Shopping cart services program download

Free shopping cart solutions are self-sufficient solutions for building traditional eCommerce websites with one seller—the store owner. The owner is the only seller and the admin on such a website. He or she takes care of stock, marketing, order shipping, payment processing, and so on. This type of software can be multi-vendor marketplace software , online shopping cart system, self hosted eCommerce platform, SaaS eCommerce solutions, free shopping cart or paid one, eCommerce widgets to embed sales functionality into an existing website, and so on.

For example, the Magento is intended for building single-seller stores. And it is eCommerce software. An online shopping cart is like a checkout in a brick and mortar store. While in physical stores customers walk along the shelves and put products to basket, in an online store customers do it all in their web browser. Once a customer fills the basket, he or she proceeds to checkout where they pay for the products. Remember how you make purchases offline: you see price tags with discounts, ads and promotional posters all around the store that convince you to buy a certain product.

The same can be implemented in an online store: the storefront can have promotional upselling and cross-selling offers, a section with on-sale products, and so on. Offline stores usually offer loyalty programs—you can get a discount card and collect bonus points or increase your personal discount by shopping in this store all the time. Free shopping cart offers the same: customers can earn reward points to spend them on products or become privileged customers and benefit from special personal discounts.

So, an website with eCommerce features works just like a brick and mortar store: you have a backend to operate the store, keep track of purchases and customers, and your customers add products to the basket on the storefront and proceed to checkout where they pay for orders via a credit card or online payment methods such as PayPal. Simple as that. A great benefit of eCommerce solutions is that you fully control every aspect of your store via a single laptop or even a smartphone.

We know how it is hard to pick the right software for your business. So, to pick the right eCommerce platform and build a website for online sales, you need to consider certain criteria. Before you dive deep into online research to find out about how to add an eCommerce functionality to a website, check out the criteria for choosing the right website eCommerce platform:.

These are the main criteria for choosing an online shopping cart solution. Of course, not all of them will hit all the spots. But if you choose wisely the most balanced solution for your online store, you will definitely benefit from the software you pick.

CS-Cart is a commercial platform that has been around for more than 15 years. This is a professional eCommerce system, whose main advantage is versatility and feature-richness.

CS-Cart once had a free community edition but now it is a paid solution with a free trial period of 30 days. For this price, you get a fully-functional top shopping cart. While using the CS-Cart affordable PHP online shopping cart system , you can easily take advantage of all eCommerce features it offers:. It will require a paid license after 30 days of free usage.

With a lifetime license, you get 1 year of free updates and some support credits to spend on technical assistance. None of the online shopping carts from our list can do that.

Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce systems in the world. It is known for its user-friendly interface—literally anyone can create a store on Shopify without any coding or technical skills.

Shopify is also an old SaaS eCommerce provider that has been operating for 15 years or so. It is a cloud platform, which means it is not open source and quite limited in terms of customization. But here are thousands of extensions and themes for Shopify, so customization is not really a problem here. The real problem of Shopify is that it is not available in most countries. Shopify is quite feature-rich out of the box and includes all the essential features for electronic commerce:.

X-Cart is another standalone online shopping cart script that is not totally free but gives you free access to its source code. This system is quite feature-rich and highly customizable, which makes it one of the best shopping carts from our list. One of the key features of this webshop builder is that it is really fast to deploy and launch a live eCommerce shop. The solution greatly withstands high loads and can handle large product catalogs.

Alright, now we move from shareware eCommerce software to free shopping cart solutions. The first, and in our opinion, the best shopping cart that you can download for free is Nopcommerce.

It is a well-structured eCommerce software and popular eCommerce platform. No file size limit , and your downloads can be hosted anywhere : with us or on your own site.

Keep your current credit card processor, or enjoy a low 2. Try it free for a whole month — no credit card required. What makes Modular Merchant the best shopping cart software for selling downloads? No per-transaction fees. Unlike other shopping carts, Modular Merchant doesn't charge you a fee for every order placed in your store. No extra add-on "apps" needed. Some carts make you pay extra to sell downloads in your store. With us, this is included at no extra charge.

Everything where you want it. The Right Solution for Selling Downloads. How selling downloads works in your store: Create a product in your online store.

