Comparison of Difference eCommerce Options

There are hundreds of eCommerce / shopping cart software choices - unfortunately, most of them have focused on a one-size-fits-all and mass sales approach.

• One-size-fits-all method of design and development - building every possible feature, even though most of the features are useless and will not apply to most industries.
• No stress testing is done to make sure that the shopping cart is able to handle a large amount of inventory (plus options & accessories) or large site traffic growth.
• Poor planning and structural application design which adds complication and complexity to site customizations and maintenance.
• Useless features that cause a major slow down of the eCommerce application.
  
• Mass quantity sales concentration - sell the defunct eCommerce application to every unknowing person who is impressed with the long list of functionalities.
• Very little support and maintenance provided.

• Scalability and the ability to handle the site's success and large traffic.
• Design and branding flexibility.
• Security vulnerability prevention.
• Ease of installation and deployment.
• Ease of customization and maintenance by other developers.
• Better usability.
• Support and maintenance.
• Version and release controls.

Below is a brief description, and a list of advantages and disadvantages of different types of eCommerce / shopping cart software platforms.

Enterprise eCommerce Platforms

Enterprise eCommerce Applications are more tailored for large online retailers with a substantial number of transactions, solid security considerations, ample room for scalability, and many rich features and functionality. Some of the most valuable elements of an Enterprise eCommerce Platform are the warranty, support and version release features.

The majority of the Enterprise eCommerce Platforms do provide design and branding flexibility. In addition, some of the Enterprise eCommerce Platforms provide ease of management and support for customizations or tailored features.

The cost for Enterprise eCommerce Platforms varies from one company to another.

For example:

• Comentum's Enterprise eCommerce starts at $13,000 (one time cost) which includes custom design and development. Includes warranty. Phone support at no cost. Maintenance and customization is available at the hourly rate. It is based on the Open Source Development Model.
• Magento's Enterprise eCommerce starts at $12,990 (yearly fee) - does not include custom design and development. Includes warranty. Support plans (Gold and Platinum) are available for a subscription cost. It is based on the Open Source Development
• OXID eShop Enterprise eCommerce starts at €12,990.00 ($18,150) - does not include custom design and development. Includes warranty. Support plans (Standard and Plus) are available for a subscription cost.

Professional eCommerce Platforms

Professional eCommerce Platforms are more tailored for small online retailers that do not require a substantial number of features, room for customizations and enterprise level support. Most of the Professional eCommerce Platforms provide a limited warranty and support. Majority of the Professional eCommerce Platforms do not provide design and branding flexibility.

The cost, warranty, and support for Professional eCommerce Platforms vary from one company to another.

For example:

• Comentum's Professional eCommerce starts at $3,000 (one time fee) which includes design and development. Includes warranty and phone support. Maintenance and customization is available at the hourly rate. It is based on the Open Source Development Model.
• Magento's Professional eCommerce starts at $2,995 (yearly fee) - does not include custom design and development. Includes warranty. Support plans are not available for the Professional version. It is based on the Open Source Development Model.
• OXID eShop Professional eCommerce starts at €1,990.00 ($2,780) - does not include custom design and development. Includes warranty. Support plans (Standard and Plus) are available for a subscription cost.

Community / Open Source eCommerce Platforms

Community based / Open Source eCommerce Platforms are more tailored for online retailers that have the necessary experience and resources for deploying and maintaining open source application frameworks.

Usually, there is no direct commercial or enterprise level support from the maker of the open source eCommerce application. The support can be provided by the community or a third party specialized in one of the open source eCommerce applications.

In most cases, there is no warranty provided for the Community based / Open Source eCommerce Platforms.

Although there is no licensing fee for Open Source eCommerce Platforms, there usually are costs involved for installing and deploying the Open Source eCommerce application. There will more substantial development costs if customizations are required.

