Choosing an eCommerce Software

Spending time to choose the right eCommerce software for your needs will save you from trouble later. When you're setting up an online store, you need to decide the software you will use to run the store. There are typically three types of solutions - hosted, off-the-shelf and custom-built.

Hosted eCommerce Solution

A hosted eCommerce solution is the easiest way to set up your eCommerce store. You can sign up with your eCommerce service provider and they will host your store on their servers. If you do not want to take the trouble of building your own store, you can use a hosted (Software as a Service - SaaS) solution. The SaaS provider will host and run your eCommerce store for a monthly fee.

Recommended Hosted Solutions

Shopify Shopify is a hosted and paid eCommerce solution. As a merchant, all you have to do is to add products and customize the look of your store.

Foxycart Foxycart is another hosted eCommerce solution, which integrates well with your existing website. You can customize its look and feel. You need to pay a monthly fee for the solution they offer.

Advantages

  • Easy to set up account.
  • No maintenance required.
  • Many hosted solutions provide additional services such as 24/7 support, SSL certificates, analytics, etc.
  • Online store is fully hosted - you don't have to lease a server.

Disadvantages

  • Need to pay on-going monthly fee to keep your store running
  • Import and export of your product and sales data are not easy with proprietary solution.
  • Customizing may not be possible or is expensive.

Licensed or Open Source eCommerce Software

Licensed eCommerce software is off-the-shelf software you can download and install on your web server. You can purchase an eCommerce software and install it on your server, rather than hosting your store with a third party.

Advantages

  • Provides a professional look and can be integrated with other areas of your website.
  • Fixed cost means one-off fee to buy the license. Many popular eCommerce packages are open source and completely free to use (e.g. Magento Commerce).
  • More flexible as the eCommerce software is written in PHP, Java or ASP.
  • More control over eCommerce data for import or export.

Disadvantages

  • Security risk with different versions, needs software up gradation on monthly or weekly basis.
  • Technical know-how required for installation and maintenance.

This option is best if you need more control and customization. When it comes to choosing an eCommerce software for your online store, there are numerous options available. Let's have a look at some of the popular licensed eCommerce software packages:

Recommended Licensed, Open Source and Free eCommerce Softwares

Magento Magento is an open source and free eCommerce software. Magento is released under GPL (General Public Licenses). You can download it for free and can modify the code adhering to licensing terms. Magento offers merchants complete flexibility and control over the presentation, content and functionality of their online channel. Unless there are other parameters to consider, QBurst strongly recommends Magento as it's flexible, powerful and customizable.

OSCommerce osCommerce is another open source and free eCommerce software released under GPL. osCommerce has a large number of community members and a large installed base. osCommerce is one of the earliest PHP-based open-source shopping cart software distributions. osCommerce come with a catalog front end and an administrative tool backend that can be easily installed and configured through a web-based installation procedure.

Zen-cart Zen Cart is also licensed under GPL and is free. Zen Cart is a fork of osCommerce and provides a template engine for creating custom themes for your online shop. Zen Cart is PHP based and uses MySQL database and HTML components. The key features included in Zen Cart are multi-language support, multiple customer modes, unlimited category depth, multiple sales and accounts, multiple display modes, multiple ad banner controller, multiple shipping options, multiple payment options, newsletter manager, discount coupons, gift certificates, featured products, quantity discounts, etc.

PrestaShop PrestaShop is an open source and free solution. PrestaShop is lightweight and fast. It is simple, easy to use and provides good back-end designs for your online store. PrestaShop is a modular and customizable solution realized in PHP and MySQL. PrestaShop offers a wide range of features for catalog, customers, orders, payments, shipping, statistics, translation, localization, SEO, security, administration and modular front office.

Custom Built Solution

Another option is that you can write your eCommerce software from scratch in robust programming languages. It provides more flexibility than the licensed eCommerce solutions.

Advantages

  • Full control over look and feel as well as behavior.
  • Easier integration with your ERP or line of business systems.

Disadvantages

  • Costs more.
  • More maintenance required.
  • More effort required for payment providers integration.

We have discussed popular eCommerce software packages. Now let's take a look at Merchant Accounts.

Back >>

Web Development
Web Applications
eCommerce
Websites and CMS
Rich Internet Applications
Microsoft
Mobile Development
User Experience (UX)
Design
IT Infrastructure Management
Cloud Computing
Independent Validation and Testing
Testing Portfolio
Competitive Intelligence
BI and Data Warehousing