looking for advice on which cart software package to use

Hi, can anyone advise which online cart software product is good to use lots available ie zencart,cubecart os commerce yahoo e commerce. Need something for a basic online shop. Any ideas?

I am not sure, but I bet another poster will come along shortly and and make his first post especially to answer this, including a nice backlink!

I just have this strange feeling.............. 

Hi there, I have been looking at ecommece sites myself and have experience in Cubecart though the templates are a bit limited to what you can do and there are alot of add ons which you need to purchase to get the website to work. Recently I have been looking into Prestashop and this is a package that works straight out of the box, the tempates can be custimised to look very professional - see the list of ecommerce stores and it seems that everything is intergrated already like voucher codes, various check out options, gift wrapping features etc.  It is also free so you can download it and have a play with it. The team at Prestashop are always on hand via Twitter if you need any help.

http://www.prestashop.com/

If you want something easy to set up and free you could try Wordpress / Cart66 - BUT - the product search is basic and the product management will get pretty unwieldy if you get much beyond 100 products (there is no product limit with this and it will run fast but the product management may drive you mad). Really only suitable for a very basic shop.

Alternatively, if you are looking to build a substantial shop I would try Magento Go - http://go.magento.com/ - you will be set up and selling within a couple of days work and as time and budget allows you can expand and customise as much as you want, you can also convert Magento Go to self hosted if it really takes off.

Good luck.

Sorry, but I disagree with the recommendation of  Magento. A true resource hog which requires at least your own Virtual Private Server (VPS). Also on the technical side of things an outrageously complex system for which you find little support (unless you want to pay top dollars). A harmless upgrade from their version 1.5 to 1.6 is so complex that even their own developers write 'advice' in their blogs along the lines: "After the upgrade you will see that xyz files show up and I don't know why or where these files come from. I'll write more once I find out"   Six long weeks later they still seem not to know....

I design and run a few stores (I have another business!) and use www.bigcommerce.com

There is a monthly charge but its well worth it as you get all the support you need both online and on the phone. Great user interface and SEO. I cant fault it. 

Best of luck. 

Jez

Agree with Michael - Magento requires serious investment in time, money and skill.

Which is why I pointed the OP at Magento Go - a pay as you go service provided by Magento which runs on their servers so you don't need to worry about the  technical side.

The reality is all ecommere solutions have downsides, but, Magento has become the platform of choice for many large ecommerce stores, yes it is complex and installed on a badly optimised server it will run horribly slowly if at all, but Magento Go addresses a lot of these concerns. 

If your store really takes off you can then move across to the self hosted community edition which will need significant investment in both server space and development.

A bit of ping pong exchange of opinions can become a bit silly. I do stick however with my rather reserved view about Magento.

Simon if you have good working experience with Magento I'd love to hear more. Seriously.
I searched intensively for somebody who could help out on some relatively basic Magento support in December last year. Neither money nor kind words would find anybody. I did find people who had heard of Magento and formed an opinion based on their marketing.
The shop I currently try to support has suffered from lost transactions and the only way to get them back after a full week of hard labour was to manually add them back in. Thankfully only very few transactions. By a very narrow margin we almost found us in a situation where my client had received money but no way how to find out from whom.

We were offered a day rate of over £1,000/day to get support for an estimate of 2 -3 days. Thanks, but no thanks, day robbery was not provisioned for in the budget.

For the transistion away from Magento I still need somebody.

Hi Michael,

Wow - no wonder you don't think much of it! £1000 a day is crazy.

Not a Magento expert myself but we have a developer we work with who is an approved Magento developer, not sure how keen he'll be to transition your client away from Magento as he is an advocate for the platform to the point where they now don't do anything else, but it can't hurt to ask. 

I'll ask him to get in touch with you.

Simon

Back to the original question........

There are hundreds of options out there and all the major names have raving fans AND detractors. So I'd recommend taking a step back and looking at what YOU want/need.

• Do you plan to do all the implementation yourself or employ a developer?
• What features are important to you?
• How much technical knowledge do you have?
• which payment methods are you planning to use?

Make a list of requirements, then put together a list of possible candidates and start evaluating them. Look for online shops you like and see which platform they use.

I have a couple of articles on my blog you may find useful.

And feel free to give me a call - I have run my own ecommerce sites using various different carts and am happy to help.

It does depend on what you are willing to put it and the skills you have. You will also need to consider what you want to get out of it. There are a number of Open Source options though, which are therefore free, if you wanted to save money.

Have you checked out http://www.shopify.com?
I've heard that it's quite easy to setup, feature rich with a low monthly charge.

Personaly I like magento, but if you haven't got the technical skills to install and customise an open source solution, I would advise you to use a company like shopify.

Ping me a message if you have any questions.

I have run several online shops on Oscommerce and I would highly recommend it to anyone. If you are looking for something slightly more managed thaen Sitemakers in Taunton are amazing!

I would suggest Zencart or Prestashop