Shopping Cart Evaluations

More than a year ago I was introduced to the world of PHP based open source shopping cart applications. My first introduction was the Zen Cart application. I soon went searching for others. I found 8 free open source shopping cart applications based on the PHP scripting language. Since my first search, one of those apps, phpShop, seems to have gone out of business and is therefore not included here. This page contains my evaluation of the remaining 7 applications. If anyone knows of any other applications please let me know via the eCommerce Forum on this site.

What qualifies me to evaluate these applications? More than 35 years of experience working for companies involved in the technologies that lead to the internet. I built my first web site in 1996 and have kept track with web technological changes ever since. Any one who wants to view my resume can view it here.

I created this site and did the evaluation and forum because I could not find anything similar to it on the web. I offer this site as a place where people can learn about and compare these different applications. Comments regarding my evaluation of any of these applications can also be made on the forum.

I have stopped the evaluation and made my decission. Magento is the best application of the seven I've looked at, by far. It simply blows everything else out of the water. It's the only thing I'll use for my own purposes. It is professional grade, industrial strength, enterprise ready software.

iPic is proud and happy to announce the pre-release of "Grow with Magento™ - The Unofficial Magento Users Guide". After months in development, we are finally able to offer this guide to installing, configuring, and using the Magento ecommerce solution. While not yet complete, this version offers more than enough information to get users started with the latest release (version 1.3.1) of the Magento software. Those who purchase now will receive free updates up to and including the final first release. For more information click the iPic Store link. Read the Introduction.

Note: All the applications were installed on my local XAMPP server. None of the evaluation applications are on a live server. All applications were installed on the MySQL database included with the XAMPP package. To see how I installed the XAMPP server package see my videos.

Table of Contents
Installation :: Physical Size :: Documentation & Support :: Customization :: Summary

Installation

The following table contains my comments on the installation of the different applications. The Install Wizard column indicates whether the application has an installation wizard to help automatically collect the necessary information to create configuration files and database tables.

App Name	Install Wizard	Comments
osCommerce	Yes	Well documented and supported.
Zen Cart	Yes	Well documented and supported.
Magento	Yes	Well documented and supported. Takes a long time because of its size. Requires no manual post installation activities to complete the installation. Magento also comes as an installer version. The installer version loads a downloader to your host and then retrieves the rest of the files it needs from the Magento web site; a very nice feature.
OpenCart	Yes	Well documented and supported.
FishCart	Yes*	For Windows users, Fishcart comes with an installer that runs on your local computer and includes an FTP client that uploads files to your server.
Digistore	No	The storefront and admin configure.php files must be edited manually. Database tables are created by importing an SQL file to the MySQL database.
PrestaShop	Yes	Well documented and supported.

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Physical Size

The following table details the physical size of each application. Size is the total size of all files as they exist in their directory. Files are the total number of files for the basic installation after the installation is complete. Database Tables are the number of tables created by the initial installation.

Note: These numbers will grow as you add extensions and community contributed add-ons to the applications.

App Name	Size	Files	Database Tables
osCommerce	3.04 MB	979	47
Zen Cart	9 MB	1,646	95
Magento	32 MB	7,185	193
OpenCart	5.66 MB	1,182	51
FishCart	6.16 MB	609	44
Digistore	4.82 MB	918	52
PrestaShop	10.9 MB	3,175	88
All figures are for the basic installation with the install directory deleted where required.

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Documentation & Support

The following table provides information about the scope of the documentation and support offered for the different applications.

App Name	Wiki	Forum	Members*	Comments
osCommerce	No	Yes	187,178	Documentation is included in the download package. The document comes in the form of a PDF file and includes instructions on all the major features of the basic package. Also included is a Community Document file with instruction on some of the add-ons. With its huge community, answers to questions on the forums are really good.
Zen Cart	Yes	Yes	63,368	The wiki contains user contributed articles on every aspect of installing, configuring and customizing Zen Cart. The forum provides quick response to most questions. There is also a book for sale that covers most of the basic package.
Magento	Yes	Yes	32,073	There is an online User Manual (a part of the wiki) which is the best place to start. In addition, there is a design guide to help you customize the user interface to reflect the store brand. The wiki contains many articles on using, customizing, and configuring Magento. The forum provides access to answers from the community.
OpenCart	No	Yes	1907	There is a user guide that is incomplete and only covers installation. It seems that OpenCart is relatively new and has yet to attract a large community of users.
FishCart	No	No	?????	The available documentation is in the form of online text files and text files included with the distribution pachage. It is written for folks with UNIX/Linux experience. Support is available by signing up with their email list server. This app is still a work in progress.
Digistore	No	Yes	1769	There is no documentation I could find. The forum does give quick responses to questions.
PrestaShop	Yes	Yes	2785	At the moment all of the documentation is contained in their wiki, which contains enough information to get the application installed, customized, and configured to take orders.
Registered members as of 8/29/2008

