Shopping cart software in php. is something like osCommerce really free?
I’ve got a good friend who says, “if it’s free, it’s for me”. When you think of ecommerce shopping cart software solutions, this is a serious challenge. Naturally, when it comes to free items, your natural inclination is to check it out. However, the free osCommerce shopping cart may be more of a hassle than a bargain. The main reason being that people launching online web stores like women’s clothing stores - forget to factor in TWO elements to their costs: software (non-human) and labor. Just because the software may be free, does not mean it is free because it still costs someone the time - and money - to install and integrate the software.
The biggest advantage to the osCommerce cart is obviously that it is free to download. It is essentially a multi-featured online sales and payment engine available for free. Because it is free, many people are willing to put up with the trouble to download it and get the osCommerce cart running on their computer. When you install it, you get all of the basic requirements needed for use with ecommerce.
In order for your free osCommerce to work properly, it is recommended that your machine can run PHP and has access to a typical LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) setup. It is possible to run on a WAMP, which replaces Linux with Windows, but the trouble makes it almost not worth it. If you have a web hosting provider that you use, it is likely that you have all of the requirements. However, it is better to be safe than sorry, so contact your support rep to assure yourself.
Before you turn around, hours have gone by just installing the platform. Then you have to start CONFIGURING it. Then you have to start integrating your design and content with their system. We could almost guarantee in a side by side comparison that it will take minimally 30-40 hours to get an osCommerce store running. Whereas with our WebCart Shopping Cart platform you could be up and running in a few hours. You could also pay one of our offshore content masters $500 or so to take your web design and integrate it completely with our cart system.
