2Checkout

$49 set-up, 5.5% of transaction amount plus 45¢ per transaction

URL:

www.2checkout.com

Type:

hosted cart, no merchant account required

Products:

Tangible, digital, or services

+

Better rates than Kagi (which I used to use), don't have to join like PayPal (which I also offer)

For our small business, it gave us what we needed, flexibility in cutting checks, lower charges, etc.

-

Able Commerce

URL:

www.ablecommerce.com

Type:

ColdFusion stand alone cart

Products:

Digital and tangible

+

Full featured and ease of use! They have been around forever.

-

The only program I have used and so far it is really not that user friendly when importing your own web design. Also when you come up against a problem that you need answered right away you can only e-mail them and wait for the answer or pay an enormous sum of money to have a representative answer you. The program itself was quite a bit of money as well.

AmeriCart

URL:

www.americart.com

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Digital and tangible

+

Wayne is very responsive to support requests, the system is very flexible with a ton of features, shipping costs are shown in the first view of the cart, it's not expensive and includes a database product upload with static html pages!

Simple to use, robust enough, inexpensive, easy to change web hosts.

Flexibility

-

bCentral

URL:

www.bcentral.com

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Tangible

+

Looks fairly easy to configure... Not familiar with many others.

-

BizHosting

URL:

www.bizhosting.com/

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Tangible

+

Easy for beginners, yet it has a lot of features and can be customized enough that it doesn't just generate cookie-cutter sites.

-

CandyPress

URL:

www.candypress.com

Type:

Stand-alone cart on Windows servers

Products:

Digital and tangible

+

Candypress for the price vs flexibility VP-ASP for the range of features both provide access to the source code, allowing significant customisation where necessary

Easy to Setup. All web-based and easy to configure. Excellent support!

I'm a designer/developer and have looked at all of the offerings available. There is not one that will even come close to this for the price. They also have some of the best support I've seen.

-

CartIt Commerce System

URL:

www.cartit.com

Type:

Stand-alone cart

Products:

Tangible

+

Stand alone, simple, easy to set up, good tech support, inexpensive.

-

Cart32

URL:

www.cart32.com

Type:

Stand-alone cart

Products:

Tangible

+

I like Cart32 best because compared to other cart programs, it is the easiest to use.

-

CCNow

9% of transaction

URL:

www.ccnow.com

Type:

Hosted cart, no merchant acct required

Products:

Tangible only

+

It's easy to set up, gives good reports, pays promptly twice a month.

-

Delays of up to a month or more receiving funds from sales. . . . very poor for cash flow!

ClickCartPro

URL:

www.clickcartpro.com

Type:

Stand-alone cart

Products:

Digital and tangible

+

Flexible & Easy integration - either flat file or database backend.

Flexible, includes lots of features found in higher priced solutions. Includes web-based administration, works with .csv or MySQL or other databases. Easy to customize look and feel. Includes Tell a Friend, E-mail list sign-up and more. Works with many payment processors.
We use Miva and Dansie as well, but ClickCartPro is proving to be an economical choice for us and our clients - it provides a lot of bang for the buck.

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Comersus

URL:

www.comersus.com

Type:

Stand-alone cart

Products:

Tangible and digital

+

Sophisticated, competitive scalable and get source code, does B2B B2C

-

Commission Cart

URL:

www.siteinteractive.com/comcart/

Type:

Stand-alone cart, affiliate program

Products:

Tangible and digital

+

-

I find Commission Cart hard to customize.

Dansie

URL:

www.dansie.net

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Tangible

+

It's simple and it always works. It has most of the features you want for small amount of money.

It was very cheap, and relatively easy to set up. Their support staff are second to none and they threw in the search engine for a good price. The cart offers many new features in its second upgrade which I will incorporate when I get the chance. I run my web site alone with no external cash so cannot afford thousands of pounds for programmers. Their held desk even helped me with general forms design. They also interface with the checkouts of nearly all the major credit card and on-line cheque websites.

-

DXcart

URL:

www.dxcart.comwww.dxstorm.com

Type:

Hosted cart and affiliate program

Products:

Tangible

+

Very flexible and easy to customize

-

Flashecom.com

URL:

www.flashecom.com

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Tangible

+

Completely integrated, very professional, no programming, and yet it looks just like the best. It is a hosted solution, so all updates are "free". Service is great!