Below are the top open source eCommerce platforms:

• Magento - Magento provides Enterprise, Professional and Community / Open Source eCommerce Platforms. It is based on PHP 5, MySQL 5 and uses Zend Framework. License is OSL 3.0. Although it uses Zend Framework and MVC which should provide an easier method of customizing the design, the code is overly complex which makes updating and maintenance more tedious, time-consuming and costly.
• Oscommerce - Oscommerce is one of the original open source shopping carts. The latest release is based on PHP 5, MySQL 5. License is GPL. Oscommerce has the most number of contributors. It is one of the easier eCommerce platforms to work with for maintenance (small changes, updates and edits); however, it has a less user friendly design and is more tedious and time consuming to customize the design and branding. Also, feature or design customizations or changes would require hiring a developer since there is no direct support from Oscommerce.
• Zen Cart - Zen Cart is a spin off from Oscommerce. The latest release is based on PHP 5, MySQL 5. License is GPL. It is one of the easier eCommerce platforms to install and manage. It has some design templates which provide a quicker way to put up a shopping cart. However, feature or design customizations or changes would require hiring a developer since there is no direct support from Zen Cart.

Low-end Commercial or Open Source eCommerce Platforms

Low-end Commercial or Open Source Shopping Cart Applications are more tailored for small online retailers that are looking for a basic shopping cart, do not require customizations and do not anticipate growth in the near future.

Here are some of the disadvantages of the low-end commercial or open source shopping carts:

• Not Scalable - cannot handle a large inventory, new options and traffic growth
• Not easy to customize, add functionality and make updates
• Very little design or branding flexibility
• Security vulnerability issues
• No support provided
• Limited or no Warranty
• A possibility of the developer abandoning the development

Cost: There is no licensing cost for the Open Source eCommerce Platforms. The cost for the Low-End Commercial Shopping Carts vary from one company to another ranging from approx. $50 - $500 (one time licensing fee).

Hosted eCommerce Platforms

Hosted eCommerce Platforms are more tailored for small online retailers that do not require control over the source code and operations of their eCommerce application; design and branding; and do not anticipate growth in the near future.

Here are some of the disadvantages of a Hosted Shopping Cart:

• Hosted eCommerce Platforms do not provide access to the source code
• The shopping cart application is usually served by the provider on a shared hosting environment
• The customer does not have any control over the hosting provider
• Usually, there is no option for a dedicated server solution, so there is no room for the site's traffic growth beyond the capability of shared hosting
• A site with a substantial inventory and complex accessory (sub-category) options will run very slowly on a Hosted Shopping Cart system and shared hosting environment

A comparison of Magento, OScommerce, Zen Cart, Comentum eCommerce and how they rank with Security, Performance, Reliability, Cost, Scalability and Support.

This article is written to inform end-users and businesses about selecting the right eCommerce software for their business.

Selecting an eCommerce software can be a challenging task; there are a lot of options out there, but there are no real resources available that help you select the best shopping cart software for your needs.

I'll start out by going over the most important elements that any eCommerce software should have in order to be successful.

Security and PCI Compliance

Security should be the most important consideration for any eCommerce website. Today, many merchant account services are now requiring sites to become and remain PCI compliant.

If your eCommerce site does not follow the security protocals to keep your customer's credit card information secure or does not become PCI DSS compliant, and there is a breach of customers' credit card information, your business may be fined and sued.

Magento, OSCommerce and Zen Cart's source code are available for download to everyone. This makes it easy for hackers to analyse the code and take advantage of any security holes that they can find. Comentum's eCommerce source code is not available for download for anyone, so the hackers do not know what is in and behind Comentum's ecommerce's source code.

Design, Feature Customizations and Unique Branding

Building a unique and inviting brand is an important factor to a successful eCommerce site. It will also add business goodwill value to the owner of the site.

Based on my 13 years experience with eCommerce software, I rarely come across an eCommerce client who does not want to customize its shopping cart software to fit its unique business needs and also to set the site apart from the competitors.

So being able to customize the look and feel and also features and functionality of an eCommerce site should be the major consideration for selecting a shopping cart software. OScommerce (and current stable version - 2.3.1 - as of this writing) is one of the older eCommerce softwares. OScommerce's code has been developed and kept up using the same legacy style code; this makes the code unmanagable and hard to customize.

There is a new version of OScommerce (version 3.0) in the making which is a complete re-write of the code in a new object-oriented platform. This version is in alpha (prior to beta), which means it is not ready and it will be a while for that version to be available for use in a production environment.