What kinds of product downloads can I sell in my online store? Digital Delivery is perfect for selling selling music, artwork, seminars, ebooks, digital libraries, PDFs, video, software Here's just some of the ways our clients are using the shopping cart software to sell files and other online content:. Create a series of downloadable products, or rotate the files assigned to a single recurring product.

Bill customers annually, monthly, weekly, or set a custom date range. Subscriptions can also be created for for shipped products or other services you provide. Use the store's built-in membership tools, or add a members-only area to your own website. Create multiple login levels, perfect for providing tiered membership levels. Grant access to customers based on either their previous orders or their upcoming subscriptions. Allow sellers to add files and uploads themselves, without the need for your intervention.

Set different security levels for each seller — preventing users from accessing info they shouldn't. Your sellers can earn royalties when their products that are sold. How does Modular Merchant differ from other digital content services?

And if that was all, then I'd stop typing here. But it's not, so I'll keep going. No transaction fees Some shopping carts charge a per-transaction fee.

To manage shopping cart access, you will assign users a unique ID using a globally unique identifier GUID when the user accesses the shopping cart for the first time. NET Session state. The ASP. NET Session state is a convenient place to store user-specific information which will expire after the user leaves the site. While misuse of session state can have performance implications on larger sites, light use of session state works well for demonstration purposes.

The Wingtip Toys sample project shows how to use session state without an external provider, where session state is stored in-process on the web server hosting the site. For larger sites that provide multiple instances of an application or for sites that run multiple instances of an application on different servers, consider using Windows Azure Cache Service. This Cache Service provides a distributed caching service that is external to the web site and solves the problem of using in-process session state.

Earlier in this tutorial series, you defined the schema for the category and product data by creating the Category and Product classes in the Models folder. Now, add a new class to define the schema for the shopping cart. Later in this tutorial, you will add a class to handle data access to the CartItem table. This class will provide the business logic to add, remove, and update items in the shopping cart. The Add New Item dialog box is displayed. Select Code , and then select Class.

The CartItem class contains the schema that will define each product a user adds to the shopping cart. This class is similar to the other schema classes you created earlier in this tutorial series. However, the code overrides the default behavior by using the data annotation [Key] attribute. The CartId property specifies the ID of the user that is associated with the item to purchase. You'll add code to create this user ID when the user accesses the shopping cart.

NET Session variable. In addition to adding the CartItem class, you will need to update the database context class that manages the entity classes and that provides data access to the database. To do this, you will add the newly created CartItem model class to the ProductContext class. In Solution Explorer , find and open the ProductContext.

As mentioned previously in this tutorial series, the code in the ProductContext. Entity namespace so that you have access to all the core functionality of the Entity Framework. This functionality includes the capability to query, insert, update, and delete data by working with strongly typed objects. The ProductContext class adds access to the newly added CartItem model class. Next, you'll create the ShoppingCart class in a new Logic folder.

The ShoppingCart class handles data access to the CartItem table. The class will also include the business logic to add, remove, and update items in the shopping cart. The shopping cart logic that you will add will contain the functionality to manage the following actions:. A shopping cart page ShoppingCart. The shopping cart page will display all the items the user adds to the shopping cart.

Besides the shopping cart page and class, you'll create a page AddToCart. You will also add code to the ProductList. The following diagram shows the basic process that occurs when the user adds a product to the shopping cart. The AddToCart. The ShoppingCart. The ShoppingCart class will be added to a separate folder in the application so that there will be a clear distinction between the model Models folder , the pages root folder and the logic Logic folder.

Name the new folder Logic. You can also install an editor plugin for the default theme. This expands the tools to edit aspects of the shopping cart app, like styling. In such cases, you would have to edit the code yourself and build what you need. By default, OpenCart supports 36 payment gateway providers.

In addition to this, over 1. Some of these are paid, though, so you should check the pricing for your preferred gateway beforehand. Still, you get plenty of ways to capture payment information than with OpenCart. OpenCart is free to download, use, and modify. You can create as many websites as you want with no restrictions. That said, there are still costs to consider with the shopping software.

You might want specific themes or extensions, which are sometimes paid. You also get a guarantee the team will fix the issue if it recurs within 30 days. This is excellent insurance in case of emergencies. This covers bug fixes, installation service, and consultations about modules. A lot of users adore OpenCart.

