Zen Cart - My Review

stef686 · 01-31-06, 05:32 PM

Well, most of my day today has been playing around with Zen Cart. We have a new client at work that want us to develop an eCommerce website and we've suggested a heavily customised Zen Cart. So, being "web developer boy" in the office it was my job to poke my nose around, see what it could do and what we could do with it.

Another reason was that I played around with osCommerce in the summer and so could compare the two.

The first thing I noticed was the fact that the admin section was almost identical to osCommerce's admin. A different layout and a lot more options but nonetheless everything works in the same way and even most of the icons are the same! There is a lot more in Zen Cart though, it seems as though they have taken it and made it a hell of a lot better. You can alter more options, some of the usability issues have been ironed out and generally has better site management abilities. Also, probably the biggest thing, the admin has a login - I still cannot believe osCommerce does not.

Onto the front end, the code is a lot less bloated and much easier to alter to your own needs. Things such as templating are quite easy to modify. Being controlled by CSS definately helps (although still a table layout everything else is stylesheeted), it only took a few hours and I had a basic site with most of the proposed look and feel in place!

Another thing I noticed while looking around is that a lot of the extra features are mods for osCommerce and work in exacty the same way.

Well, there's my opinions on it anyhow. Personally I would reccommend it over osCommerce definately, but will still say that it is far from the perfect solution.

**Max** · 01-31-06, 05:43 PM

Nice review! I'm sure many people will value this info.

Have you looked at CubeCart yet? I have used OSCommerce, ZC, and CubeCart -- I must say, CubeCart is a breath of fresh air. OSC And ZC seem too bloated and unorganized for my taste.

stef686 · 01-31-06, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Max

Nice review! I'm sure many people will value this info.

Have you looked at CubeCart yet? I have used OSCommerce, ZC, and CubeCart -- I must say, CubeCart is a breath of fresh air. OSC And ZC seem too bloated and unorganized for my taste.

I haven't actually no, they have a nice website hehe. This was a work thing more than anything really, don't see myself running an ecommerce site any time soon. Will reccommend it to my boss next time this kind of thing pops up though.

Tim · 02-02-06, 10:42 PM

So ZenCart has alot of unbuilt features that you cant get for OsCommerce without modifying it?
Thats interesting. I would prefer that as I can never get mods to work for CMS's.

Trish · 02-03-06, 11:14 AM

Nice review of Zen Cart.

I'm sorry to hear that it's not the best option out there. So is CubeCart better?

**Max** · 02-05-06, 11:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trish

Nice review of Zen Cart.

I'm sorry to hear that it's not the best option out there. So is CubeCart better?

For a small store, I believe it's better. If you're going to be running a large store, I wouldn't use OSC or CubeCart -- it's best to go with a real professional solution.

stef686 · 02-05-06, 11:28 AM

Definately. By all means I am not saying it is a bad piece of software - far from it in fact - there is an incredible amount it can do and from what I saw it was very stable. For large eCommerce stores though, like Max already said, it is worth investing in high quality software.