-

goEmerchant

URL:

www.goemerchant.com

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Tangible

+

Liked the combination: reasonable price and features.

-

InterShop

URL:

www.intershop.com

Type:

Enterprise-level stand-alone system

Products:

Tangible

+

Extendable with many professional level store features like automatic "customers also purchased", "wish lists", "top sellers", etc.

-

Intershop support and customization (which they had to do, due to the encrypted source code) was extremely expensive and bothersome.

King-Cart

URL:

www.king-cart.com

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Tangible and digital

+

Marshall Dudley offers the best, in my estimation. He has developed a shopping cart that is interactive with nearly any site: and offers the best of all and/or any options available. One of the best features is Marshall himself: he is always there to listen and help and lend a hand when necessary. My cart is not functional yet: but he is helping me every step of the way and I know that it soon will be a reality. You do not need to know any HTML to use the cart. You do not pay a cent until it is fully operational: no matter how long it takes. Then the cost is 25 cents per order up to 100 orders: and 10 cents per order after that. If you do not sell any products then you simply owe nothing! He can accommodate all credit cards, encrypted, on his cart. It is so easy to use: with step by step instructions. And, you can add your own designs if you want to. I've already matched the shopping cart to my site (or rather, had it done by someone who knows HTML). With luck it may save me from losing everything I have worked for all these years. With my lowly bricks and mortar store alone I am going broke in today's economy. Now that I have found king-cart I have a chance to recoup some of my losses. Check it out at www.king-cart.com

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Mals E-Commerce

URL:

www.mals-e.com

Type:

Hosted cart, order manager, affiliate program

Products:

Tangible

+

It is the best value shopping cart about in my opinion. The cost is very cheap (for some people free) and there is a very good range of features for your money. Some other carts quite possibly have more features but, Mals really is fairly feature rich -- especially for the money. Mal has a programme that integrates with his cart called M Orders. OK, so M Orders isn't nearly as good or feature rich as his cart, in fact it has a lot to be desired, but it's the programme that I use.

I like the concept of mals-e

Easy to use and easy to manipulate the way you would like.

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MerchandiZer

URL:

www.merchandizer.com

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Tangible

+

-

Poor support. Hard to reach them. Slow to respond to problems.

Miva

URL:

www.miva.com

Type:

stand alone cart

Products:

Digital (tangible with plug-in)

+

It's "open source" so that we can either create or buy a module to do whatever the client needs the store front to do.

I recently discovered MonsterCommerce.com and was blown away at the breadth of features. FINALLY -- a shopping cart that has robust features on both the front end AND back end. Following that are Miva (for its flexibility) and PayPal (for its ease of use and affordability).

Easy to use for a non-tecchie; great support;quick results

Easy to customize a site with use of add-in modules

It's so adaptable, and there are several third party developers to help customize the functionality.

Very versatile, but make sure the hosting provider you use has some talented people who know the in's and out's. My site loads extremely fast and I must say the folks at Hostmysite.com do a real nice job of handling any and all issues. The other nice features are the ability to continually add on additional modules as you need them and with so much available already in the program from affiliate tracking to complete customization it really is a great tool. For example, right now I can collect email names and run my email campaigns directly from Miva with an add on module. During checkout I can promote upsale items and collect the email address' ( opt in of course ) and monitor all the people opting out after they receive newsletters, etc etc. And to think this is just the tip of the ice. Affiliate tracking and promotion is one more included aspect of the program. Best Regards, Jim Tarabocchia Founder and President Just-Binoculars.com A Division of Net Shoppe, LLC

I like the open source that allows me to find and install modules to extend the capabilities of Miva in any direction I want

Large active user group, external developers, highly customizable.

Flexibility

-

Hard to use. Poor support

Not very flexible

I have a love-hate relationship with Miva (hence it's appearance on both my favorite and least favorite lists). I'm an e-commerce consultant and web site designer, and I have found that an average designer cannot overcome the learning curve needed in order to use Miva's more robust customization features (Open Code). Furthermore, Miva is a NIGHTMARE in terms of administrative interface. I have set up countless small merchants on Miva, only to learn later that they could not easily navigate the clunky backend just to check their orders -- despite my doing one-on-one training with them. A perfect example of BAD usability. (How ironic -- it's a perfect example of GREAT usability on the part of the shopper.)

