Today’s market has estimated that online sales will reach nearly $249 billion by next year in the United States. It is also has predicted that 175 million people will buy online in 2018.
The growth in online sales is enormous and now accounts for 8% of total retail sales.
Without a doubt, online sales have reached very high levels and become very lucrative.
Whether you are the owner of a traditional brick and mortar store that wants to grow online or are an entrepreneur eager to take advantage of this rising trend of online sales, one thing to consider from the beginning, it’s the choice of platform that you will use for your online store.
The good news for you is that there is a diverse selection of e-commerce software available to you in open source (free) market. We will take a look at the best choices.
I will make my own opinion about these popular e-commerce solutions that are available for free use:
- osCommerce
- Zen Cart
- Magento
- PrestaShop
- paGO Commerce
Let’s start the discussion with the oldest e-commerce first.
osCommerce
osCommerce is one of the oldest open source shopping cart available on the market. It was born on March 2000. The project was born in Germany.
osCommerce uses PHP for server-side programming and MySQL for its relational database management system (RDBMS).
Nearly 13,000 websites use this popular e-commerce solution. Over the past 12 years, osCommerce has formed a massive community around it, consisting of 270,000 members and over. So you will be able to take advantage of the expertise of thousands of osCommerce experts, and web developers specialized in the e-commerce platform if you ever need support.
Throughout its history, osCommerce is vulnerable to significant security issues.
Zen Cart
Zen Cart is similar to osCommerce one of the oldest on the market today. osCommerce may appear like Zen Cart because was developed with the osCOmmerce codebase.
Zen Cart provides online retailers with a more significant number of customer management, sales, and marketing tools such as gift certificates, coupon codes, promotional and sales rules, automatic order confirmation e-mail, and much more.
Zen Cart is primarily for developers and advanced users. The creation and management of sites built with Zen Cart, as well as the modification or updating of Zen Cart’s models, is a complicated affair compared to the most e-commerce cart like paGO Commerce or PrestaShop.
Magento Community Edition
Magento is an open source e-commerce platform that has a tremendous growth right now. Magento currently propels more than 125,000 online businesses worldwide. eBay quickly acquired this open source project launched in 2007. Magento, being highly configurable and robust, attracted a large number of contributors.
Magento can be compared to WordPress. Both revolutionized and dominated the space they targeted. Magento in e-commerce, WordPress in blogs and content management.
Currently, it offers three elective plans ranging from $ 0 to $ 49.99 per year. We are talking about the free source edition here, which is called the Community Edition.
PrestaShop
Prestashop offers essential e-commerce functions, many marketing tools for site owners, the ability to run multiple online shops from a single facility, good active support from the community, and the abundance of technical documentation. All this makes PrestaShop an excellent choice for online sellers.
Being not very targeted towards web developers, PrestaShop focuses on usability. Although to do some advanced customization, you might still need to hire a pro.
paGO Commerce – Joomla E-commerce extension
Although paGO Commerce is the youngest of the e-commerce platforms in this article, it has already proven itself as one of the best e-commerce software. The success of paGO Commerce is in its simplicity and excellent user-friendliness for online merchants and their customers.
The target market for paGO Commerce ranges for small companies to enterprise level solution. Project and community contributors are very active and provide outstanding support. The project is updated very often, offering users new features and fixes. It is a real gem for online merchants.
General Trends in Open Source E-commerce Software
It’s clear that Magento is dominating space right now.
osCommerce and Zen Cart seem to disappear from the charts. Interest in these e-commerce solutions is down. Zen Cart has not even reached the pinnacle of its glory due to the arrival of new platforms like Magento.
The whole landscape has changed entirely with PrestaShop, and paGO Commerce has jumped into the scene.
The popularity of PrestaShop continues to increase and, in the near future, I think it will surpass its rivals.
paGO Commerce has grown faster than any open source e-commerce software; I think even quicker than Magento. Its popularity has doubled in the past year. This is indicative of the project’s ability to provide an excellent e-commerce platform for online entrepreneurs.
Author Bio: My name is Olivia, and I am a web developer with more than seven years’ experience in the PSD to Magento theme company, WebePower Ltd. If you’re looking to hire WordPress developer, then Olivia can prove to be an intelligent choice.
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