenCart, OSCommerce, and now, Magento.

I'm hosted on Bluehost and, since they do have Magento available through their SimpleScripts install system, I'm quite sure that my client's small store will run just fine on it.

[seosean]

No x-cart on the list? I'd suggest them if you had them listed.

[Bob Barr]

Originally Posted by seosean

No x-cart on the list? I'd suggest them if you had them listed.

Thanks, that's certainly another one to take a look at.

The ones that I listed above are all available under a scripts management facility at my hosting provider. The facility implements a one-click-install and an auto-update capability.

[SiteShrine]

If you are considering osCommerce then you should consider creloaded. The templating system is in place and many of the modules you would need to add manually with oscommerce are standard with creloaded. Osmax is another option of oscommerce that has been improved upon.
Creloaded is a shopping cart powered by the popular osCommerce programming and supercharged by CreLoadeds added features and conveniences. This is the optimal cart for any eCommerce retail business venue. Easily manage an online store with a full featured shopping cart with inventory control, ease in adding inventory, seo control and capability, and tracking monthly sales and real time site visitors.

Create New Account or New Order
Edit Orders 1.56 MS2
Purchase Without Account
Free Shipping logic enhancements
Shipping Modules (UPS, FED EX, USPS)
Shipwire order fulfillment integration
Attribute Copier
Category Box Enhancement
Cross-Sell
Custom Sort Order
Daily Products Reporting
Download Controller
Easy Populate
Product Extra Fields
Customer Edit Page
Customers Not Validated Report
Purchase Without Account
Basic Template Structure
Category Box Enhancement
Template Install & Configure V1.2
Banner Manager
Credit Class / Gift Voucher / Discount Coupons
Header Brand Manager for catalog logo and slogan text
Print Order with Store Logo
Featured Products
Meta Tag Support
Specials On Main Page
Specials by Category
All products and manufacturers
Shop by Price Filter
Header Tags Controller
Article Manager
Information Pages and Categories
Links
FAQ Manager
Who's Online InfoBox
Language File Editor
Wishlist
Admin Dashboard
Admin SSL
Admin With Access Levels 2.2
Create New Account or New Order
Admin URL return after log-in
Mysql Backup
Product Notifications Reporting
Wishlist Reporting
Sales Reporting
Monthly Sales & Tax 1.55
VVC Configuration (on/off and settings)
Registered Globals Off
Order Fraud Screen
Visual Verify Code (VVC) security
SMTP mail server abstraction
Runtime Code Inclusion Expansion
Shipping & Payment Modules
Multi-language capabilities

The fact that you can install easily from Fantastico is certainly not the best reason to make a decision. The other carts out there are easily installed via ftp and include and install module with simple instructions. Even better is to purchase an upgraded version so that you have grounds to demand support for what you paid for versus hoping there is support with a free script. Shopping carts are always being updated as they have many functions that can become vulnerable to hackers. Don't rely on a free script where you have to wait for some generous programmer to update and contribute his findings.

[Bob Barr]

The fact that you can install easily from Fantastico is certainly not the best reason to make a decision.

Thanks for your suggestions.

I was only using the availability of packages through SimpleScripts as a starting point for filtering packages before making my decision. I will certainly take a careful look at creloaded. An automated install isn't a necessity; rather, it's just a nicety. Since I'm totally new to ecommerce, I needed to start somewhere and that list seemed as good a place as any.

Thanks again.

[hostrea]

+1 for creloaded. the template system is a ton easier than oscommerce. You can modify oscommerce to use the sane template system but it is a pain.

[flyingman]

try prestashop ver 1.1 click here : www.prestashop.com

[Mousee]

If you main site uses Joomla CMS than the best choice for you is to set up e-commerce solution using virtuemart.
But for independent shop I prefer Magento for its web 2.0 approach.

[nks]

This is a good thread, I am also on the look-out for a script that can be used for my shop.

[PerfectMoney]

with so many fans and so many active forums user my vote is for oscommerce platforms,

[sequincer]

Magento is great however I would like to go for Zen cart for a Change.

[zaksamba]

Depending on the scale - WP-ecommerce for WordPress is very nice. WP is also a great deal easier to manage than some of ther other larger scale CMS systems such as Drupal or Joomla. Again, totally depends on customer need of course.

[so.ray2000]

zen-cart and oscommerce

[nks]

As mentioned in my post earlier, I am also looking out for a ecommerce shopping cart website. I have found one that is simple and easy-to-use; to integrate using WordPress - WP-e-commerce plugin. It works really great!

[Aramis]

Magento and if you dont like magento oscommerce or zencart

[highcloud]

Personally I'd suggest Optimal payments (optimalpayments.com) / (optimalpayments.co.uk)