Sources from www.ecommerce-guide.com

Online store is one of the wonderful tools to drive more sales to your business. If you think this is another channel in marketing. One of the most cost effective way is use some of the commercial e-store software. That’s I found many offer in monthly subscription fees from $19.95 to $69.95 depend on the function or features of their shopping cart software. While you can pay a few extra dollars for shopping cart software when signing up for a hosting account or looking for a freelancer to design a layout for you. This is where Open Source software comes in to save thousand of your cost on setting up your own ecommerce business.

Open Source Software
Many like-minded programmers create software that costs nothing and can be edited just as freely. The result of this collaboration of professional programmers is software that is often as feature rich as its commercial competitors. Best of all, of course, it’s free. Open Source software is nothing new, but it was once considered to be lacking in features and incredibly difficult to install without the help of a trained professional. However, now many Open Source e-commerce packages are as intuitive as commercial solutions. And, with such a vibrant and active Open Source community, there are many options available and lots of support should you need it. To help you decide what’s a good fit for you, we’ve highlighted the features of five Open Source platforms we recommend.

osCommerce

osCommerce is one of the most widely used and highly respected shopping cart applications available. The software itself has been developed and improved over the past six years and new additions and add-ons are submitted on a daily basis. The result is a user-friendly, secure and stable e-commerce environment.

Zen Shopping Cart

The Zen shopping cart is another feature-packed, simple-to-use solution backed by a very strong community. As well as offering the same template design structure as osCommerce, Zen Cart offers an excellent range of advanced features that go beyond the general realms of shopping cart functionality. An e-mail and newsletter manager is a very beneficial tool and the flexibility in product and price options is also excellent.

Agora Shopping Cart

Agora Shopping Cart is actually only one Open Source product offered by Agora and it is a good one. The shopping cart and catalog can be completely customized to exactly match your requirements thanks to the use of CSS files. This also enables you to change the look and feel of your entire site in just a few minutes and with just one or two changes.

NoPCart

NopCart, created by NopDesign, is an extremely simple shopping cart application with the main difference when compared to others being that it is written entirely in JavaScript. This means you can use it on your Web site without having to have CGI access. One potential drawback is that NopCart is lacking in some of the more advanced features. It is only really possible to update basic product information, tax information and a minimum order level.

Commerce.Cgi

Commerce.Cgi is one of the oldest and best established of all e-commerce applications. Nearly 10 years have passed since it became the first Perl shopping basket, and being open source, that means a huge amount of development has ensued. As well as a mass of features, Commerce.Cgi provides a backend system that is simple to install and even simpler to manage.

VirtueMart

VirtueMart is an Open Source E-Commerce solution to be used together with a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla! (and Mambo). Joomla! and VirtueMart are written in PHP and made easy for use in a PHP/MySQL environment.

FistCart

FishCart is an e-commerce system for products, services, online payment and online donation management. The unique of this software is they have a add-on module that gives you the tools to exporting FishCart orders into Quickbooks! This is a real boon for small businesses, saving mistakes and hours of tedium rekeying orders.

UberCart

Ubercart is an exciting open source e-commerce package that fully integrates your online store with Drupal, the leading open source content management system. This is a killer combination for anyone looking to build a community around a product, sell access to premium content, offer paid file downloads, and much much more!

Magento’s

Magento’s commercial open source business model yields a product that is superior for a fraction of the cost. They let you control every facet of your store, from merchandising to promotions and more. There are no limits to creativity with Magento.

PrestaShop

The PrestaShop e-Commerce Solution was built to take advantage of essential Web 2.0 innovations such as dynamic AJAX-powered features and next-generation ergonomy. PrestaShop guides users through your product catalog intelligently and effortlessly, turning intrigued visitors into paying customers.

Tags: e-commerce shopping cart, e-commerce shopping carts, ecommerce shopping cart, ecommerce shopping carts, oscommerce, shopping carts, shopping carts software, zen cart