An e-commerce website is one of the best and most efficient ways of promoting your products to a wider section of the audience. The first thing which would come to mind is which e-commerce platform should you go with.
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Open Source E-Commerce Platforms Compared
If you are a new player in the market you would be most probably tight on budget. You would want to opt for a platform which comes with an attractive price tag along with offering all the essential features which include scalability, customizability and community support.
So, to make things simple for you I am going to compare the best open source e-commerce platforms below.
1. Magento Open Source E-Commerce Platform
Magento is a name that you would have probably heard even if you have minimal knowledge of the e-commerce platforms. It is one of the biggest open source e-commerce platforms out there.
Nike and Samsung are among the big companies which use the enterprise version of Magento. However, the Magento Open Source which was formerly known as Magento Community Edition will also offer you a majority of the same features totally free of cost.
All the basic tools will be offered to the users apart from the more powerful and optional tools which are reserved for the paid version.
Standout Features:
- Creating landing pages and content of your products can be done easily. Managing the shipping and fulfillment can be done in any manner you wish to. You will be able to generate the useful reports which include sales tax, on-site search items and stock.
- Magento has an extensions marketplace that will offer you with a lot of options for adding sales tax integrations, live customer chat integrations, custom stock systems etc.
- You will be offered with pre-made themes for your website. A few of the themes are free while the others come at a price.
2. osCommerce E-Commerce Platform
osCommerce has been around for some time now and there have been numerous add-ons which are available for this e-commerce platform.
There are numerous customization options for designing and enhancing the overall functionality of your e-commerce store. Being in the e-commerce domain for a very long time there is a huge community base which is present to provide the needed support. There are a lot of great features which osCommerce has on offer for its users.
Standout Features:
- osCommerce will seamlessly integrate with all the third party apps by its Apps Marketplace. This will enable your site to integrate with Facebook and Sage Pay. You will also be able to present your website in different languages.
- The platform is not at all complex. This will make it easy for all those users who are not well versed in using the different e-commerce platforms.
- There is a large community base which has years of experience in working with the software. In case you need support from the community, it can be availed at a price.
3. WooCommerce E-Commerce Platform
For all the WordPress users out there, WooCommerce should be your preferred e-commerce platform. This will enable your WordPress website to be easily converted into an e-commerce store.
If you are already a WordPress user then you won’t face any hassles while installing WooCommerce. This will enable to have your e-commerce store setup and running quickly. It is mobile friendly which will allow the brands to cater a large number of mobile users.
Standout Features:
- WooCommerce is fully functional and needs very less customization. Even if you face any kind of issues in the installation process there is no need to worry. There are a lot resources over the web which you can cite to for solving your query.
- It follows a one-page checkout process which will enable the users to pay for the different items that they wish to buy.
- There are a number of themes and plugins which are available from the third party websites and from WooThemes.
4. OpenCart E-Commerce Platform
OpenCart is quite popular among the small businesses who do not have the professionals with the programming experience. This e-commerce platform is quite simple and does not come with a whole lot of functionalities which you would find on the other platforms.
However, still, you will be able to do a lot of things with OpenCart. It is easy on your server which will make it run quickly. In order to add functionality to your website, you can make use of plugins. There are also a number of themes which are available that will enable you to customize your e-commerce store. (Best Open Source E-Commerce Platforms)
Standout Features:
- There is not a whole lot which is required for installing OpenCart. For LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) stack on a server, you will be ready to go. You can always take the assistance of your service provider in case you are not sure.
- The OpenCart’s marketplace will allow the customers to make use of add-ons for extending the functionality of your store. You will be offered with some free basic integrations which include Facebook plugins and Square payments.
- OpenCart will also offer you a cloud version that is available at a starting price of $35/month for all those businesses which do not have in-house tech support.
5. PrestaShop E-Commerce Platform
PrestaShop has its core built on PHP that makes it quite an easy fit for most of the websites. The ease of usage of the platform is the reason behind its popularity. Due to the intuitive nature of the platform, you will be able to install and customize it quite easily.
PrestaShop is widely used and is trusted by a lot of people. There are thousands of templates and modules for adding on to the core functionality.
Standout Features:
- PrestaShop has a support for international and multiple stores which are within one back end. For example, if you have separate storefronts then you will be able to take care of both of them together.
- There are more than 1500 templates which are offered by the platform. The add-ons will allow the integration with Google Merchant Center, Stripe and Amazon Marketplace.
- You will be offered with great reporting capabilities which include forecastability and unique Intelligent Merchant KPI feature.
In The End
All the open source e-Commerce platforms which are mentioned in this post are best in their own way. Each platform has its own set of unique features. Depending on the requirements of your online store you can choose a platform which best matches your requirements.
Did I miss any of the e-commerce platforms which should have been mentioned above? Do let me know about them along with your views about the post in the comments section below.
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