We have published a post about Free eCommerce Platforms some time ago. Some readers suggested that we can make a post for premium eCommerce platforms as well. Here we have done a comparison of some of the most notable shopping cart software packages available.
I’m very aware that this is an incomplete list, and I plan on doing further research and posting eCommerce shopping cart reviews in the future. Until then, I hope this limited information helps send you in the right direction. Here you go, the Best Premium Shopping Cart Solutions Comparision.
1. Shopify
Shopify is a complete ecommerce solution that allows you to set up an online store to sell your goods. It lets you organize your products, customize your storefront, accept credit card payments, track and respond to orders — all with a few clicks of the mouse. The Shopify Theme Store hosts a collection of over 100 premium and free ecommerce website templates as well. Every website template comes with its own settings so you can quickly and easily customize your website’s design.
| Features: 9/10 |
Pricing: 9/10 |
Customer Support: 9/10 |
| Overall: 9/10 |
2. Big Cartel
Big Cartel is where artists set up shop. They provide clothing designers, bands, jewelry makers, crafters, and other artists with their own customizable store to sell their stuff online. You can pick one of the beautifully designed, pre-made themes and easily customize the images, colors, fonts, and more using the simple controls. You can also add your store to any Facebook page and connect your fans to your products through the seamlessly-integrated Facebook app.
| Features: 7/10 |
Pricing: 8/10 |
Customer Support: 9/10 |
| Overall: 8/10 |
3. Bigcommerce
Bigcommerce is a e-commerce website builder is designed to help you sell more. Their search engine optimization (SEO) gives you higher search rankings, meaning more free traffic to your store. You can choose from more than 60 payment gateways like PayPal, Authorize.net and Google Checkout. With discount and coupon codes, social media integration, newsletters, automatically generated customer lists and an abandoned cart saver, Bigcommerce gives you more marketing tools than anyone else.
| Features: 9/10 |
Pricing: 7/10 |
Customer Support: 7/10 |
| Overall: 7.6/10 |
Read the rest of this entry »
PrestaShop is a reliable and flexible Open-source e-commerce software since 2007. It’s fast, efficient and easy to use, PrestaShop’s free e-commerce solution provides everything you need to open, operate and maintain a successful online store. PrestaShop comes complete with over 310 features that have been carefully developed to assist business owners in increasing sales with virtually little effort. All features are integrated in the software and are 100% free. PrestaShop is one of the world’s most used e-commerce solutions powering over 150,000 online stores
PrestaShop’s open-source e-commerce solution is used in 150 countries, which is perfect for online internationalization with over 56 language translations and localization features. PrestaShop is very SEO friendly and makes it easy for merchants to rank high on search engines with its built-in SEO features. From keyword tags to customized URLs, optimize your store using back office settings and you will see an increase in rankings without doing external linking.
PrestaShop is dedicated to e-merchant success and they are here to help. An online shop can be built by an e-merchant that has limited computer knowledge with over 500,000 community members to rely on as well as a wide network of agencies and in-house tech support. Developers prefer PrestaShop because the code is easy to access and easy to understand.
Find out why over 150,000 merchants are using PrestaShop. You can download PrestaShop for free today. Please feel free to check out some Live Shops here as well.
Requirements: –
Demo: http://www.prestashop.com/en/demo
License: License Free
Sylius project provides a full stack e-commerce solution. In further parts of The Book you’ll learn how to master it and develop your next project really quickly. Sylius provides a complete webshop solution and some of features include:
- Flexible product catalog, with multiple variants per product, options, properties (think attributes) and protypes.
- Categorization engine, which allows you to categorize the products under various taxonomies, by “Brandâ€, “Category†or whatever you imagine.
- Inventory tracking system, where you can track every single unit of your inventory or disable tracking at all.
- Powerful shipping with configurable shipping categories, item sizes, weight, shipments management and customizable cost calculators.
- Taxation engine, with support for many different tax categories, rates and zones.
- Orders system allowing you to easily create and manage sales, with super-flexible adjustments which can serve many different purposes, from taxation & shipping to promotions and manual order total changes.
- Customizable checkout process, built from reusable steps.
And best of all, Sylius is 100% free and open source − and they intend for it to stay that way.
Requirements: PHP and Symfony2 Framework
Demo: http://sylius.com/
License: MIT License
Tinypass is a powerful e-commerce platform that helps sites charge for access to content. Tinypass makes it easy to build a revenue stream based on access to paid content, not just on how many eyeballs you attract. It’s the same kind of technology behind The New York Times paywall and iTunes and give it to you in a simple, beautiful package.
