Who is zen cart

Shopping carts What is CS-Cart? What is Open Cart? What is PrestaShop? What is Magento? What is X-Cart? What is Zen Cart? Start Trial. Read Review. We've done in-depth research on each and confidently recommend them.

Responses are not provided or commissioned by the vendor or bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the vendor or bank advertiser. I was working with OSCommerce and getting frustrated. I am a small business working out of my home and ZenCart has all the features — and more — that a small business would want.

Their forum is very active and their documentation is top notch. I started with Zen Cart about 5 years ago, after investigating both the availability of shopping cart software here in Tokyo, Japan, and its customizability and updating. For my side-business it was clear from the start that the commercial offerings would be vastly too expensive right off the bat; and unfortunately the local Zen Cart hosting companies use old and unmaintained versions.

So I ended up investing heavily in learning the software, and creating Japanese support for the latest version. This has worked out very well, and the help from the forums has been great.

I admit it was hard work, but this type of investment is something I consider necessary to make sure the business has a reliable engine driving it. There are fortunately also plenty of available and recommended experts to hire via the forums, which is a good thing to be able to fall back on. I have been using Zencart since and I must say that it has been the most adaptable cart that I have ever used.

I started trading online in which was the very early stages of online shopping. While companies like mNP offer an amazing interface with automated picking etc the shop end was no better, indeed far worse than zencart. If you are looking for a simple, easy to use shopping cart then ZEncart is the best option. If you are not tech savy then use an online web programmer from O Desk or similar and they will always help and. It is good to see reviews on zencart. I have been using zencart for last nine years.

That is know about it from version 1. In every system there will be a difficulty. It is built with such a care that hackers cannot get into it easy. You can run the store without updating for 5 to six years. That is something amazing you are updating your websites twice a week as wordpress and paying for modules of wordpress every year. You have a free shopping cart system. But you are paying monthly charges for shopify! You can maintain and customize cheaply You need to pay hefty amount for magento customization And finally it is a PCI compliance system.

I dont think you want something more of a shopping cart that supports seo friendly, less maintained and free to use. Could you help me? I made an online purchase from ardeshop. Never received anything from them except charge to my visa. They have web run by Zen. Their website is down for many days. Is there a way you can help me contact this vendor? Will Zen tell me who this is. According to my credit card charge they are in China.

Thank you for your help. How can I get a hold of nrpan. There is no way to contact them. They had no problem charging my card. I need to return these items that I will never use.

Please help. Thank you. I love the fact that I can customize anything. Yes, doing so requires either some previous knowledge of programming and website maintenance, or the willingness to learn.

I appreciate the fact that the Zencart developers have spent their time making a solid, dependable, bug-free core that others can build on. The savings in monthly fees alone have made a big difference to my small business, which is self-funded and still growing. Have you tried Woocommerce? Talk about not intuitive! I gave up on it and went back to Zencart. The whole development team is focused on the things that matter to the core functionality, they added a Templating feature so users can make their OWN flashy, fancy layouts….

This is the way it has always been…. To me it means they spend more of their energy in making a better core system, rather than a crappy core with a pretty face. Thanks for the review Amad. I am still caught up on which open source software to use for my next site. This is on the list, so now at least I have a good overview of the product. Like trying any new ecommerce platform, a learning curve is expected.

And I thought Magento was bad! My God! I think the only way it has stayed in business so long is the word FREE. Hi, great review, I have been working with zen cart for about 6 years now. I am a small business man and not a programmer or developer. I needed a little help at first with the first build and install, but now can do most stuff myself and have learnt how to change some of the PHP and mod stuff to suit me..

I find Zen cart awesome, Yes the stock templates look dated, but my site does very well with SEO, and its just a case of a few plugins and keeping up with what works best for Google which changes.

If I were new to this would not be put off from trying , especially if you are new to web shops.. Essentially, you are responsible for getting this website up and running: designing and building it, setting up its hosting, and registering a domain name.

As such, many third-party developers have created themes and templates that you can use to get your store up and running. These themes and templates can essentially turn your shopping cart into more. Some providers you might consider include:. If you have been looking into other e-commerce solutions, such as Magento or PrestaShop, you will see that this is an additional step you have to handle to get your website and store running. As we have mentioned, Zen Cart unlike the two options we just mentioned is only a shopping cart, not a full e-commerce platform.

Opting for Magento or PrestaShop might be easier for someone who wants a one-stop shop for all things e-commerce, but if you want a free option to integrate with an existing website and predetermined payment gateways, Zen Cart would be fine. You are fully responsible for hosting your Zen Cart installation. To help you choose a host, Zen Cart provides a list of compatible hosts though you should know that these are affiliate links.

If you want to choose your own host, you can do that. Many, such as SiteGround, even provide help articles to get your installation set up properly. These flaws placed users of Zen Cart-powered stores at risk of data compromise and theft, as well as unauthorized user tracking. By , Zen Cart had fixed most, but not all, of the issues discovered by Trustwave. With that said, exploiting the flaws that remain are difficult, and we suspect that the costs of fixing this issue exceed the risks of this being problematic for users.

If you opt for Zen Cart, be sure to use the latest versions, which include the security fixes, not a legacy copy. Because Zen Cart is open source , there is absolutely no cost to using the software.

If the features offered by the base Zen Cart installation meet your needs, you might not have a lot of work to do above and beyond installation and configuration. The installation process for Zen Desk is not user-friendly. The Zen Desk installer attempts to do a fair amount of the legwork on your behalf, but you will still need to check and make sure that the automated processes are doing what you expect it to which, in turn, requires you to know what to look for.

With all those caveats aside, Zen Cart is a very powerful tool that can turn your website or blog into an e-commerce site. While Zen Cart , as an open source offering, has a lot of downsides, there are certainly more than enough upside to justify them if you have the right knowledge for this kind of implementation.

See how Zen Cart compares. Written by Katie Horne Updated November 5,