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Customization

Customizing the storefront for a unique online experience for visitors is vitally important for store owners. All of the applications listed offer some way of changing the different elements of the storefront. The following table offers my evaluation of each applications customization capabilities and methods. The Comments column contains information about the applications' methods of changing the look and feel of the storefront. The Ease column is my assessment of how easy the methods are. This column uses a rating system from 1 to 5 where 1 is the easiest or most intuitive and 5 is the hardest or least intuitive. To qualify for a rating of 1 an application should allow changes to every aspect of page design and layout to users with no programming knowledge or experience. Each incremental tick in the rating indicates an increasing knowledge of web technologies is necessary to successfully change all of the different aspects of the page design, layout, and behavior.

App Name	Comments	Ease
osCommerce	Layout of the osCommerce pages is table based. There is very little customization that can be done from the admin panel. The primary method of making changes is by editing the PHP files. This requires a knowledge HTML and PHP to be successful. An understanding of the software architecture is also required. Additional changes can be made by editing the CSS Stylesheet included in the root directory.	4
Zen Cart	Based on osCommerce, Zen Cart's layout is DIV based and relies more on CSS than its predecessor. ZC also offers more configuration options from the admin panel, such as configuring the columns and side boxes to include and offering an admin based editor for changing information included on several standard pages including the main page. ZC implemented a template override system as a method of preserving edited language and template files to preserve changes during updates. They also provide their "EZ Pages" feature allowing users to create new pages and/or link to other pages. Knowledge of PHP, HTML, and CSS is still required for making complex changes to the appearance and behavior of the storefront.	4
Magento	Magento has implemented their own version of "Themes" in the design of the Magento pages. Their themes are implemented on a modular basis and provides an unprecedented flexibility in design choices, including the ability to have different designs on a per page basis. This flexibility comes at the cost of complexity, including a complex software architecture. Page layout is defined by a series of XML files which work in conjunction with template files. These template files define the XHTML code not for the page but for the individual page elements defined in the layout. While an exhaustive knowledge of XML is not necessary, some understanding of the basic XML concepts are more than just useful. In addition to the XML and XHTML knowledge required, the designer must also have a basic knowledge of PHP. Knowledge of JavaScript, while not necessary, is also useful in programming specific behaviors for individual design elements. I give high marks to the design document on their web site, but even with the excellent documentation, taking full advantage of Magento's design capabilities will require a long learning curve for even highly experienced web designers. However, once you learn and understand the architecture and how there design capabilities work you can impliment designs that can't be touched by any other package.	5
OpenCart	OpenCart has a relatively simple archetecture for controlling the look and layout of pages. Even without formal documentation, I was able to figure out how it works and how to make changes. The architecture makes it possible to create multiple template sets that can be applied from the admin panel. There are template files for each of the pages making it possible to make changes on a per page basis. CSS files are also available that can be modified on a per applied template basis. Anyone with intermediate XHTML and CSS knowledge can quickly figure out how to quickly create customized pages.	3
FishCart
Digistore	Digistore is another application based, in part, on osCommerce and is completely table based. Many design elements can be set via the admin panel.
PrestaShop	PrestaShop allows for the turning off and on different page elements from the admin panel as well as the ability to edit the home page title and description. This includes the ability to change the position of the variou elements. Beyond that, they use a theme architecture similar to OpenCart's. There are CSS files and template files that can also be edited.	3

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Evaluation Summary

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I have stopped the evaluation and made my decission. Magento is best application of the seven I've looked at, by far. It simply blows everything else out of the water. It's the only thing I'll use for my own purposes. It's enterprise strenth software.

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