The shopping cart software allows online shopping customers to accumulate a list of items for purchase, described metaphorically as “placing items in the shopping cart” or “add to cart”. Upon checkout, the software typically calculates a total for the order, including shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) charges and the associated taxes, as applicable.

All shopping cart software listed in this article are open-source and free for use. Feel free to suggest any other shopping cart not mentioned in the article.

OpenCart

Project page: http://www.opencart.com/

OpenCart is designed feature rich, easy to use, search engine friendly and with a visually appealing interface.

OpenCart is a turn-key ready “out of the box” shopping cart solution. You simply install, select your template, add products and you’re ready to start accepting orders.

It has order management and multiple payment gateways already built in and we provide lifetime free support and free software updates.

VirtueMart

Project page: http://virtuemart.net/

VirtueMart (formerly known as mambo-phpShop) is an open source e-commerce solution designed as an extension of the Mambo or Joomla! content management systems (CMS). VirtueMart is written in PHP and requires the MySQL database environment for storage. It is best suited for low to medium level traffic web-sites.

VirtueMart supports an unlimited number of products and categories, with products able to be assigned to multiple categories. It also permits the sale of downloadable products, and offers a catalog mode where the shopping cart features are turned off. VirtueMart supports multiple prices for a single product, based around shopper groups or a quantity range, and permits the use of a variety of different payment gateways.

Because VirtueMart is an open source e-commerce solution all the application code is openly visible in PHP. This allows PHP developers to view, update or customize the operation of the shopping cart. In addition VirtueMart itself offers simplified templates (called ‘fly pages’ in VirtueMart) structure that allows various shopping and cart page(s) to be edited as standard html and css.

Magento

Project page: http://www.magentocommerce.com/

Magento is an open source e-commerce web application that was launched on March 31, 2008. It was developed by Varien (now Magento Inc) with help from the programmers within the open source community but is owned solely by Magento Inc. Magento was built using the Zend Framework. It uses the entity-attribute-value (EAV) database model to store data.

The Magento Community Edition is the only free version of Magento available.

Zen Cart

Project page: http://www.zen-cart.com/

Zen Cart is an online store management system. It is PHP-based, using a MySQL database and HTML components. Support is provided for numerous languages and currencies, and it is freely available under the GNU General Public License.

Zen Cart branched from osCommerce as a separate project in 2003. Beyond some aesthetic changes, the major differences between the two systems come from Zen Cart’s architectural changes (for example, a template system) and additional included features in the core. The release of the 1.3.x series further differentiated Zen Cart by moving the template system from its historic tables-based layout approach to one that is largely CSS-based.

osCommerce

Project page: http://www.oscommerce.com/

osCommerce (“open source Commerce”) is an e-commerce and online store-management software program. It can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed. It is available as free software under the GNU General Public License.

osCommerce was started in March 2000 in Germany by project founder and leader Harald Ponce de Leon as The Exchange Project. As of August 2008, the osCommerce site says that there are over 14,000 ‘live’ websites using the program. This number is almost certainly conservative, given the inclusion of osCommerce in hosting panel application installers such as Fantastico Delux(tm), and Softaculous(tm). The backlink growth somewhat depends upon osCommerce users linking their sites into the osCommerce Live Stores listings.

Distributed under the GNU General Public License, osCommerce is one of the earliest PHP based Open Source shopping cart software distributions. As such, it has spawned a number of forks including Zen Cart.

PrestaShop

Project page: http://www.prestashop.com/

PrestaShop is a free, open source e-commerce solution. It supports payment gateways such as DirecPayDirecPay ,Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, Skrill, PayPal and PayPal Payments Pro (Direct) via their respective APIs. Further payment modules are offered commercially.

PrestaShop is available under the Open Software License and officially launched in August 2007. The software, which is written in PHP and based on the Smarty template engine, is currently used by 150,000 shops worldwide. MySQL is the default database engine. PrestaShop is the winner of the 2010 and 2011 Best Open-source Business Application awards.

Drupal Commerce

Project page: http://www.drupalcommerce.org/

Drupal Commerce is open-source eCommerce software that augments the content management system Drupal. Within the context of a Drupal-based site, Drupal Commerce presents products for purchase; walks customers through the checkout process; keeps track of invoices, receipts, orders, and payments; facilitates shipping and payment; and performs other functions needed by online merchants.

Like Drupal itself, Drupal Commerce can be extended through the use of modules that add functionality and themes that define visual presentation. There are more than 300 Drupal Commerce-specific modules available for free in such categories as payment gateways, shipping service providers, and administrative and development tools.