Hi Everyone ~

I've got a question on the different shopping carts that are out there. I am looking for a good shopping cart that has great shipping options. I would like one that can be set up for multiple ways for shipping (ie: USPS Priority Mail, UPS Ground, Fed Ex Ground) and that calculates shipping accurately. Right now, the shopping cart I am using processes shipping charges and then I go through each and manually figure out how much shipping should actually be (website 90% of the time calculates way too high) and I adjust the costs down to actual before manually processing the customer's payment.

I also would like to find one that will keep track of inventory...let a customer know if we only have one left in stock or if we are currently out of stock on an item.

Thanks for your input.

I haven't used a readymade shopping cart, but I think www.x-cart.com has some really cool features. You may have a look.

I agree with Farhan, I've used X-cart and StoreFront shopping carts and x-cart beats StoreFront by far, simple to use, cheaper, easy to customize, can run on both platforms (Microsoft and Unix) I prefer the later because of stability and security, and as far as add-ons you can get some very good ones for almost nothing (compared to the ones for StoreFront which by the way only runs on a Windows server and if you want the full code you'll end up paying something on the neighborhood of $650.

Welcome to the forum, Soyomb! :)

Thank you very much Robert, I look forward to all the good stuff that I'm sure I'm going to get from this forum!

Thanks for the info...I will take a look at X-Cart soon. (uggg...too busy trying to get my newsletter written right now...can we say "PRO-CRAS-TIN-A-TION"?????) :D

I use Mals Ecommerce free shopping cart, since I haven't had any sales it's suited me just fine -hehe! You can customize the shipping with a lot of different parameters, I haven't figured out shipping yet so i'm not sure how it all works. I'm not sure if it does the inventory tracking though. the website is www.mals-e.com

Hi Lisa,

Here are a couple more options for you. The first I have not used, but seriously considered it when I was evaluating shopping carts for my own business. It is called 1shoppingcart (http://www.1shoppingcart.com/features.asp) and I have linked to their list of features. As far as I can tell, even the Starter package has a ton of shipping options.

I use PayPal (http://www.paypal.com) myself, but since I do not offer any shipping, I have not used those features. I just checked and it is possible to set up variable shipping rates, but it doesn't look as robust as what 1shoppingcart offers. The one nice thing about PayPal is that their startup fees and overhead are pretty low (lower than most of the services that I compared) so that's nice if you want to get the highest dollar return on the products you offer.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, Angela & Chris. I'll look into both of these as well.

I haven't used this, but another to investigate is:

Apple Pie Shopping Cart
http://www.applepiecart.com/

Thanks, Robert. I've got it on my list to check out! :thumbsup:

Back in March I performed and exhaustive search a new shopping cart solution. We were outgrowing our Bizhosting hosted solution so I review and tried carts from Applepie to Zencart. It is unbelievable the number of different shopping cart solutions available.

I was looking for the most feature packed cart under $1,000 that had an active users community and secure advancing technology. It needed to be a stand alone application I could host anywhere so we would have complete control.

Here's what I found:

I ended up purchasing X-cart http://www.x-cart.com for $185.00. This is probably the most featured packed cart I came across. There are several companies developing and offering plugin enhancements such as testimonials, sitemap, marketing manager ......... The users forum is very active and helpful. I have been able to find everything needed so far. X-cart has been offering free upgrades almost monthly and this would be my only complaint. If you modify your cart (stylesheets), some of the upgrade components may need to be manually patched, and this can be confusing to a non-programmer. Otherwise, I have been very pleased. It is a PHP code based cart the uses a MYSQL database. You can find many inexpensive hosts and use a Lunix server. We use Bluehost $ 6.95 month.

The other cart I considered is http://aspdotnetstorefront.com/. At the time, many required features were promised but not available. Since then, I have been impressed to see all the features added and their own website redesigned. This is a highly configurable cart based on the newer .net standards. It does cost slightly more to host...ASP is usually offered on Windows based servers.

The most feature packed free cart: http://www.oscommerce.com
This cart is widely used and offer with easy one click installation from many webhosts (including Bluehost). The style sheet is difficult to customize however. Zencart is a takeoff of oscommerce and a little more freindly to use.

A few others looked interesting: http://www.comersus.com and http://www.vpasp.com.

Hosted Solutions:
For the coolest (price doesn't matter) hosted point and click solution...see Volusion (formerly Store2003) http://www.volusion.com/. I absolutely fell in love with their customer interface and checkout process. For a budget, Bizhosting served me well.

I hope this helps. Cheers!

Scott Jarvis

See? That's why we love new members! Great post, Scott. :thumbsup:

Scott ~

Thank you for such a detailed post. I think we have finally decided on X-Cart. We are starting our 2nd online retail store very soon so will start off with the new shopping cart and see how we like it before changing our exsisting store over (too much work for hic-ups to happen).

I'm happy to hear that there is a forum and even more enhancements to add on. Can you please let me know websites or companies that offer some of the enhancements?

:thumbsup:

Here are a few of the Xcart Add-on sites:

http://www.cart-lab.com/lab/catalog/index.html

http://www.firetanksoftware.com/

http://www.cartmods.com/
I'll be using Alex from Cartmods for some enhancements as soon as Xcart version 4.0.4.

Side note: When X-cart moved to version 4.0.0, they made a devils pact with UPS to offer UPS online tools only if no other shipping methods were activated. Well the users screamed loud and with version 4.0.4 (hopefully due out soon) you will be able to use all shipping methods when UPS is enabled.

And....a few more:
http://www.bcsengineering.com/store/catalog/

http://www.prodynamix.co.uk/customer/home.php
Very active and helpful on the Xcart board

And....if you need someone adept at working over your skin: http://www.2techchicks.com/index.php
or
http://www.finestshops.com/

Some of these folks resell each others wares, but they all offer something original.

And now the fun begins! I'm Jetting to Vegas for my weekend.

All the best to you,
Scott

Scott ~

Can I go to Vegas too???? :D

Thanks for all the info! You just saved me so much time.

Yeah, I'd be ticked if it only offered UPS also! I don't use UPS unless the customer requests it. FedEx and USPS Priority mail are the only ways I ship.

We are UK based but I am sure there is a US version of Actinic which we use and I thinks is very good!

Thanks for the info, Tom...(and welcome to the forum)! :standingw

Welcome to the forum tomsk! :)

Hi,
My comments would differ from all your experts..but I personally feel that it's always better to have a customized shopping cart which would suffice all your requirements.
The readymade carts do not have all the features which you might be looking for.
Also, the database is not really stored in your own database..so then what's the point? Say you want to get few results from the previous records or want to run a query..how would you do that..that's what I call customization.

Initially it may be a little expensive then the readymade carts..but in the long run..its always a PLUS to have your own shopping cart..

I personally have developed more then 30 shopping carts for my clients..each customized to your requirements..and trust me..they are VERY HAPPY PEOPLE..these clients are from USA, UK, Australia and many other parts of the globe..but they are very pleased with thier own cart..

I hope someone agrees..:)
Regards,
Deepak