Ecommerce

osCommerce Shopping Cart Review

By Tinuiti Team

oscommerce-review-logoLooking to transfer platforms or start an entirely new online store? This unbiased osCommerce review will help you learn the fundamentals  as well as your fit with the ecommerce platform.*

Curious about how other platforms measure up? This osCommerce review is the 15th installment in our ecommerce platform series. Check out how the top ecommerce platforms stack up against each other here.

osCommerce Review: What Kind of Merchant Should Use the osCommerce Shopping Cart?

osCommerce’s online merchant platform is a comprehensive PHP-based ecommerce solution for online retailers. Think of it as the grandfather of all open-source shopping carts (“os” means open-source). Zen Cart is actually a branch off of the osCommerce software (see Zen Cart review here). Currently, more than 12,000 business owners use osCommerce as the backbone for their self-hosted (vs. hosted) online store.

Because osCommerce (v2.3) is a self-hosted, open source solution, there are no limits to the number of products that can be uploaded using the platform. Additionally, thousands of free community add-ons make just about any in-store functionality possible. If you’re looking for a differentiating factor for osCommerce among the sea of other open-source solutions, it’s that osCommerce has been in the business for over 13 years now. This means that the cart already has a built-in, active community (which is huge for open-source) and that there are many 3rd party services that integrate easily with it. Customization is one of osCommerce’s strong suits.

The general consensus is that although osCommere was the Model T that started it all, it simply does not compare to the more advanced and improved open-source shopping carts available today.

Ideal for: Any-sized retailer (osCommerce is the 5th most used ecommerce software among the Alexa Top 1M; the top 5 are all self-hosted open-source)

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osCommerce Review: Good osCommerce Features

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osCommerce Review: Bad osCommerce Features

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osCommerce Review: Submit Your Product Data Feed from osCommerce to Google Shopping

Haven’t tested these, but there appears to be a number of add-ons made specifically for creating a Google Merchant feed, like this one and this more recently made one. The perks of having an active community of developers who’ve been conditioned to be resourceful…

osCommerce Review: Bottom Line

As the original leader in open-source ecommerce software, osCommerce’s run at the top has dwindled as more and more improved-upon solutions popped up on the market and surpassed it (see Magento, CS-Cart, Zen Cart, and PrestaShop). Your main expenses with an osCommerce shop will be for web development services, hosting, and added security.

Recommending osCommerce to the masses of medium-sized retailers would be like recommending a DeLorean to a family man with 4 kids (another one of my attempts at analogical humor…). There are simply more robust, streamlined, and updated software available for arguably less of an investment of time and resources.  Nevertheless, with affordable and capable web development resources, an ecommerce business owner could still have a very functional online store, yet the effort required to get that point will probably not be worth the ROI.

Merchants can be ensured a blank slate and uphill battle with osCommerce.

osCommerce Ecommerce Platform Comparison Grade: C

Email [email protected] and request to have your experience be part of this osCommerce Review.

View the master list of our ecommerce platform comparison to make the most informed choice when choosing your ecommerce platform software.

*Note: Grades are subjectively based on analysis and comparison to other ecommerce platforms, based on availability, significance, and functionality of the platform feature and overall value.

How do you think osCommerce stacks up against the rest? Have your voice be heard and your opinion known!

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