In previous post, you have been knew about Magento – eCommerce Software for Growth. Today, you will be find other good eCommerce Softwares.
Zen Cart is an open source online store management system. It is PHP-based, using a MySQL database and HTML components. Support is provided for several languages and currencies, and it is freely available under the GNU General Public License.

Zen Cart branched from osCommerce as a separate project. Beyond some aesthetic changes, the major differences between the two systems come from Zen Cart's architectural changes(e.g. a template system) and additional included features in the core. Among the modules already included are a Gift Certificate/Voucher module which allows to create, send and manage the digital coupons. A module to sell downloads(pdf or other media files) is included as well.

Zen Cart's default installation provides everything needed to maintain a shopping cart web site, however no warranty is given that the software fulfills its purpose. Products, pricing, shipping, newsletters, sales etc. are managed by the store owner through the administration area. The shopping cart is set up to receive payments from major credit cards and several payment gateway services are also provided.

Although Zencart improved the shop management and administration with the template system, still it suffers from the fact that editing core files for customizing is often required (no real modular structure). Therefore, in case of heavy customizing, the software is cumbersome to maintain and update.

Installation

Most hosting companies offer Simple Scripts or Fantastico, which are application installers to help install Zen Cart. I would recommend using them as it saves time and also the hassle of setting up databases yourself. Zen Cart is one of the standard shopping carts available for installation so it should be a breeze to install. If you decide to go through and install Zen Cart yourself then you will need to read the instructions provided and it will take some time to get through. I would only recommend this route if you have a strong knowledge in PHP and MySQL as it will require you to edit some files and utilise FTP tools. You can download Zen Cart here.

Installation was fairly straight forward. I did get confused once or twice and have to manually tweak one or two files, but I suspect most people will have a smoother experience than I did. As usual, just create your MySQL database first and have the details handy.

Initial Impressions

As with most shopping carts, it comes with an out of the box skin and configuration. This seemed to be serviceable, although the skin wasn't terribly attractive and it seemed like a lot of options were turned on, making the interface a bit cluttered for my liking. This is a minor problem, as the various modules are easily turned off.
The administration interface is reasonably well laid out and is attractive enough, although the number of options is overwhelming. It was hard to know where to start to set things up as there are so many options, which is a mixed blessing.

As with most of the open source “out of the box solutions”, I knew there were going to be somewhat a lot of customising to be done. What I found at first was the default skin that Zen Cart provided had a lot of “stuff” that were not needed and it made the whole store look a bit cluttered for my liking. Furthermore it was extra work to turn off all the banner advertisements and also to rearrange the boxes to have a simplistic look. I believe there has to be some element of visual appeal for any new user wanting to use Zen Cart as their e-commerce system.

Skinning

Zen Cart ships with a few skins, there are more available for free and commercially. My client had very specific design requirements, and so I needed to get deep into the skinning. Frankly, I was disappointed. If you want to make superficial changes - maybe change the color, the font, the logo, the module headings, etc, then it would be a fairly painless experience. If you want to get deeper into the skinning, expect a significant battle and some mid-level PHP skills required. Skinning is such a fundamental concept I don't think it should be this hard. For example, one requirement was that some modules have a unique appearance. By default, Zen Cart requires all modules in a column look identical. While I managed to work around this, it was time consuming.

Changing text that appeared in the user interface was relatively easy in most cases, although sometimes some hunting was required, it certainly wasn't nicely centralized. The admin interface even comes with its own search tool to help find files, demonstrating how common this problem is. The folder structure seems confusing and I found it hard to locate the right file. I'm sure there's a reason for the structure, but I couldn't work it out and haven't experienced this problem with other shopping carts or similar products.

Most Internet businesses usually want a customised website and want different features to show their customers, which is why Zen Cart has a wide range of free and paid templates. You will find free basic templates available on the Zen Cart website that can be easily installed changing the colours and layout of your website. If you want more customisation, try some paid templates which start from about $50 and upwards. Here are two sites I recommend: Algozone and Template Monster.

Product Management

The key to running any successful e-commerce business is how well you can manage your products. With Zen Cart, you are provided with a wide range of product options such as:

• Allows you to sort your products in categories and sub-categories
• Manage and control your stock levels
• Create attributes for your products, such as colours, sizes, and much more
• The ability to create products in bulk using the Easy Populate add-on
• Create specials and featured products
• Write reviews for each product

Each option can be activated when you need it or turned off. Zen Cart’s product management system is by far the most comprehensive system I have used to date and everything is at your finger tips as it is all linked to your orders and customers.

There is a wide range of product options. Creating a product via the web interface is relatively straight forward, and there is a free add on called "Easy Populate" for those wanting to create their products in bulk. I didn't bump into any product features that couldn't be handled in a default install. For instance, product reviews, stock management and automatic thumbnail creation were all handled easily and out of the box. I did struggle to find out where to change some of these options - once again, the administration interface is a little overwhelming and not always clearly labeled. As an example, my client didn't want stock levels showing for products, and it took some hunting to find this.

