Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said, “In the real world, the most powerful weapon for a store is location, location, location, while for us, the three most important things are technology, technology, technology.” It goes without saying that if you want to enter e-commerce, the e-commerce system plays a pivotal role. A powerful system delivers better results in terms of work efficiency and business implementation.
With the rapid development of web technologies, picking a suitable system from dozens of e-commerce platforms today is no easy task. I believe many people don’t want to agonize over this decision for too long. The author has also been keeping an eye on this area recently. Below, this article rounds up eight open-source e-commerce systems that I consider quite good, with brief comments only — search online for more details if you’re interested.
Domestic (China):
ECSHOP
Language: PHP
The first domestic system to champion the open-source banner, ECSHOP quickly amassed a large fan base thanks to its powerful and flexible features, with market share second only to the closed-source ShopEX.
Comprehensive functionality is one of ECSHOP’s highlights. The backend offers fairly complete product management, order processing, member management, and more. Many features are designed with flexibility in mind, offering customizable settings, and according to the manual, you can even develop your own payment interfaces. After being acquired by Shanghai ShopEx, ECSHOP’s update pace gradually slowed, and some bugs went unresolved for long periods — a real shame. Fortunately, it still adheres to the open-source principle. Site owners or enterprises with technical expertise should definitely keep an eye on this classic homegrown system.
iWebShop
Language: PHP
There isn’t much online about iWebShop. I once saw a netizen comment, “This one has a typical Shanghai-style approach.”
After trying it out for a while, I didn’t sense any particular Shanghai style. What I do appreciate is iWebShop’s truly thorough open-source nature. It is a rare domestic open-source e-commerce system since ECSHOP, allowing free secondary development. This saves you the trouble of tearing down and rebuilding the system when the site needs significant feature additions or removals. Just as iWebShop is still in its early days, compared to older peers its functionality still needs improvement — for instance, data statistics and promotional topics are still just simple listings.
V5SHOP
Language: ASP.NET
Compared to the PHP camp, there aren’t many ASP.NET e-commerce systems. V5SHOP is one with a strong reputation online — no surprise, given it was built on solid technical foundations.
V5SHOP is relatively feature-complete. That said, since I personally focus more on PHP software, I’ve only had a cursory experience with it and can’t offer a thorough review. I’d appreciate any supplement from friends who have used it. I recall it can generate static HTML pages, which should be very helpful for SEO, though you’ll need enough hosting space for that. Because it’s built on ASP.NET, there are relatively fewer systems it can integrate with — that might be the biggest reason I gave up on it.
International:
Magento
Language: PHP
I believe friends doing cross-border e-commerce will be more familiar with this international open-source system. Magento has very few flaws — quite rare — but it demands more from the server; the author failed several times trying to install it on XAMPP. It is designed with great flexibility, featuring a modular architecture and rich functionality, and easily integrates with third-party applications. It also offers a paid enterprise edition. Magento uses the Zend Framework, so those planning to develop on it should get familiar with Zend first.
Note: oschina recommends Makingware, an improved version based on Magento that better suits domestic (Chinese) users.
Language: PHP
Another well-known foreign e-commerce system in China. Zen Cart is easy to install and customize. Ordinary shop owners using Zen Cart can customize their store’s appearance and functionality on their own. Zen Cart is one of the best e-commerce programs, but some inherent program issues interfere with on-site search engine optimization. So plugins and secondary development are needed to better achieve the goal of selling products through search engines.
osCommerce
Language: PHP
osCommerce is an open-source online shopping e-commerce solution licensed under GNU GPL. It features an easy-to-use visual installation interface, comprehensive frontend product display and online shopping cart functionality, powerful backend management, and fast running speed — highly regarded abroad. There is no official Chinese language pack; localization is handled by a domestic organization, and customizability is relatively limited.
OXID eSales
Language: PHP
OXID eSales is an open-source e-commerce system developed in PHP using MySQL for data storage. OXID eSales features a modular and standards-based architecture, making it easier to customize. The system has all the features an e-commerce system should have, including B2C and B2B. Powerful integrated marketing. Integrated content management system (CMS). SEO-friendly URLs.
PrestaShop
Language: PHP
PrestaShop is a feature-rich Web 2.0 online shopping system developed with PHP5. PrestaShop is customizable and stable. The entire system is only 5.8MB and easy to install quickly. PrestaShop is built on the Smarty templating engine with a modular design and strong extensibility, easily supporting multiple languages and currencies for browsing and transactions, and supporting almost all payment methods including PayPal — an excellent choice for building cross-border e-commerce sites. The latest version is 1.4.