They love how straightforward the admin dashboard is and how fast and effective the solution is. A few store owners did complain about the solution lacking support. The software has been around for 11 years, and it has amassed quite a user base, including companies like Volvo, Lacoste, and Casio. After all, most websites are hosted on Linux.

Yet, it would be unfair not to mention any alternatives. As for the features, nopCommerce gives you all you need to set up a midrange or large store.

You can even run multiple stores from one admin or set up a robust online marketplace and let internet merchants sell on your platform.

You have a ton of options for adding products, and you can easily create dozens of product variants by mixing different attributes. You can also calculate shipping rates, access multiple shipping carriers, configure taxes by country, state, or zip code, and a bunch of other options. The checkout features are rather robust as well. Aside from the usual, you can enable advanced shopping cart options like one-page checkout or displaying a mini shopping cart while your clients are browsing.

You can take advantage of many marketing tools, including emailing features, an affiliate system, a reward point system, upsell features, discounts and coupons, and a lot more. A comprehensive SEO suite is in the mix too, with features like microdata and breadcrumbs support. If something you need is missing, nopCommerce has a massive library with 1, plugins. You can find tools for improving page load times, managing popups, providing customer support via live chat, and a whole lot more. Many providers let you set it up in a few clicks via Plesk.

If you use Microsoft Azure, you can also have it preinstalled on a server instance. Configuring the shopping cart program, however, can be tough. Once you do set up the store according to your specifications, you get to enjoy a very well-designed dashboard. Even though it features hundreds of options, all the menu tabs are neatly categorized and laid out clearly.

A nice detail is that you can collapse the controls sidebar to get an even better view of the main screen. You can use 7 free themes with nopCommerce 4. All are well-designed, though you could get more variety. The themes all use Bootstrap, though, meaning they are fully responsive, and they implement commonly used styling features like Font Awesome icons. These usually integrate paid plugins, feature a professional design, and are meant for easy modification by developers.

Some even add features like image zoom that can be helpful for specific industries. Your options are to either purchase a theme editor plugin or hire a developer to get you a unique look. Do the latter if your business can afford it. While using a plugin is definitely cheaper, it might get you mixed results. The extension library has more modules that enable processors like AliPay and Apple Pay. The software is free to download, use, and modify. It basically lets nopCommerce siphon away a part of your traffic through a link in the footer.

However, removing or modifying the link yourself would be a copyright violation. You should also consider how much you would have to spend on premium templates, a theme, and a developer who will set it all up.

Like a few other open-source shopping cart apps, nopCommerce offers a premium support service. The support is only available on business days, and it offers a 1-day response time guarantee and a 5-day bug fix guarantee. They will help you fix any bugs with the core software and answer questions about customizing it.

They do not, however, include support for any third-party themes or plugins or customizing the software for you. Many users adore nopCommerce. They love how scalable and stable the platform is and how powerful it becomes when you customize it properly. It is widely regarded as the best ASP. NET shopping cart. Unsurprisingly, a few users are upset by the copyright footer text. The solution can help you scale well into six or seven-figure earnings, and it will not leave you wanting for features.

NET-based carts out there. Spree Commerce is one of the most popular open-source ecommerce projects in the world. The software has 1. Unlike most shopping carts that you can set up in a few clicks, Spree Commerce is more like a collection of Ruby code modules. The solution requires someone at least semi-fluent in code to put it all together.

Spree Commerce is more geared toward developers, startups, and other businesses that need to quickly deploy highly customizable online stores. If you do decide for Spree Commerce, the platform has plenty of handy features integrated into its code. The storefront can also be integrated into an already-existing website.

Spree Commerce is also cloud-ready. There are also about 60 native integrations, covering things like Elasticsearch and various payment processors. You can also find a bunch of third-party extensions. The idea is to let developers build fully custom stores within days, so everything is geared towards fast web development.

Spree Commerce users have created everything from custom user authentications to robust B2B stores and online marketplaces. Despite requiring developer attention, Spree Commerce has a rather well-designed client area. The navigation is straightforward, and all the key features are very obvious.

Even complete beginners can easily handle day-to-day activities once the store is live. Of course, some of the client areas will depend on how you or your developer customize the software. One of the principles of this shopping cart service is letting all users design their own frontend. The developer just needs to build the design you choose. The software is also built with reusing code in mind, which can cut down on the time it takes to develop your application. This includes big ones like Stripe and PayPal and dozens of country-specific gateways.

