Zen Cart E-Commerce

What’s Zen-Cart?

Zen Cart™ truly is the art of e-commerce; free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. The ecommerce web site design program is being developed by a group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think ecommerce web design could be and should be done differently.

From Wikipedia:

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 Features:

  • Multiple language support
  • Multiple customer modes
  • unlimited category depth
  • Multiple sales and discounts
  • Multiple display modes
  • XHTML 1.0 compliant template system
  • extra pages
  • Multiple ad banner controller
  • Multiple shipping options
  • Multiple payment options
  • Newsletter manager
  • Discount coupons
  • Gift certificates
  • Featured products
  • Quantity discounts
  • PhpBB integration through external module
  • Allows customers to shop your store 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
  • Easily keep your products/catalog updated – no HTML coding required to add, delete, or modify products.
  • Works on the popular combination of PHP and MySQL technologies.
  • Secure – no one but your administrative personnel can access your customer/catalog data.
  • Easy to install – our helpful installation program guides you easily through the setup process.
  • User frontend is validated to XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
  • Advanced template system using stylesheets and images.
  • Any PHP coding changes can be protected during upgrades by using the built-in override protection system.
  • Switching from one installed template to another is as simple as a couple of clicks in the Admin.
  • Merchandise Pricing options – single and Multiple items can be put on sale. Sale options include percentage-off, fixed amount off, new price, etc. Sales can include or exclude product attributes. You can add or exclude a discount from a special. You can put a whole category or the entire store on sale.
  • Products can be marked as free or Call for Price.
  • Products can be marked as Featured for specific highlighting/attention.
  • Products can be linked and/or copied to Multiple categories.
  • Minimum or maximum quantities and units – you can sell one per customer, or require at least four and in Multiples of two. You can set requirements on a per-product basis.
  • HTML-style email supported.
  • Email can be sent via sendmail, smtp, or smtp-with-authorization.
  • Email archiving supported for audit trail.
  • Administrative activity logging enabled for audit trail – especially beneficial with recent merchant agreement requirements concerning tracking of activity related to accessing customer information.
  • Advertising banners – show information about your business colleagues and track banner link activity. Banners can open in new windows so that customers never really leave your site.
  • Shipping estimator allows your customer to get an idea of their shipping costs prior to checkout.
  • Coupons and gift certificates are easily handled both by customers and administrators.
  • Customer group pricing allows groups of users to receive a set discount amount at checkout.
  • Newsletter and product notification systems.
  • Low order fees can be configured.
  • COD fees can be added.
  • Shipping tare, large package handling to give fine-grain control over shipping services.
  • Tax rates, tax zones, etc easily configured in the Admin area.
  • PayPal™ IPN and many other popular merchant services supported.
  • Customers can write product reviews (approvals can be required by an Administrator).
  • Low stock notifications to administrator when inventory is getting low (level can be configured).
  • For the developer – simple customization via stylesheets.
  • Developers toolkit helps quickly locate a setting or text string to be customized.
  • Scalable from small shops to larger shops with hundreds of thousands of products.
  • Track who’s online interactively.
  • Multiple language support.
  • Multiple currency support.
  • and more..

Zen Cart Vs osCommerce:

Zencart & osCommerce are the most popular free open source for PHP commerce software. Which one is better? Which one is more suitable for your personal requirements? I’ve tried to use Zen Cart, also osCommerce, with my experience, Zencart is more powerful and easier to re-configure. Why? Zencart & osCommerce are all easier to install, but Zencart is much easier to customize and use, much like the osCommerce application, only better (well, according to its users anyway). Actually, many consider it to be based on the osCommerce code (since its developers have worked extensively on that system), a bit more simplified.