Charge for pay-per-view, page access, downloads, subscriptions and more. The API lets you implement a huge variety of models to find the best approach for your audience and your business. The Tinypass UI seamlessly integrates with any site or platform. Your users never leave to pay and their experience is never disrupted. Delivering content has never been so fast or intuitive.
Requirements: –
Download Link: http://www.tinypass.com/
License: License Free
Forward is a full-featured, developer centric e-commerce platform that makes custom code easy, with powerful templates & expressive syntax. Every business needs a custom admin interface to fit its process. Sometimes it’s as simple as adding one more field to the shipment page and packing slip. Not having it leads to expensive workarounds or lost revenue.
It should be easy to build or customize your admin interface. Forward is built exactly the same way you would build a front-end store template, without complex programming. Design is important here too, so it’s developed with Twitter Bootstrap to make things easier. Combined with MongoDB by default, it’s now easier than ever to customize admin screens without complex schemas, or database migrations.
It is scheduled for public release in 2013. The code will be 100% free forever. You can also take a look at other eCommerce Solutions we mentioned some time ago.
Requirements: PHP, MongoDB
Demo: http://getfwd.com/
License: Apache License
Stripe is a simple, developer-friendly way to accept payments online. They believe that enabling transactions on the web is a problem rooted in code, not finance, and they want to help put more websites in business. You don’t need a merchant account or gateway. Stripe handles everything, including storing cards, subscriptions, and direct payouts to your bank account.
With wrappers in Ruby, PHP, Python and more, you can get started in minutes. 2.9% + 30 cents per successful charge. No setup fees, no monthly fees, no card storage fees, no hidden costs: you only get charged when you earn money. Earnings are transferred to your bank account on a 7 day rolling basis.
Stripe powers commerce for thousands of sites across the web. Their users include large companies, rapidly-growing start-ups, side projects, and everything in between. I think it could be a great alternative to PayPal. However, it’s only available to US and Canada now.
Requirements: –
Download Link: https://stripe.com/
License: License Free
Ecommerce stores have etched themselves in the heart and mind of modern consumers. They have changed the way we used to shop, and for some people they have made it easier to buy happiness. And every other day we see some ecommerce stores taking birth; we see the rise of some and the fall of some. Some, as we all know, have become apparently evergreen.
Needless to say, the future is ecommerce – whether it’s done on mobile, tablet or desktop. So, here’s to some inspirational, enviable ecommerce stores!
1. ebay
No story of ecommerce is complete without eBay. It has also given small businesses the opportunity to sell their products without creating a site of their own.
2. Nike
Nike’s is possibly the most attractive online store. It has a lot of call-to-action quotient in it. Read the rest of this entry »
If you are a creative person, you create a lot of content. But most of it sits, archived, on some computer somewhere for the rest of time. It’s either too hard, or too time-consuming, or it doesn’t even make sense to put in a store! Gumroad is a relatively new eCommerce platform that let you easily sell the stuff you haven’t been able to, yet.
You can price a link for as little as $1, and as much as $1,000. They support all major credit cards. That includes Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, JCB, and Diners Club cards. They take 5% + $0.30 of each transaction. There are no setup fees, no monthly fees, and no bandwidth fees.
You can also take a look at other Open Source Ecommerce Platforms we mentioned some time ago.
Requirements: –
Demo: https://gumroad.com/
License: License Free
PayPal is the most popular platform for receiving online payments today. The ease of opening a PayPal account and receiving payments compared to opening a merchant account with a traditional payment gateway is probably the number one reason for its popularity, with a close second being the comprehensive API that PayPal provides for its payment services.
SmashingMagazine has published a really useful article: Getting Started With The PayPal API for building E-Commerce sites or Web Applications. In the article, they will break down some of the techniques and approaches to working with the PayPal API, in order to make integration and troubleshooting simpler and easier.
Source: Getting Started With The PayPal API
Recurly.js is an open-source Javascript library for creating great looking credit card forms to securely create subscriptions, one-time transactions, and update billing information using Recurly. The library performs in-line validation, real-time total calculations, and gracefully handles errors.
Your customer stays on your website while their billing information is securely sent to Recurly for approval. Because the cardholder data is sent directly to Recurly, your PCI compliance scope is dramatically reduced. The Recurly.js project also includes examples for updating billing information and performing one-time transactions.
Requirements: jQuery 1.5.2+
Demo: http://js.recurly.com/
License: MIT License