So inflexible

It's a total pain in the rear to get it to look nice. The GUI stinks. It's very hard to figure out where to find the parts that control what you want to change. Lots of third party modules required to get features like coupons, volume discounts, mail list export.

Klunky, disorganized, difficult to integrate with other components of a site, hard to customize.

MOFcart

URL:

www.merchantpal.com

Type:

Stand-alone cart

Products:

Tangible

+

$29, no fees. Needs a search feature.

-

MonsterCommerce

URL:

www.monstercommerce.com

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Digital and tangible

+

I recently discovered MonsterCommerce.com and was blown away at the breadth of features. FINALLY -- a shopping cart that has robust features on both the front end AND back end.

-

osCommerce

URL:

www.oscommerce.com

Type:

PHP/MySQL stand-alone cart

Products:

Tangible

+

It's open source, and pretty good.

Easier to work with than the one I am currently using (Interchange); flexible code written in a language (PHP) I am comfortable with. Very strong community support. OSCommerce (and Interchange) use SQL database back-ends which make it easy to extract data. OSCommerce is a bit less powerful than Interchange, so one needs to do more programming to achieve the special results one is looking for, but the programming is fairly simple.

It's very comprehensive and free (GPL Open Source). But badly documented and not for the fearful!

-

PayPal

URL:

www.paypal.com

Type:

Hosted cart and payment system

Products:

Digital, tangible, services, recurring

+

The best feature is its price, the problem is that customers have to have an account and all people may not want an account.

It's set up for the small entrepreneur. Good tutorials and PDF support.

It's free.

Easy

Admittedly, I'm biased... (you can guess who signs my checks :)

Processes credit cards at a low cost. Immediate access to funds from sales. Easy to implement. No setup fees. Integration with UPS is also a plus for shipping.

Ease of use and affordability

-

Too simple - can't track inventory.

I can never get any questions answered from PayPal. They do not have any interaction between their customers and themselves.

Had a PayPal merchant account (over two years ago). Tested it with my own credit card (not a valid transaction because it's like a cash advance without the fee). The transaction failed BUT, PayPal told me I made a "sale." I realized there would be a lot of extra work to log into PayPal to verify each transaction. I implemented a flexible shopping cart that could be used with a merchant account through my own bank.

Too ebay/PayPal centric.

PayPal's proprietary systems have more leaks than a colander. They just are simply not secure.

I can never remember what the passwords should be when I want to use it and am too lazy to go hunting for an old statement to get the matching security numbers.

Paysystems/Revecom

URL:

www.paysystems.com

Type:

Payment gateway with hosted cart

Products:

Tangible

+

It's attractive, comprehensive and comes free and integrated with Paysystems low cost CC processing.

-

Quikstore

URL:

www.quikstore.com

Type:

Stand-alone Perl cart

Products:

Tangible

+

Great Support! The support received through the online message boards is tremendous. The software is easy to use. Very customizable.

-

SecureNetShop

URL:

www.securenetshop.com

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Tangible

+

1. Bolts on to any existing website. 2. Allows you to store your inventory variables on static product pages that then pass to the cart. 3. Integrates well with other programs (affiliate software, conversion analyst, and almost anything) 4. Easy to configure. 5. Cart can be shared across multiple ecommerce web sites. 6. Good collection of standard ecommerce features (quantity breaks, promotions, discounts, variable shipping rates, etc.) 7. Dependable, system has never been down in all of the years I have been using it. 8. Progressive, company is constantly improving the program and rolling out the improvements in a safe manner. 9. Externally hosted.

Unlimited capabilities, price! (Unfortunately no affiliate SW - but that's the flaw I found)

-

ShopFactory

URL:

www.shopfactory.com

Type:

Stand-alone cart on Windows OS

Products:

Tangible

+

Easy-to-use shop creator with many advanced features, handles multiple currencies and languages, complex discount and shipping rates etc. Many templates to choose from, interface with several well-known payment systems. Australian software (I'm British).

