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Open Source Shopping Carts: A list for 2021

Starting a new online business? Or looking to upgrade to newer open source shopping carts? Confused by all options?

Here is our compilation of Open source carts. We have marked the ones you should consider if you are considering new development. Others are still good for maintenance.

Name	No of Installs	Good for New Site
Agoracart	10000000+	Yes
Cube Cart	9177	Yes
Drupal Commerce	37631	Yes
Joomla eCommerce	1100000000	Yes
Magento Open Source	761205	Yes
OpenCart	952949	Yes
Prestashop	699213	Yes
Spree commerce	1000000+	Yes
WooCommerce	4275585	Yes
Commerce.CGI	251137	No
jcart	77381	No
nopCommerce	3,000,000+	No
Oscommerce	251936	No
Shopware	9013	No
Ubercart	77293	No
VirtueMart	9013	No
Zen Cart	662403	No
Zeus cart	–	No

1. Agora cart

No of Installs: 1000000+
Good for new site: Yes

Summary: AgoraCart uses Perl, Javascript, jQuery, HTML 5, CSS 3, Font-Awesome, and popular JS/CSS frameworks such as Materialize and Bootstrap. AgoraCart's ecommerce shopping cart software is responsive design, mobile ready.

2. Cube Cart

No of Installs: 9177
Last updated: 10, Nov, 2020
Good for new site: Yes

Summary: CubeCart is a free, feature-rich eCommerce shopping cart. With an exhaustive list of features, it is a great deal for your web store.

3. Drupal commerce

No of Installs: 37631
Last updated: 22, Oct, 2018
Good for new site: Yes

Summary: Drupal Commerce (a.k.a Drupal for Commerce) is another open-source eCommerce solution for Drupal-based websites looking to add eStore capability to their website.

4. Joomla eCommerce

No of Installs: 1100000000
Good for new site: Yes

Summary: Joomla! is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content. Joomla! is based on PHP and MySQL, so it's easy to use share and support powerful applications on an open platform.

5. Magento open source

No of Installs: 761205
Last updated: 15, Oct, 2020
Good for new site: Yes

Summary: Magento is one of the best open-source eCommerce solutions available. It also has paid versions: Magento Commerce Starter and Magento Commerce Pro.

6. Open Cart

No of Installs: 761205
Last updated: 15, Oct, 2020
Good for new site: Yes

Summary: OpenCart's first release came in 2010 and has had close to 1 million installs to date. Its marketplace is enriched with more than 13,000 modules and themes to jump-start your online store.

OpenCart launched OpenCart Cloud in 2017, a cloud-based hosted shopping cart software.

7. Presta shop

No of Installs: 699213
Good for new site: Yes

Summary: Launched in 2008, PrestaShop is an open-source eCommerce solution backed by a community of more than 1 million users. It is a secure and sustainable shopping cart solution. Over 600 features and more than 5000 modules & themes make it flexible and scalable.

8. Spree commerce

No of Installs: 9013
Good for new site: Yes

Summary: Spree started in 2008. Based on the Ruby on Rails platform, it is an open-source eCommerce shopping cart solution with 4000+ members on its Spree slack group.

9. Woocommerce

No of Installs: 4275585
Good for new site: Yes

Summary: WooCommerce is the trusted and most-used open source eCommerce shopping cart in the world. It leads the eCommerce Shopping Cart installations with 22% of the top 1mn eCommerce sites in the world using it. It is a flexible, scalable, and sustainable solution built on WordPress with 6,000+ WooCommerce plugins.

10. Commerce.CGI

No of Installs: 251137
Good for new site: No

Summary: Commerce.CGI is a fully featured shopping cart that is very simple to install unlike other carts available that require technical support. CGI was first introduced way back in 1988 and one of the first free Perl shopping carts released on the web.

11. j Cart

No of Installs: 77381
Good for new site: No

Summary: jCart is an open source shopping cart that’s easy to install and customize. jCart is fully functional without javascript, Based on jQuery and PHP, jCart handles visitor input without reloading the page too.

12. nopCommerce

No of Installs: 77381
Good for new site: No

Summary: Having 12 years of experience into eCommerce market, nopCommerce have 60,000+ live shops onboarded, 150+partners from 40 countries, 1500+ integrations, and 2,50,000+ members worldwide

13. Oscommerce

No of Installs: 251936
Good for new site: No

Summary: One of the oldest eCommerce shopping cart solutions, Oscommerce has a strong community of 350,000+ members. It is a high-performance solution that is secure, flexible, and scalable with over 9,000 add-ons that help you customize your online store.

