Top Free and Open source eCommerce Platforms Software

According to a survey by Statista, 40% internet users have bought products online via mobile, desktop and other devices. This equals to 1 billion users and the number is projected to increase exponentially. 

With rising eCommerce sales, most small businesses are including online selling as a part of their strategy. Small business owners do not have big budgets to spare for making an online eCommerce store. Every retail owner wants a reliable, cost effective and easy to set up online platform that can be easily managed.

The advantages of using free and open source eCommerce Platforms are:

• The online store can be set up with a few clicks.
• The store can be set up without paying a penny.
• These platforms have a large community of developers to help in case of technical issues.

With numerous open source eCommerce Platforms in the market, selecting the most appropriate one for your business is a challenging task.  We’re summarized a list of 9 open source eCommerce Platforms specially designed to meet the requirements of small businesses. They’ll help in increasing sales, attracting and retaining customers and will boost your business.

This round-up of the 9 most popular free and open source eCommerce Platforms along with their key features will make your research easier.

  

1. ZenKart

ZenKart is a free, user-friendly open source shopping cart created with PHP framework. Installation, addition, and updating of products is easy and does not require HTML coding. There are numerous templates to customize the look of your eCommerce store.

The admin can control and edit the product information from the dashboard. This leverages the ability to customize product related content.

Features:

• Easily customizable eCommerce store.
• Quick integration with multiple payment gateways.
• Supported by all hosting servers with PHP, Apache and MySQL framework.
• Easy to update catalog – products are added, deleted and modified without HTML coding.
• Multiple shipping options such as post, courier, pickup, and delivery.
• Advanced search functionality to search products by name, description, meta-tags and price.

2. Magento 

This open source eCommerce software allows storeowners to modify the source code and add features using Magento extensions. Great flexibility and control over the look, content and functionality makes it the most powerful eCommerce solution in the market.

Features:

• In-built Search engine optimization for better visibility on search engines.
• Targeted promotions and personalized shopping experiences.
• Product recommendation, up-selling and cross-selling.
• One page checkout process supported by multiple payment gateways.
• A/B testing by integration with Google Optimizer.
• Online transactions secured by SSL.
• Easy integration with third-party applications for customized website styling and added functionalities.

3. Digi Store

Digistore allows the users to launch their eCommerce store and start selling the merchandise online within minutes. A content management system is inbuilt in this General Public License (GPL) open source eCommerce software.

Features:

• Email reminders: create email reminders to your customers before, on or after expiration.
• Creation of email reminders for customers to be used for promotions and to remind the customer of expiration dates.
• Customer functionalities – quick login, customer reviews and advanced search features.
• Back end functionality – addition of unlimited products, multicurrency and multilingual support, regular sales report and easy to create and edit product information pages.
• General functionalities – supported by PHP 4 and 5 framework, addition of meta-tags and the eCommerce website can be made SEO friendly.
• Payment and shipping functionality – online payment gateways and offline payments accepted, customizable payment modules and customized shipment.

4. OpenCart

Online merchants can make feature rich, visually appealing and search engine friendly eCommerce stores using OpenCart, a powerful open source eCommerce Platform.

Features:

• Automatic image resizing.
• Addition of unlimited products, their categories and information pages.
• Inclusion of product reviews and ratings.
• Monthly/weekly sales reports.
• Customizable templates.
• Inbuilt backup and restore modules.
• Built on AJAX technology, it has quick loading speed.

5. PrestaShop

PrestaShop is used to build and maintain an online store free of cost. By integration with eBay, Amazon, and other listing websites, store owners can increase the exposure and promotion of their products.

Features:

• Easily customizable mobile responsive themes.
• 2,000+ templates to choose from.
• 300+ features including beautiful promotion banners, product quick views, customizable product layout and centralized backend for analytics.
• Payments accepted from credit cards, debit cards, and gift cards.
• Tracking and automatic calculation of local tax rates.
• In-depth conversion statistics.

6. osCommerce

osCommerce is a secure, easily customizable and self-hosted free open source eCommerce platform for online vendors to sell their products globally. This platform has 7000+ modules and add-ons for the e-retailer.

Features:

• Management of product catalogs – addition of unlimited products, categories, manufacturers, product attributes and information.
• Automatic tax calculation based on the customer location.
• Thousands of modules can be added to customize the eCommerce platform.
• Multi-currency and language settings.
• Advanced tools such as controlling banner promotions, cache control, data backup and eCommerce security.

7. Woo-Commerce

With over 1.6 million downloads, WooCommerce is among the most popular free open source eCommerce platforms. It’s hard to find another WordPress plugin with similar functionalities and potential.

Features:

• Vendors can sell physical and virtual goods along with downloadable and affiliate products.
• It is possible to integrate a blog with a fully functional website.
• The store owner gets to select from 39 themes. After the theme selection, the color and special features can be modified.
• A detailed list of customer engagement features and order tracking tools.
• Statistics about total sales, sales on each day, customer stats and total orders are presented in easily understandable graphs.
• Many ready API’s to build third party extensions and a huge documentation library.

8. CubeCart

CubeCart is the best option for eCommerce players wanting to get a hang of the online business. The set-up is easy, look and feel of the website can be customized and doesn’t cost a penny.

Features:

• CubeCart is amongst the few platforms accompanied with Brute Force Protection for added security for the eCommerce website.
• Allows bulk product price updates and bulk product category management
• Create amazing images with their hover zooming and light box viewing functionality.
• Automated shipping tax calculations.
• Custom tax calculations using geo-location.
• Customer friendly user interface.

9. Ubercart

Using Drupal, Ubercart integrates eCommerce stores with the best open source content management system. The free eCommerce platform allows to build communities surrounding products and the store owners can sell premium content with exclusive access.

Integrating add-ons, modules and themes is easy and can be done as per your requirement.

Features:

• Configurable product catalogue includes catalogue pages and a block to display product categories
• Automatic account generation (anonymous checkout). Accounts and emails are automatically generated based on the customer's e-mail address.
• Multiple discount modules for configuring product/service discount model.
• Flexible product creation processes.

With an increase in number of people using online mode for shopping, the number of industries opting for eCommerce software solution have also hiked up. Aforementioned is a list of free and open source eCommerce solutions which can be used to serve your purpose well. Well, no doubt there are companies which have also opted for serving their customers on a mobile device itself. Here is a list of 8 platforms to build eCommerce mobile app. If we have missed any, then your thoughts are most welcome in a comments section.

Source: blog.softwaresuggest.com