-

ShopSite

URL:

www.shopsite.com

Type:

stand-alone cart and site builder

Products:

Digital and tangible

+

Powerful and easy to use.

It purrs, bells and whistles. It's so much better than our last one.

It is pretty easy to use. Still has a few drawbacks but we've been able to train sales and marketing staff to operate it! Thank goodness!

It's easy to use, easy to link anywhere, easy to deal with different product types.

-

Store2003

URL:

www.store2003.com

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Tangible

+

Easy to use, no programming language needed

-

StoreFront

URL:

www.storefront.net

Type:

Stand-alone cart

Products:

Digital and tangible

+

Complete system

Only one I've used

This applies to version 5.0 only. We like the functionality, ease of use, developer API into Dreamweaver, affiliate tracking, gateway integration, etc.

Integrated with Dreamweaver (my favorite web building tool), feature rich, and LaGarde seems to be a respectable firm.

Easy to use, very helpful documentation, great support.

Very versatile, can be modified, works with FrontPage. Upgradeable to be robust, handle limitless users and large files using SQL backend, so you don't have to start with the Cadillac - you can get into the program with a simple version, then upgrade as you grow. Lots of extras, including affiliate management and reporting (basic), mailing list management (basic), gift list, volume discounting, couponing, etc on the advanced models. Many third party add-ons to get you specific functionality you may need that isn't standard.

Ease of implementation, feature set, ease of use for the end user.

As a web developer, I like LaGarde's StoreFront software for its end-to-end solution. However, many developers are not happy about the recent upgrade path from version 5 to 6 because it requires the developer to learn a new programming language and is less friendly to "major" modifications of the delivered product. Apparently LaGarde is aware of this since they have recently started marketing both version 5 and 6 as programming language options instead of 6 simply being the current version.

-

Requires a lot of developer knowledge, but still offers somewhat limited capabilities. Very buggy, even with the latest release. Limited ISP support (my ISP wouldn't support the latest .NET release, but had supported earlier releases). I returned it and got my money back.

Look difficult to setup.

Ver 6.0 very buggie, extremely slow during checkout.

VPASP

URL:

www.vpasp.com

Type:

Stand-alone ASP cart

Products:

Digital and tangible

+

Good business to business functionality. Source code provided so you can configure how you want it. Australian options for the Australian market

-

WebCart

URL:

www.mountain-net.com

Type:

Stand-alone cart

Products:

Tangible

+

Simplicity

-

With-It Solutions

URL:

www.withitsolutions.com

Type:

Hosted cart

Products:

Tangible

+

The store is integrated into the rest of the site tools. The tools include store, CRM, reservations, wireless notification, web domain registration, search engine registration, content editing, and much more for little bits of money. I like the friendly service offered by withitsolutions.com. I also like that I can do everything myself without asking my webmaster to do it for me. That's great. Order management is integrated.

-

X-Cart

URL:

www.x-cart.com

Type:

Stand-alone PHP cart

Products:

Tangible and digital

+

The shopping cart uses smarty, so it's extremely easy to customize, it is constantly under development and is being updated often, forum community provides great support and updates, a lot of options. x-cart keeps track of shipping, back orders, and so on.

-

Yahoo! Store

URL:

store.yahoo.com

Type:

Hosted cart and website

Products:

Digital and tangible

+

Comprehensive

Well, actually it is the only one I have used, but I wanted in on the results! ;-)

These are the two that I found it easy to learn & have great features.

Price, ease of use, look.

Easy to use. easy to optimize.

Instant notification of customer order, tracks where the customer arrived from, tracks sales by product (pageviews, orders, dollars.

-

Not available to international vendors. Very very expensive

Always is locking up merchant editor. Ran very slow over Christmas do to load Yahoo can no longer handle (but even had problems Christmas 2001). Archaic RTML.

A real headache for users placing orders, who are not associated with yahoo.

Very expensive over all

I HATE Yahoo!'s shopping cart. We are moving off of Yahoo! as soon as we can. It turns away our customers with the frequent errors and forces our customers to follow a path they do not want to. It is not very customizable so we have very little control over what we can display and how we can display it. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'll give Yahoo! a 2. Get a new cart.

Whilst their functionality is great, their fees are high. Oracle's Small Business Suite is fantastic but the shopping cart functionality is limited.