What shopping cart system do you use?

[gary]

I'm curious to see what e-commerce systems other sites are using. I use osCommerce, with Worldpay for card processing - a popular combination it seems. osCommerce is great, but you do need to do a lot of work on it to really get it to do a lot of things other systems have as standard. There are a lot of features you can add though, and some of the reporting tools I've installed are quite useful.

So what system do you use, and what's great about it?

Gary

[SillyJokes]

We wrote ours entirely inhouse with WorldPay as a payment service provider.

In this way we have total control over how it looks and works and it doesn't look like an off the shelf product.

We have also written all our back office stuff so that orders are processed with the minimum hassle and sent out to customers pronto. We can create whatever reports we want.

This all means the shopping cart can grow and evolve as our business does.

[gary]

That's clearly the ideal way to go, though there's obviously a considerable cost involved. Hopefully if all goes well I'll be doing the same at some point, though osCommerce and the extras I've added on are doing the job very well at this stage.

Gary

[Ozzy]

Hi Gary,
osCommerce is very good for a free piece of software, and if it does the job then it is very good. I know one of the UKs largest online shops use osCommerce with some modifications and they take nearly 2 million pounds a day in sales (I know because I used to work for the payment gateway, in fact ran the payment gateway, that processes their online transactions).

However, developing your own if you have specific needs is better even though so long as the data is stored in a database you can do anything with the data including reports and automation.

[gary]

That's true, Richard - I just need to get someone on board with a little more technical knowledge than I have so I can do more with it (once I've decided exactly what I want it to do, of course!)

Gary

[Enigma121]

I'm surprised that anyone else has, but we are developing a system in much the same way as Silly Jokes.

We see the benefits as fine grained control over integration with the site, and the biggest one for our customer at least easy upward migration to support full I18n in the near future.

Out of curiosity Silly, are you using SelectPro integration?

[chris1317]

currently just use paypal as dont have any tangeable products yet but that is to change soon. I was thinking of oscomerce but was not exactly sure how to integrate with my current site.

Chris.

[Rob Holmes]

We wrote a small script that customises a hosting package, quotes on it, gives the visitor the option to pay monthly or annually, then gives them the choice to pay via Paypal or Worldpay, then the script points them to the right site and embeds the correct info for whatever payment processor the customer chose.

Not much to it but very effective!

Rob

[Richard Conyard]

We obviously have all of ours as in-house systems.

Interesting to hear about the cost worry. With something like an e-commerce system the tweaks towards your business process to save time more than make up for any small additional cost from going with a package.

[Paul_J_Cooper]

Litecommerce or Xcart is excellent and very cheap software used by designers, coders and shop owners to build e-commerce stores. You can use most payment processors ie HSBC, ePDQ, WordPay etc.

It has loads of add-ons like advanced search, greet customer, gift certificates etc.

If you're s designer it's very easy to edit their templates which use the Flexy template engine.

You can see an example liteCommerce store that i built at http://www.angrydragonx.co.uk/shop/, the store isn't "open for business" yet, but it's fully working, we're just adding products at the moment. Check out the ladies underwear in the Ladies/Accessories section.

If you want us to help or build a site for you using litecommerce visit our website at http://www.opusonlineltd.com :D

[Whistle Ink]

Hi everyone,

I've just downloaded EROL and Actinic. Erol offer 60 day trial by which you can set your store up completley and then just pay!

The templates aren't too bad actually compared to the shops I will be 'competing against'. I can also import product information, update and delete old products which will take care of the 6,000 product catalogue I plan on using!

Its definatley worth checking out.

[SNS IT]

Hi,

We have got our own but we can customise according to client requirement. If you need more details please let me know

Regards
Hemal
www.snsitltd.com

[PowerBasket]

Power Basket is a new shopping cart software which can use PayPal, WorldPay, Nochex & various other payment methods.

It has no set up fee and its priced at just £19.95 a month, possibly the cheapest around..

[MichaelG]

Hiya - We build bespoke ebusiness applications. We take requirements and build a system to meet needs. We are currently building a commerce management system for a client that will include various flexible modules, for example

- multiple web store support (same product inventory, different product categories/design/product pricing/shippping/etc)
- order management
- purchase management
- inventory/warehouse management
- customer relationship management
- content management
- integration with suppliers
- integration with fulfilment houses
- reporting module
- intelligent search/dictionary module
- etc

All these for version 1 - the system will be delivered as open source so that the client, if required, can expand the application inhouse.

[wezza]

I use zencart which is open source and free! Works well for me.

[forpetmenot]

I use Cubecart V4, its easy to customise, costs £75 a year and has lots of 3rd party add-ons available.

Check out my latest shop to see it in action - at forpetmenot.co.uk

Saying that though, I have just today been put onto CRE Loaded which looks impressive and may be worth a punt for my next project.

[boho]

I use Internet Retailer (http://internetretailer.biz) for mine, been with them since 2005 and very happy with my hosted package and the features/facilities that I have. Its their own white label software so its a bit more flexible than a lot of similar hosting packages and run by people with online shops and retail experience themselves - always helps! :)

[dark_stranger]

I use shoppingcart.org, well i use the Paypal IPN & inventory management backend, but developed the site shopfront around my needs as didnt want your box standard shopfront. The support is pretty bad, but fortunately I am good with this type of stuff so was able to resolve all issues myself.

[dollyseller]

I have used ClickCart Pro for 2 yrs (version 5.1) and am very happy with it. I was a complete novice when I built my site, but managed to link their shopfront to my static pages , and to apply a skin to their pages to tie in with my colours. Payment options are numerous, I have customised postage and checkout (although you can just use theirs), and it is easy to use via admin pages, or to go into the backend and customise.

[Stampy]

Magento for one site, Prestashop for three sites, and cre loaded for another. All open source "free" applications. Presta is the easiest to use, magento looks and "feels" nicer and has more functionality. Use paypal and googlecheckout as payment options.

[scoobielou]

I use EKM which is reasonably priced and offers loads of options for payment methods, a stock control system, easy to use templates or option to adapt using html. This is the third shopping cart ive used and is far the best. Would recommend to anyone.