Payment, shipping & taxes

There is a wide range of payment gateways available for Zen Cart. Only a few are installed by default, but many more are available for download. Installing new payment modules (or other modules) is a relatively pain free experience, and while it could be simplified further, is definitely better than most. There is no cutting and pasting of code, simply a matter of copying a few files into the right places. There's a good chance your payment gateway of choice is supported by Zen Cart.

I was impressed with the shipping module. There is a very flexible range of options, but despite it's power, it's relatively easy to use. All the options you'd expect - shipping by weight, by number of products, flat rate, etc, are all easily supported. Your shipping requirements would have to be quite unusual to not work in a default install. Management of taxes was similar, flexible and easy to use, with support for different regions. Configuring taxes was similarly flexible.

An area that could be improved is the checkout process. This process is critical to minimize shopping cart abandonment, and while not bad I felt it could have been made easier. My biggest objection was that it was unclear to the customer when payment was to be handled. While most Zen Cart shops will probably be using a third party payment processor such as 2CO or Paypal where payment is handled on an external site, in the mind of the customer this is still part of the entire payment process, where as Zen Cart gives the customer the impression that payment is a completely separate step. The Zen Cart developers could take some tips from other products such as CubeCart who handle this process much more smoothly.

Reporting

All the reports you expect to see are found out of the box. Sales, most popular products, customers, order status, etc, are all available. There isn't any highly sophisticated reports such as sales by search keyword, but that's not found in many expensive carts either. The conclusion on reporting: don't expect in depth analysis, but you should have all the essential information needed for day to day running.

Support

Being a free product, there is no formal support. You basically have 3 options. Look through the source code and work it out yourself, post to the forums and hope for the best, or pay someone to sort it out for you.

I found the source code for Zen Cart to be someone convoluted. I tried to make a few small tweaks and found it time consuming. Admittedly, PHP isn't my strongest language, but I found what I saw confusing. I have comfortable hacked other PHP shopping carts with no issues. You'll need to be at least a mid-level PHP coder in order to be able to work through the source code in a meaningful way. There does seem to be a small range of people able to give paid help. I requested a small modification via rentacoder, I wasn't overwhelmed with bidders but found someone who did quality work for me at a good price.

The forums are ok. They aren't the busiest forums in the world, and one or two questions went unanswered. The replies I received were reasonably good and helped me with a few problems.

There is some documentation available. There is an FAQ on the web site which did help me out with one or two questions. There is also a detailed administrators manual available as a PDF file. It is helpful in parts, but mostly just steps through the screens you'll come across and provides a little bit of detail, the sort of thing that should really be done inline on the site. There is a small "how to" and troubleshooting section, but not thorough enough for my liking.

The unreasonable things

• Not Cosmetically Appealing: As with most of the open source “out of the box solutions”, it comes with an out of the box skin and configuration, I knew there were going to be somewhat a lot of customising to be done. What I found at first was the default skin that Zen Cart provided had a lot of “stuff” that were not needed and it made the whole store look a bit cluttered for my liking.
  The administration interface is reasonably well laid out and is attractive enough, although the number of options is overwhelming. It was hard to know where to start to set things up as there are so many options, which is a mixed blessing.
  Furthermore it was extra work to turn off all the banner advertisements and also to rearrange the boxes to have a simplistic look. I believe there has to be some element of visual appeal for any new user wanting to use Zen Cart as their e-commerce system.
• Very Basic Reporting:Most of the basic reports are available which include products viewed, products purchased and customers orders. It lacks more sophisticated reports such as sales by products, profit on each product, profit margins made and so forth. There are additional addons which can be installed but are still not up to scratch. Basically I would not expect in depth analysis of sales, customers and products going through the door. You will need to generate these reports from your accounting software.
• Upgrades And Add-On Integrations Are Difficult: This is the big downside of Zen Cart. Once you have installed Zen Cart and made modifications to the software, don’t expect to upgrade for a very long time. In my past experience if you decide to upgrade to the next version, you will basically have to start from the beginning again. The system has not been designed to upgrade without overwriting all your addons and customisations. So if you did any modifications like I have on my websites, I would be very cautious to stick to the existing version. Unlike Wordpress for example, if there are major upgrades or upgrades for add-ons it is a simple click of a mouse and the rest of the system will do the upgrade for you.

Conclusion

My rating for Zen Cart is a 8 out of 10 and I would recommend it as a solution to start off with for any small to medium business owner.
Zen Cart is worth considering if your requirements are very basic and you aren't very fussy about the look & setup of it, or if you enjoy hacking PHP and are moderately good. However, if you want a complex store up and running quickly and cheaply, I'd recommend thinking twice.