You can also gain access to a few extra gateways like Apple Pay through integrations. All in all, you get a decent choice of payment providers, and you will be able to cover over countries with an international store. Spree Commerce is a completely free online shopping cart system. You can download the source code from GitHub. The solution runs almost entirely on community support, so all the plugins are free as well.

You still have to account for the price of developing your store with Spree Commerce if you run a business. The development with this software usually goes very quickly, though, so you can expect to have your store online in no time.

That said, the Spree Commerce community is massive and very loyal. Spree Commerce is one of the most loved open-source projects out there. Hundreds of online shopping cart reviews praise how easy it is to quickly deploy a fully custom and highly scalable application. There are few negative reviews to speak of. Spree Commerce gives its target audience just what they expect, so there are no surprises there. Spree Commerce falls somewhere between an ecommerce framework and a shopping cart solution.

Before becoming a separate solution, Zen Cart was a part of osCommerce, making it 20 years old today. Now, it is one of the most-used shopping carts on the web and sports a massive community. Zen Cart is typically used as software that you plug into an existing website to add ecommerce functionality.

This depends on the theme, though—some might let you design a fully-fledged website with an online store. Be that as it may, the online shopping cart software lacks strong features for standard website building. Zen Cart covers all the basics like inventory, order, and shipping management, product categories and attributes, basic speed optimization and SEO, etc.

You also get a decent number of features to engage and secure customers. This includes tools for email marketing, discounts, coupons, gift certificates, and a bunch of other options. Zen Cart also has decent multi-language support. You can pick from 65 language packs, which is impressive. Still, you should really go through the translated text yourself and fix any mistakes. This covers additional admin tools, international shipping carrier integrations, sidebar modules and widgets, and a lot more.

In short, Zen Cart has all the critical functionality users look for in online shopping cart services. You may want to hire a developer to design something truly unique down the road, but you get more than enough tools to start with. For starters, the installation requires some effort. The backend looks a bit dated, and it is definitely designed for users comfortable with tech. Finally, you might need a developer to handle more in-depth customization.

Your best bet is to go for a premium template since many of those are much more modern. An alternative is to go with a free theme and customize it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. This is a valid option if you have a specific design in mind and want to get it just right, though you could do the same with just about any open-source cart.

Once you pick out a theme, you can do some simple editing. This includes things like basic layout changes rearranging and resizing text boxes , editing the CSS styling, adding custom fonts, etc. The exact layout and styling features do somewhat depend on your theme, so choose wisely. Zen Cart is a completely free shopping cart software. Its 2, plugins are all community-generated, so you can download them for free as well. Unlike a few providers looking at you, nopCommerce , it lets you remove this for free.

The only caveat is that Zen Cart will not feature your store on its website, but this is just a minor detail. Third-party themes may be paid.

ZenCart is free, but there is no support. If you need help with something, you can always ask a question in the forums. Depending on your hosting provider, you might get some basic assistance. The cart is built on the standard LAMP stack, so finding a qualified dev should be a walk in the park. Many website owners have built amazing stores with Zen Cart. Some users did complain about trying to set up Zen Cart via Softaculous and it breaking immediately.

Zen Cart is a solid choice if you run a midrange business and want to add a custom-tailored storefront to your website. It takes quite a solution to stay relevant in ecommerce for that long.

I will focus on the latter since hosted solutions deserve their own article. It also includes a few advanced options to help you maximize conversion rates, like abandoned shopping cart auto-recovery and upsells. The online shopping cart system also has an integrated affiliate platform. You can have users sign up and promote products for you. If you prefer, you can also make products available on Amazon, eBay, and Google Products. You can easily sell across multiple channels and get more exposure for your business.

UltraCart strives to make as much functionality as possible available out-of-the-box. While it does succeed at this, there are few extensions to speak of. The cart only has eight notable integrations, which only cover the essential functions. No extensions really distinguish UltraCart from all other shopping carts. UltraCart is pretty easy to set up and integrate with your website. All the retail management features are well-designed and intuitive, and all you really need to do is copy short snippets of code onto your site.

You can just install the UltraCart plugin and feature products or groups of products on your website in only a few clicks. Most of the popular processors are supported, so you should have no trouble finding the right one for you. The solution also integrates its own processor, called UltraCart Payments.