14. Shop ware

No of Installs: 9013
Good for new site: No

Summary: Shopware Community Edition is an open-source shopping cart solution that is packed with unique features that is needed to start an online shop. It is modular and easily scalable using the plugins and modules available.

15. Uber cart

No of Installs: 77293
Good for new site: No

Summary: Ubercart is the go-to module for Drupal-based websites needing an eCommerce Shopping Cart. In the last 3-4 years, the trend for Ubercart installations seeing a huge drop, and with the Website found not to be working, possibly is an indication of Ubercart heading to an end.

16. Virtue mart

No of Installs: 9013
Good for new site: No

Summary: VirtueMart is an open-source eCommerce solution for Joomla! Content management system. It is a feature-rich, flexible, high-performance, and scalable shopping cart solution.

17. Zen cart

No of Installs: 662403
Good for new site: No

Summary: Zen Cart is claimed to be a user-friendly, open-source eCommerce shopping cart add-on software that can run on your existing website. It is fully customizable and easy-to-setup. It works with most of the hosting companies and can be used with your own domain.

18. Zeus Cart

No of Installs: NA
Good for new site: No

Summary: Zeus cart focus mainly on Small & medium scale store operators and designed their software to cater everything from inventory management, attribute driven product catalog, category management, in-built CMS, SEO friendly URLs, Gift Cards, Discounts, Tier-Price, Taxation, Integrated payment gateways, EMail templates to Newsletter

Need help deciding on which shopping cart is best for you. Talk to us – we will be happy to help. Is your favorite cart is missing from the list? Comment below with the info and we will happy to add it.

Shopping Carts: Self-Hosted vs. Hosted

In our previous post, we covered Shopping carts and it’s various types. In this one, let’s get into the pros and cons of both types of shopping carts.

Why Self-hosted eCommerce platforms?

With a self-hosted shopping cart, you have better control over your web stores.
Additional features are available in forms of plugins or extensions and if you don’t have one, there is a community to reach out to develop one.
The self-hosted eCommerce solution gives you the freedom and capability to scale anytime as business grows.
Freedom to choose hosting of your choice.

Why NOT?

Requires technical assistance in setting up the store.
Though you have the community backing you but there is lack of direct support from the provider.
Costs go up once your store begins to grow and this is completely dependent on the hosting provider you choose.

Why Hosted eCommerce platforms?

The one-stop eCommerce solution that includes hosting, shopping cart capability, and technical support.
Simple to build and manage eStores with very little technical knowledge.
Centralized support team to go to when you are stuck and they will take care of it for you.
They are reasonably priced and offer various deals on advance payments.

Why NOT?

As you scale your store on hosted eCommerce platforms, it can cost more than the self-hosted eCommerce solution.
Your control is limited when it comes to customizing the store and can work only with the available resources.
Switching platforms can cost you a lot of money and is also a time-consuming process. At times, it has been found impossible to migrate the stores from hosted platforms due scope of the store.

In Conclusion, Hosted and Self-Hosted eCommerce solutions are both powerful and flexible. They provide control and can be set up within lower budgets but takes time and requires technical know-how to maintain and run.

Whereas, Hosted eCommerce platforms can be set up quickly and requires less technical knowledge but will cost more and have limitations with customization.

Now that we have covered the positives and negatives of Self-Hosted and Hosted shopping carts above, look out for our next blog where we will present comprehensive list of Self-hosted Shopping Carts solutions.

Different Types of Shopping Carts

If you are planning to open an online store, you cannot ignore shopping carts. Shopping carts are the basic functionality that allows the user to make a purchase on your website. Here is a compiled list of all the shopping carts for you at one place.

Following are some basic types of shopping carts:

Hosted shopping carts or a.k.a eCommerce platforms are software-as-a-solution which are hosted by platforms on their own servers.
Example: Shopify.
Self-hosted shopping carts, these are traditional or the original shopping cart solutions that are hosted on your own servers.
There are two types of Self-hosted shopping carts:
- Open Source Shopping Carts which can be installed on your server. The source code of this available to developers for customization and bug fixing.
  Example: Woocommerce (WordPress), Drupal Commerce (Drupal), Magento.
- Licensed Software is developed by a single company and is available for use on your own server for one-time fee payment.
  Example: CS-Cart

Read our blog for Pros and Cons of Self-Hosted Shopping Carts and Hosted Shopping Carts.

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