This is intended as an ongoing article that will be updated on occasion until it serves some kind of useful purpose to the reader, once complete this introductory note will disappear. Please note that I am speaking from a personal perspective as a web developer installing and reviewing Open Source Software. I would be only too pleased to add your appropriate comments suggestions or views.
I believe that many free open source ecommerce alternatives have been suppressed in the past by larger corporations because the free alternatives could prove a threat to their future profits. I’m not naming any names but we know who they are, you only have to take a look at Craigslist and eBays failed attempts to buy a governing stake in it to realize that if any web site or viable free software alternative were to arise it would be bought out or suppressed. I have been searching for the Holy Grail amongst OS Ecommerce systems for some time now, the Multi-Shop Cart or Shopping Mall. I have yet to find it, or at least a viable version that works efficiently without glaring bugs that render it useless to anyone without a PHP PHD!
I’ll leave the subject of Multi-Shop software for the moment and move onto Open Source Ecommerce carts and the various versions that I am currently aware of. If you do a search on Google for ecommerce software you’ll possibly find “Magento” close at the top, Magento is a relatively new shopping cart solution, it’s very resource hungry but if you can get your head around it’s bewildering back end then it may almost certainly be the most impressive cart out there. I’m currently toying with it for the third time and still can’t quite get to grips with it.
One of the oldest pieces of free shopping cart software available is OSCommerce it’s been around for roughly 10 years, it’s relatively easy to install and not very complicated to administer, many small vendors use it or one of its off shoots and some not so small ones also. OSC had remained pretty stagnant with no updates or newer versions for quite some years, this created a vacuum for others to create off shoots, like Cre-Loaded, OSC Max and Zen Cart. Many consider these to be superior to the original or at least until the original OSCommerce was updated.
That’s all, I will add a list later, for now, I’ll continue dreaming about the ultimate Open Source free to install multi platform, host your own store but be part of a massive international shopping mall come thrift shop…
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