Zen Cart is an spin off of the OScommerce software. Therefore, Zen Cart's code is very similar to OScommerce, using same legacy style code, but with an added templeting system and some new functionality. Zen Cart has an added advantage over OScommerce which is its template system — This provides a capability for a site owner to select a custom template.

Magento is written using a newer based PHP platform (Zend Framework), but it is developed using a heavily layered, complicated and intertwined coding style. This makes Magento one of the most complex softwares to learn, manage, and maintain. It has the lengthiest learning curve of any eCommerce software.

Magento is bloated, using hundreds of unnecessary tables and hundreds of thousands of lines of codes to cover features that fit any customer. By making a shopping cart good for everyone, it becomes not as good for anyone. Unwanted features get in your way and it is not easy to remove them. And modules are intertwined which makes customizations more tedious and time-consuming. For example, to add an additional address input field to the checkout page, you would need to extend the Customer Address object (extend the entire object of customer address), change several template files and so on. This simple task will take 1-2 hours using Magento, but will take 5 minutes using Comentum's eCommerce.

Comentum eCommerce is written using the newest, straight-forward PHP MVC platform. It is modular based, which makes adding or customizing features very easy.

Comentum eCommerce is built with design and brand customizations in mind. It is built to make it easy to customize the look and feel by any designer without having to know any programming.

Performance & Scalability

Magento trys to cover every feature under the sun and even features that are rarely used by most online stores. Because of that, it uses hundreds of unnecessary tables and hundreds of thousands of lines of code which makes Magento bloated and slow.

Sites that are running Magento with high numbers of products for sale will need to run on dedicated servers with a hugh amount of CPU power.

OScommerce and Zen Cart both added features that require multiple database queries per page to facilitate features such as Best Selling, Up-sells in the Shopping Cart, and Customers Who Bought This Product Also Bought features. These features are added to a legacy code which slows the shopping cart noticibably when there are a high number of products.

Comentum eCommerce is writtem using the latest PHP and MySQL platform, MySQL, code optimizations and database caching for optimum performance.

Experienced Development Firm

There is a high demand for quality and experienced development firms. Finding an experienced development firm that can act as a partner in providing continuous support for your organization is essential in running a successful eCommerce site.

Comentum has been in business for 13 years and will provide enterprise level support and maintenance for its shopping cart client.

Comentum eCommerce is writtem using the latest PHP and MySQL MVC platform which makes the maintenace and customizations easy by any development firms.

Comentum eCommerce is lisenced so the site owner can take the application to any other developer for support and maintanance. This provides the full flexibility and offers piece of mind that the cart can ne maintained and scaled by any other development firm or an in-house team of programmers.

Backup, export and import

Setting up an automated back up of the website and database should be an important part of maintaining any eCommerce site. Especially because today's hard drives are becoming less and less reliable and usually crash within one year. Magento and Comentum eCommerce provide a backup and export solution. OScommerce and Zen Cart do not provide a backup solution but can be accomplished through an add-on or a server backup solution.

Maintenance and Support - Developer Friendly

Due to the complex nature of Magento, maintaining and customizing a Magento shoppoing cart can be tedeous, time-consuming and expensive. Due to the legacy style coding of OScommerce and Zen Cart, maintaining and customizing both shoppoing carts can be tedeous, time-consuming and expensive. Comentum eCommerce uses a straight-forward, modern style, structured (MVC), PHP platform, which makes maintaining and managing a Comentum eCommerce site effortless cost saving and fast.

Platform and Technology

Magento, OScommerce, Zen Cart and Comentum eCommerce are all developed and run on the popular open source LAMP platform (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). Using Open Source platforms provides greater support resources and is the most cost-effective situation.

A list of the best eCommerce shopping carts and a Comparison Chart of the best shopping cart software.

I have outlined a comparison list of the best shopping cart software in order of the following advantages and features: Security, Search Engine Optimization Features, Design Customization, Reliability, Performance, Maintenance and Support.

In my opinion, below is the list of best shopping cart software and features available:

• Comentum eCommerce
• Magento
• Zen Cart
• OScommerce
• CRE Loaded