Setting up your own ecommerce shop on an open source system

[jimmyjimmerson]

I am going to be setting up a few online shopping sites but don't have the money to throw at getting the sites developed.

What advice and tips would you give to me to help me set up?

Decent open source carts with templates etc...

I come from a purely seo/online marketing background but I don't want to go into the service market. So any help and advice would be hugely appreciated.

 

[cornish hosting]

Hi if you have web hosting now check if they have softaculous installed. if they have you can install shopping carts from there for free i think they have about 10 to pick from,

 

[jimmyjimmerson]

Hi if you have web hosting now check if they have softaculous installed. if they have you can install shopping carts from there for free i think they have about 10 to pick from,

I only have the domains bought at the moment.

Which hosting companies offer this?

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

There are plenty of open source carts out there that will do the job for you. Some of the ones that get recommended a lot on here include Magento, OpenCart, RomanCart and ZenCart. We have clients on all 4 platforms using our gateway and yes there are some very basic (but functional) websites out there on open source but there are also some fantastic looking websites that have been built using a free shopping cart such as those mentioned above.

 

[cornish hosting]

I only have the domains bought at the moment.

Which hosting companies offer this?

We have softaculous installed

 

[Cris]

You can have a free shopping cart but it is feature limited. You can get a free shopping cart from Avactis, it is an excellent solution for online business. It is a great way for any online merchant to start selling online without much investment. It has Powerful marketing tools, integration with QuickBooks, a Facebook storefront, mobile skins, and responsive technical supports.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Cris, you are right, Avactis is very limited.

All of the carts already mentioned (I add Joomla/Virtuemart) are very well specified, free to access, use and open to change source code.

 

[jimmyjimmerson]

I am not a big fan of joomla so I would never use that again.

I will have a good look into virtuemart and avactis. Thanks for your help

 

[Cris]

I am not a big fan of joomla so I would never use that again.

I will have a good look into virtuemart and avactis. Thanks for your help

You're welcome jimmyjimmerson. You can have a look at Avactis and try out the demo and if you like the software then go for it. We have different needs for our businesses and maybe Avactis will suit your needs.

 

[Faevilangel]

I am not a big fan of joomla so I would never use that again.

I will have a good look into virtuemart and avactis. Thanks for your help

Cris is an Avactis spammer, every post he has made has been "Avactis does this and this"...

For Open Source ecommerce carts I would go for Magento, OpenCart or Prestashop. Joomla / Virtuemart is buggy and you're relying on a developer to keep supporting VM (it's a Joomla extension).

Going with Magento, OC or PS, you get a team of developers behind each system which are regularly updated and offer decent (ish) support via their forums. There are literally thousands of free and premium themes for all 3 carts so you should be able to find something you like / fits the intended website.

 

[Cris]

Cris, you are right, Avactis is very limited.

All of the carts already mentioned (I add Joomla/Virtuemart) are very well specified, free to access, use and open to change source code.

Yeah, limited features in free version but if you should need additional features of the full package, you can upgrade anytime without losing any data.

 

[Faevilangel]

Yeah, limited features in free version but if you should need additional features of the full package, you can upgrade anytime without losing any data.

Please put that you're an Avactis staff member in your signature as you're trying to deceive people by pretending to be a customer.

 

[JiDéGé]

Take a look at the WebOrder platform. Feel free to create a vendor account to review the application "from inside". All comments, suggestions, etc. .. are welcome. For a summary of the application, download he "WebOrder in 10 points" PDF document from the home page.

 

[CS-Cart]

Hello jimmyjimmerson,

You can take a look at CS-Cart Community Edition which is distributed for free and gives full access to its source code. Besides, SiteGround hosting provides one year of free hosting for CS-Cart users. You can learn more information on the company's site.

 

[Indivijewelistic]

I set up my site using 1&1, it start at £9.99 in its basic form, but now its £29.99 a month (as I needed more options and item headings), loads of options to choose from and you can always change the look of it in the future if you don't like it. It comes with technical help and you can also set up paypal on it or even worldpay as I have with mine. I have never known 1&1 to fall over technically and they also give you loads of advanced notice if they are going to do anything technically (which is normally 3am in the morning for about half and hour sort of thing so it has no impact).

 

[jimmyjimmerson]

I set up my site using 1&1, it start at £9.99 in its basic form, but now its £29.99 a month (as I needed more options and item headings), loads of options to choose from and you can always change the look of it in the future if you don't like it. It comes with technical help and you can also set up paypal on it or even worldpay as I have with mine. I have never known 1&1 to fall over technically and they also give you loads of advanced notice if they are going to do anything technically (which is normally 3am in the morning for about half and hour sort of thing so it has no impact).

What do the sites look like aesthetically though?

 

[mojobeans]

I used an open source system called Avactis and found it is functionally rich (e.g. stock control, customer reviews can be configured, promo codes etc) and easy to customise. I was originally going to pay a company to build my store in Avactis but after installing it locally I found it easy to do it myself! It comes with several out of the box templates too and there are of course ones you can purchase too.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Looks like Cris has a friend (or a new name!).

 

[ecterra]

Do explore ZenCart, Prestashop, OpenCart or TomatoCart
Have a look at our implementations of these shopping cart solutions.
You can even request a one hour access to the backend admin panel and play around with it.

cheers
Nonny

 

[wight services]

For years I used oscommerce then moved onto Zencart which was I believe a fork of oscommerce and a lot neater and very easy to add modifications to and use. Recently I fell upon opencart, and while its purely aesthetics I really like the add to cart bit and slide checkout bit meaning no page reloading, so have now developed my second store in it and when I get a spare hour I am swaying towards ditching zen cart just for that reason.

In saying that both are very good systems and I would suggest trying the demos of both see how you find them.

 

[virginoffice]

We use zen cart as this seems to be about the easiest to understand for a novice user like me. also it has hundreds of mods most of which are free to download from their website. Templates can aslo be installed easily as well.

 

[movietub]

Magento is a steep learning curve if you want a quick fix... But as you want to run several shops, it could save you a lot of time long term. You can run several stores from a single magento install.

One thing that will hold you up with any open source solution though is server costs. Magento is very resource hungry but to be honest all decent open source carts are quite hungry, and dedicated hosting soon becomes the only realistic option. Open source are hungry because they are built to be very open ended in how they can be added too, which means they load up a lot of files for every process they are asked to perform.