The gateway supports all major credit cards. The rates depend on your plan, with the higher tiers offering more favorable deals than most processors. The smallest plan is somewhat limited.

Despite this, the support team is rather decent. The longest I waited for an email response was 20 minutes. And did I mention you can reach the support team on Skype? The agents do a superb job of answering all questions and helping you make your store work. They are a delight to work with.

UltraCart gets plenty of praise for being robust and highly scalable. Many users effectively sell products through it. A few users did complain UltraCart can feel a bit clunky, and features like reporting could be more customizable. Those are fair points; UltraCart definitely has room for improvement. UltraCart is one of the best online shopping carts if your website is already doing well, and you want to use that popularity to sell a few products.

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, meaning you can use it to equip a WordPress website with a shopping cart. WooCommerce comes with all the necessary functions like inventory management, selling physical or digital products, managing shipping and tax options, etc.

You can also upload nearly unlimited product categories, let users leave product reviews, run affiliate campaigns, and a whole slew of other options. Speaking of plugins, WooCommerce has an expandable architecture. This means the core storefront software is lightweight, and you can pick and choose which features to add on top of it. This way, everyone can install what they need and avoid wasting server resources on non-essential features.

WooCommerce has nearly official plugins you can integrate into your store. Some of the notable ones include plugins for booking, subscription-based services, and enabling product add-ons like gift wrapping.

All sorts of features are in the mix, making WooCommerce one of the most customizable shopping cart solutions in the industry. Also, check that the plugins you install are compatible with WooCommerce, or it might be difficult to do software updates.

WooCommerce is easy to set up. Enabling it on your WordPress installation is as easy as typing its name in the plugin repository. Some hosts even let you preinstall WordPress and WooCommerce when picking out a hosting plan. Once you do install it, WooCommerce gives you a quick tour to help you find all the key features. Using the plugin is pretty similar to navigating WordPress. The dashboard makes it easy to find all the options and handle basic retail management activities.

Of course, this will depend on the theme. Some premium themes, like Astra, add a bunch of design features and even let you fully customize the layout of your website. Alternatively, you can go for a builder plugin like the Elementor WooCommerce Builder. Just make sure the plugin is compatible with WooCommerce and not only WordPress, or else it might break your online shopping cart software.

WooCommerce enables five ways to capture payment information out of the box. This covers two gateways—PayPal and Stripe—as well as the basic methods like bank transfer and cash on delivery. You can add over other gateways through extensions Some, like Square and Amazon Pay, are free. Yet, some of these are paid and can cost several hundreds of dollars. You also might want to hire a developer for some custom work. Once your store gains some traction, though, you might come up with a few ideas to get an edge over the competition.

That said, some providers like SiteGround offer managed WooCommerce hosting. You can actually get excellent support for your application, but this will depend on your provider. WooCommerce also has a massive community and probably gets the most attention out of all shopping carts. The plugin gets fantastic results and is revered by practically everyone using it. Clients praise the customizability, flexibility, and sheer power of the platform, among dozens of other things.

To be fair, WooCommerce is definitely not as straightforward as some of the best hosted shopping carts. WooCommerce is an extension of WordPress and one of the most popular shopping carts. The software is relatively easy to handle and is one of the most customizable out there. It might just be the best free shopping cart for private users. Magento is too big and too powerful to even be compared with the average shopping cart. It is practically in a category of its own and often requires an entirely different level of hosting.

Still, the software has so many fantastic features, it deserves an honorable mention. Magento is the system powering big stores like HP Inc. To mention a few, you get one-page checkout, SEO and marketing, tax and shipping, one-page checkout — plus many, many more. Then there are the integrations. Need I say more? Imagine any store you want, no matter how complicated.

Chances are, you can build it with Magento. The admin dashboard is straightforward enough. Non-technical users can handle day-to-day things like listing products pretty easily. It is notoriously difficult. Hiring a professional is unavoidable. Magento might be among the best shopping cart software, but user-friendliness is not its forte. A few free and thousands of paid ones are available for download. However, if you run a Magento store, the transaction fees are more of a factor.

Look for the best rates to get the best profit margin. There are also hosting costs. Plan to pay a few hundred dollars a month at least. In fact, everyone ought to consult an expert beforehand.