Blog Listing

The open source e-Commerce platform is growing at a lightening speed in the online marketing sector. Moreover, the year 2014 manifested a strengthened relationship between business and web-space. The massive array of open source e-Commerce platforms witnessed certain great rise and fall in their use. Here is an overview of the major trends of open source e-Commerce platforms in 2014 and also for the upcoming year 2015 : 1. Magento: The changing market trends and new launches of open source software’s was unable to shake the grounds of dominant platform Magento. This feature-rich, enormously flexible over the layout, design and feel software has retained the top most position for even this year. Today, Magento is the established leader among all the e-Commerce softwares empowers majority of the innovative e-Commerce stores on the web. Strength-

• The Magento Community Edition enables you to modify the core code and add features and functionality by installing extensions from the Magento marketplace.
• It allows you to amiably adjust with the existing features, is more SEO-friendly and doesn’t require expertise technical support.
• It has an out-of-the-box feature set which manages and organizes concept properly. Some of the operational and management features of Magento include user profiles, admin panel, email notifications,product catalog toolkit, SSL support and many more.
• Cost-worthy extension is helpful to attract customers in your Magento store. For example- the installation of Daily Deals Extension on your Magento store will let you showcase latest attractive deals and offers.

Limitation- Magento can be only used for e-Commerce website and no other website. Although it works phenomenally well for the e-Commerce website. 2. Open Cart: The OpenCart at the second position is a high-end solution that combines simplicity, flexibility and multi-functionality. By supporting more than 20 payment gateways OpenCart e-Commerce service makes your users shopping experience completely enjoyable. It has an excellent order management system. Moreover, it provides numerous choices for tax payment in different countries. Strength-

• OpenCart is a highly powerful and scalable e-Commerce platform enabling you to create a limitless number of categories, sell countless numbers of products, accept multiple currencies and uses multiple languages.
• The simple set up is the major benefit of open cart. This platform enables not so technically expert people to create a store without any kind of support of an expert.
• The good speed of the site is the main point that will boost the customers shopping experience. This user-friendly website offers countless features to increase the usability for the client.
• OpenCart supports multi- store functionality, which enables the retailer to manage different stores through a single admin panel.

Limitation-One of the drawbacks of OpenCart is that it is less used than other platforms, therefore documentation and help may be hard to come by. 3. PrestaShop: PrestaShop is among highly customizable open source platform in 2014. This rapidly growing robust  platform is widely favored for its excellent interface which is significantly innovative and user-friendly. With numerous features Presta Shop increases your conversion rates to  many folds. Strength-

• PrestaShop provides flexibility to easily customize the admin panel.  This user-friendly platform is available in English, French and Spanish, with an additional 41 translations. Moreover, it enables the store owners to create and manage their catalogues, customers and orders.
• Feature-rich PrestaShop offers great features such as unlimited categories, products and attributes, product comparison, multiple images with lightbox, cross-selling / related products and customer product reviews.
• The enormous variety of themes gives you an access of a key tool to make your store highly-functional.
• Presta Shop comes with an in-build animated ‘add to cart’ feature  which will make online shopping quite easier.

Limitation- Although, PrestaShop lacks many of the features of e-commerce. No ease in downloading and countless issues will demand hours of time investment. 4. Woo Commerce: Three years old Woo Commerce comes at the fourth position. It  was developed by WooThemes from a fork of Jigoshop which let you turn your WordPress sites into an online store. This open-source platform offers users with an extensive variety of features and functionalities. Strength-

• It has a huge variety of themes and plugins such as WooThemes, ThemeForest and CodeCanyon.
• This open source platform offers users with vast features and user friendly experience which makes it a good option for the startups.
• It easy to find a support for the woo commerce as numerous companies and developers around the world support it.

Limitation- However, with a large number of themes working on the WooCommerce platform, selling becomes a secondary task rather than primary. 5. Os Commerce: Os Commerce is one of the most comprehensive and fifth most popular open source platform in 2014. It has a large variety of features and is counted among the most versatile open source platforms. With numerous features of OsCommerce, easy to customise is the chief feature of OsCommerce. Strength-

• Os Commerce offers a complete access to your online store’s data with limitless products, categories and items.
• It poses features such as custom currencies, multiple languages, backup options, SEO-friendly URLs, multiple payment gateways, custom taxes and shipping modules.
• With all themes and plugins, it offers non-developers an ease to set up a shop with a little or no help.
• Os Commerec offers a complete online store solution which accommodate both front-end and back-end administrative tool, which are very easy to configure on web.

Limitations- However, it comes with major drawbacks of not so vulnerable coding and decreases the hacking security. Moreover,the use of similar themes makes your site just like any other site without any uniqueness. 6. Zen Cart: A large number of retailers are turning towards Zen Cart and therefore it secures sixth position in the list. Loaded with numerable feature Zen Cart is easy to install and maintain. Originally a PHP shopping cart program of e-commerce it is build on the GPL code foundation of commerce operation system. Zen Cart has an easy set up management system which is quick and easy to set up. Strength-

• Zen Cart is a user-friendly open source shopping cart software.
• It is easy to install and keeps your catalogue updated without any support of HTML coding. Its simplicity with not much of technical complexities makes it the first choice of less technical minded people.
• It offers handy features such as discount coupons, newsletter manager and gift certificates.
• It has unlimited payment gateways.

Limitation- With a large number of features and functionalities Zen Cart comes with a bad store layout that makes your website complex and confusing. 7.  Spree Commerce: Spree Commerce has acquired seventh position in the most favored open source e-Commerce platform. The framework of Spree Commerce is based on Ruby on Rails. This easy to use platform can be easily customized according to our requirements. Strength-

• Spree Commerce is easy to integrate, is flexible, customizable and provide back-end automation which helps you to create your own unique storefront.
• It enables you to manage sales through multiple storefronts, both online and offline.
• Through this platform you can integrate your in-house systems into your existing workflow and create custom functionality. It was successful to attract retailers this year but certainly not so friendly features left a bad taste for the users.

Limitation- One of such point of concern that it runs on the Rails Framework and it becomes complex. It is not user friendly for the ones who don’t have the knowledge to work with Rails. Evidently, Magento is the best Open Source e-Commerce platforms in 2014. Its feature-rich functionality and scalability empowers your website to increase your business sales at considerable speed. Striking the major trends of 2014, Magento turns the 1st choice of the leading brands in the world. Its resonance in the e-commerce market forecasts its bright future for the upcoming year, 2015.