Shopping cart options?

Kent Brockman

Has anyone any experience using Zen Cart? looking for pros and cons thanks.
It appears to be free and Im thinking of trying it out.

AndyJB

Kent Brockman wrote: »

Has anyone any experience using Zen Cart? looking for pros and cons thanks.
It appears to be free and Im thinking of trying it out.

Hi,
I was in the same position as you. I thought it's free so it can't be any good.

I'm in the middle of playing with it at the mo.

The stock control side of things has some nice features, it is fiddly but it's ok when you get used to it. I've run into a negative stock issue when using the attributes function for stock items, but I've been given a code patch to apply to solve this. Not got round to it yet.

I would advise you to get the manual.

I've played around with screen layouts, again a little fiddly manual helps!!

The functionality around the whole invoicing area and managing customer accounts I like.

It's very easy to use with PayPal. I have still to look at using non PayPal methods eg Realex.

The VAT reporting side seems ok again will need to do some more looking.

For a product that's free there's a lot of functionality built-in and ready to go. I've my test cart running on a web server and I'm v-happy with the response times I'm getting, of course that's with a v-low user count and product count.

I've played with one other paid for shopping cart system and it wouldn't even install!!

There are loads of shopping cart products out there but you'll pay. So if you're on a budget and have patience and are willing to fiddle around with it, it's the one for you.

Their wiki is not bad.

Keep me posted on how you get on.
Drop me a line if you have any other queries.

Best of luck.

mneylon

Most of the software that runs the internet is "free"

Eoin

I've used it. It has lots of features that can take a while to figure out. It is absolutely essential that you apply all the security patches, as it doesn't seem to take much to get malicious files appearing on your site. The admin section allows files to be uploaded (product images etc), and this can be exploited quite easily.

I've yet to see a module that allows checkout without registering. This might help increase sales, as some customers don't like creating an account - they want a once-off transaction.

One thing that is both a pro and a con is that Zen Cart sites can look quite generic. This obviously isn't good from a branding point of view, but it does provide a familiar interface for many customers, which can help usability.

AndyJB wrote:

I have still to look at using non PayPal methods eg Realex.

It's quite simple, there's a module available and not much has to be done to integrate it.

Scotty #

Zen is a fork of OsCommerce. I've never been a fan of either for some reason. Just too many bugs and flaws though I haven't used either in a couple of years to be fair.

If you want a really simple e-commerce solution that's easy to set up I'd check out www.opencart.com/