A shopping cart is a software application that allows people to view, search and purchase product in your store catalog.
A shopping cart normally includes a storefront that displays information to store visitors (e.g. product detail pages, search pages, checkout pages, etc.) and an administration area that allows the store owner to manage their store.
Shopping carts are written in a variety of different programming languages. Some shopping carts run on Windows Web servers, some on Unix, others on both.
Open Source Shopping Cart provide full access to the “source code”, thus allowing experienced programmers to make modifications to the system features.
PHP based Shopping Carts software
The following are some popular open source shopping cart for your business. Most hosting companies listed in Best linux hosting provide automatic installation of shopping carts with their hosting.
Magento Cart
Magento is one of the latest Open Source shopping carts on the web. It offers professional features, flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of the online shop. The coding is based on the latest PHP 5 object oriented coding standards and the Zend framework. Click here to see full list of features and how to quicklly setup and host Magento with a free automated installation of Magento.
PrestaShop – PrestaShop is a powerful open source e-commerce solution, which is available for free. PrestaShop requires Apache web server 1.3 or later, IIS 6 or later, PHP 5.0 or later, MySQL 5 or later and Linux, Unix or Windows installed operating system. Store admins can add Unlimited categories & subcategories, manage the inventory, orders, customers & payments easily. See more details of PrestaShop and how to quicklly setup and host a PrestaShop website
osCommerce Cart 
osCommerce is a free, open source online shop software. It allows store owners to set up, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with absolutely no costs or license fees involved. osCommerce uses PHP web scripting language, the stable Apache web server, and the fast MySQL database server. See more details of OScommerce and how to quicklly setup and host an OScommerce website
Zen Cart 
: Zen cart is a free, open-source cart application branched from the very popular OSCommerce application. It is PHP-based, using a MySQL database and HTML components. Zen cart is highly customizable and available with multiple language support. Zen Cart can be installed and set-up by anyone without any computer skills. See more details of ZenCart and how to quicklly setup and host a ZenCart website
TomatoCart – TomatoCart is an innovative open source shopping cart and is based on php and mysql. Advantages include responsive design support (It uses Bootstrap responsive CSS framework to support mobile and desktop browsers) , light framework, built-in piwik based web analytics, SEO , content management system and email system, Efficient Admin panel , Multi-level drop-down menu, Grid/List layout support for Products List etc. You should give this a try. Best part is it is lightweight.
See more details of TomatoCart and how to quicklly setup and host a TomatoCart website
CubeCart Cart 
CubeCart is a popular eCommerce solution written using PHP & MySQL.. CubeCart is very powerful and easy to connect to various payment gateways. CubeCart is not Open Source software, although full source code is available at no cost, and the custom licensing model allows for customization of the code.
Recommended CubeCart hosting : See more details of CubeCart and how to quicklly setup and host a CubeCart website
Ubercart 
Ubercart is a free store management software program, available as a plug-in module for the Drupal. It can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed. It can be used to sell shippable goods, downloadable products, recurring memberships, event tickets, and enable complex interactions with Drupal through various add-on contributions, such as multi-seller stores, discount coupons, affiliate programs, software license codes, or customizable goods.
See more details of UberCart and how to quicklly setup and host an UberCart website
AgoraCart
AgoraCart is a free Open Source ecommerce shopping cart software. Agora is written in Perl/MySQL. Some of the AgoraCart features include CSS manager & Templates system that allows you to edit how your shopping cart looks online, add Unlimited products and add different Shipping options, different Tax calculating options, different Payment methods from your customers. For a full list of features please visit www.agoracart.com.
Recommended AgoraCart hosting: Bluehost
OpenCart
OpenCart is a free open source PHP-based online e-commerce solution. OpenCart is designed feature rich, easy to use, search engine friendly and with a visually appealing interface.
See more details of OpenCart and how to quicklly setup and host an OpenCart website
phpShop – phpShop is a simple and easy to customize shopping cart application. phpShop is written in PHP and supports MySQL database. For a full list of features please visit phpshop.sourceforge.net
Digistore – Digistore Ecommerce 4.0 is a fully featured open source ecommerce solution based on the popular osCommerce engine. Boasting improvements both to the administration and the end user experience – Digistore has quickly become a popular choice for people wishing to market products online. Didistore is compatible with all PHP 4 versions and PHP 5 support. For a full list of Digistore Features: http://www.digistore.co.nz
ASP or ASP.NET based Shopping Carts
AspDotNetStorefront – AspDotNetStorefront is a complete e-commerce storefront with an easy-to-use admin web site. SQL Schema included. Full source code in C# or VB.NET available. Google checkout and site maps supported. Supports ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005. For a full list of features please visit http://www.AspDotNetStorefront.com.
Consider a list of best asp.net web hosting companies, if you need asp.net hosting.
nopCommerce 
nopCommerce is the leading ASP.NET online shop e-commerce solution. nopCommerce is available for free. It has user friendly administration tools to manage your storefront, customers, wish lists, discounts, and coupons. It also has flexible tax support, multi-lingual support and support for the most popular gateways. It’s a secure, scalable and extendable e-commerce platform. For a full list of features please visit http://www.nopcommerce.com
Recommended nopCommerce hosting: InterServer
Product Cart – ProductCart is quality shopping cart software used by thousands of businesses to run a professional Internet storefront. One of the great things about using ProductCart is that this shopping cart software can be fully customized. Code is written entirely in Active Server Pages (ASP). For a full list of features please visit http://www.EarlyImpact.com
Comersus ASP Shopping Cart – Comersus ASP Shopping Cart is an Open Source database driven shopping cart using Access, SQL Server or mySQL database. Features include fast and easy installation in 4 minutes, a demo shopping cart as well as a blank database, full source code, no DLLs (100% Vbscript code), a detailed User’s Guide, and cookie detection for client browsers. CNET Networks is not responsible for the content of this Publisher’s Description. For a full list of features please visit : http://www.comersus.com
DashCommerce – dashCommerce is an open source e-commerce software developed with ASP.NET & using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for storing data. dashCommerce has a functional interface which lets you navigate through the products with unlimited sub-menus or browse the products by price. This shopping cart software also offers commercial versions which include support for the product. For a full list of features please visit http://www.DashCommerce.com
Final Words and Recommendations
We strongly suggest, Magento, which is a great way to launch your ecommerce dream. Backed by a great community and loyal developers, Magento is the #1 choice for open source ecommerce.
So how do I get started?
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