e-commerce-site.co.uk

Free ecommerce software is not difficult to come by. When you are just starting up in e-commerce, money can be tight, and with domain names,  hosting and all the other things to pay out for before you even start, paying several hundred pounds for a commercial e commerce program can be a significant barrier

Fortunately, there is some well established and secure free ecommerce software available to help you get your online shop up and running.

osCommerce

No article on free ecommerce software can go without mentioning osCommerce.  osCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution that offers a wide range of out-of-the-box features. This allows online stores to be setup fairly quickly with ease, and is available for free as an Open Source based solution released under the GNU General Public License. In addition to the built in features, there are many thousands of add-on “contributions” which can extend the capabilities of this free ecommerce software.

Zen Cart

Zen Cart is described by the developers as being  a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software that puts the merchants and shoppers requirements first.

Zen Cart branched from osCommerce as a separate project. Zen cart uses a different templating structure which makes it easier to change the design of the site, and additional modules are included in the core of the system, rather than having to be added on afterwards. This makes it significantly easier than osCommerce to get an e-commerce site up and running.

Magento

Magento is the much hyped new kid on the block as far as free ecommerce software is concerned. The developers refer to it as “ecommerce evolved” and claim that it is going to revolutionise the industry. It certainly has the power and flexibility to develop a dynamic and complex ecommerce website, but it appears to be aimed more at developers than the average small start-up online shop. A high level of technical proficency is required to customise the website to your requirements. There are also reportedly performance problems on some hosting – enthusiasts recommend either using hosting that is specially optimised to run magento, or using a dedicated server – again not ideal for most people.

Agora Cart

Agora Cart is free with most cpanel web hosting, usually with a simple one-click install. However, despite this, it is not a particularly popular choice. A look at the company website shows that most (though not all) of the showcase sites were built around 2002-2005. Agora Cart seems to suffer a bit from having been left behind by  newer php based ecommerce software (AgoraCart is Perl/MySQL based shopping cart system)

Nevertheless, it does offer a great deal of flexibility in many areas including full design controls through Cascading Style Sheets (css) and  templates, enabling the building of online stores ranging from simple template sites for the beginner, to complex web designs for the developer.

Cube Cart

Cube cart is another shopping cart that is available free of charge with most cPanel hosting. It is is a fully featured ecommerce shopping cart  used by over a million store owners around the world, which is easy to set up and run. You can quickly set up an online store with the minimum of fuss and sell either physical or downloadable products. A big plus is that it has been professionally Security Audited with thorough penetration testing. It  is easy to modify the design of your store, for instance to match your company’s existing website, due to CubeCart’s powerful HTML template system. The free version of the software is v3, the newer version, v4 has many improvements over v3 including  search engine friendly urls, a quicker checkout and product reviews and comments.

VirtueMart

Virtuemart is an exciting addition to the world of free ecommerce software because it is used together with Joomla,  the renowned Content Management System. This means much more flexibility in the design and layout of your store, allowing you to get away from the typical online store look, and stand out from the crowd.

There is of course other free ecommerce software available,  particularly new developments of existing ecommerce software, such as Batavi, which is based on osCommerce.