3 General Types of E – Commerce Implementations – Comparisons

// June 1st, 2010 // Strategy

A. Open Source & Free E-Commerce Softwares
B. E-Commerce Modules for your CMS
C. Paid Solutions

A. Open Source & Free E-Commerce Softwares

OSCOMMERCE MAGENTO ZEN CART PRESTASHOP
Pricing & Licensing Free GPL Free GPL
The Magento Community Edition is free under the open source OSL 3.0 license and is recommended for expert developers.
Free GPL Free GPL
URL OS Commerce Magento Zen Cart Presta Shop
Upgraded Paid Version Avail Enterprise Version
Last Update Mar 09 Feb 10 Mar 10
Number of add-on modules 5600 2000 1000
Number of active Community Members 200, 000 30,000 90, 000 50,000
Site Showcase OS Commerce Zen Cart Presta Shop

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B. E-Commerce Modules for CMS

WP-ECOMMERCE UBERCART VIRTUEMART
Brief Most popular Wordpress commerce extention.  Integrates and works smoothly with Wordpress MU.  If you are a Wordpress developer this is suited to your commerce projects. Plug-in for popular content management system Drupal allows you to sell products, digital downloads such as music, videos, software, and sell membership site access for members only Web sites, including automatic renewals and expiration of user access. . A plug-in for Jooma! or Mambo Content Management System. Uses Joomlab’s admin interface for store administration, so if you know Joomla it’s easy. Nice Web 2.0 style.
Pricing & Licensing Free GPL Free GPU & MIT license Free GPL
URL http://www.getshopped.org www.ubercart.org www.virtuemart.com
Integrated Payment Options Manual Payment (checks/money orders)
PayPal Payments Standard
PayPal Payments Pro
PayPal Express Checkout
Google Checkout (Level 2)
Chronopay
PayPal Payflow Pro (available with Gold Cart)
Authorize.net (available with Gold Cart)
FirstData/LinkPoint (available with Gold Cart)
eWay Payment (available with Gold Cart)
iDEAL (available with Gold Cart)
BluePay (available with Gold Cart)
DPS (available with Gold Cart)
Paystation (available with Gold Cart)
SagePay (available with Gold Cart)
Virtual Merchant (available with Gold Cart)
PayPal – PayPal Website Payments Pro allows you to process credit cards remotely.

Authorize.net – The current module works with Authorize.net’s Advanced Integration Method.

CyberSource – The current module works with the SOAP API and Silent Order POST methods. View instructions.

PayflowPro – Two versions: PHP 4 and PHP 5

PayTrace (for D6) – http://drupal.org/project/uc_paytrace

LinkPoint APIhttp://www.ubercart.org/contrib/903

Monerishttp://www.ubercart.org/contrib/732

USA ePAyhttp://drupal.org/project/uc_usaepay

VirtualMerchanthttp://www.ubercart.org/contrib/978

Integrated Shippping Mods Internal Shipping Calculator: How do you want your shipping to be calculated. WP e-Commerce comes with the following options

  1. Flat Rate -
  2. Table Rate -

External Shipping

  1. Australia Post
  2. UPS - If you select, you will be presented with a whole bunch of optional settings
  3. USPS – If you select USPS, you will need to make sure you have registered with them, and have a USPS ID and Password. Otherwise, the shopping cart won’t connect.
UPS – UPS Rates and Services Selection XML Tool

USPS – United States Postal Service Rate calculator API

FedEx – FedEx Ship Manager Direct

Upgraded Paid Version Avail Yes. License and pricing: Standard Version is FREE, Gold cart which has extra payment gate ways and a grid module is a one time fee $195 for businesses.  Additional add-ons includes a FEDEX mod for $25, drag and drop shop for $100. No No
PRO’s Super easy to set up and admin area is well organized. Well defined groups and categories ability.  Simple to add unlimited products and customization is paramount. Widgets and customization of where cart shows up.  Ability to use coupons codes. Huge list of payment gateway options. All transactions are processed via SSL (Need SSL on our server). Very powerful and flexible when installed and set up correctly. Wide variety of add-on contributions available. Ajax Product Overview page, vendor tracking of product sources, and product availability or when customer can expect delivery.
CON’s Reporting isn’t as exhaustive as say ZenCart.  Documentation lacks but they have just launched a Documentation Wiki. Must install, maintain and upgrade both systems, Drupal and Ubercart; not easy to customize; digital downloads require a third plug-in. Currently only for earlier Drupal version 5 Stiff learning curve to run both systems, and double maintenance: both Joomla! and VirtueMart must be upgraded separately each time there is a new release.
Showcase Sites http://getshopped.org/showcase/
Security WP offers SEVERAL Security Add-On Modules
Other Great Features Coupons: Everyone loves a discount, and everyone loves to feel special. What better way to combine the two then through a coupon!

Display Cross Sales: When a customer views a product they will a list of other products purchased by customers who also purchased that particular product.

Share This: You have probably come across the ubiquitous Share This button sometime in your browsing history.

Display How Customer Found Us Survey: This is pretty self explanatory. If you select this, a short survey will appear on your checkout page asking the customer how they found your site. Knowledge is power!

RSS Address: Not only can people use this RSS feed to keep up-to-date with your product list,  but you can also use this link to promote your products in your facebook profile.

Google Base: This is where you can grant Google Base (now called Google Merchant Center) access to your site. Google Merchant Center is a place where you can easily submit all types of content, which will be made searchable on Google.

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C. Paid Solutions

X-Cart Gold
X-Cart is one of the leading ecommerce platforms in the world today. Based on PHP Smarty templates, this shopping cart software makes managing your online store a breeze.
X-Cart Pro (software for multi-vendor online marketplaces & web supermarkets) Magento Enterprise
Magento is an open-source ecommerce platform, created on the components of the Zend Framework. It gives you complete flexibility and control over your online store’s design, content and functionality.
Pricing One time fee $115USD One time fee $431USD Starts at $12,990/year
Licensing Single-domain lifetime license Single-domain lifetime license Commercial License
PCI Data Security Standard yes yes yes
Platform Php/SQL Php/SQL PHP 5/zend framework
Security Features HTTPS/SSL Support/ Blowfish encryption/Anti fraud module/Backup sub-system HTTPS/SSL Support/ Blowfish encryption/Anti fraud module/Backup sub-system Strong Data Encryption
Support Have to buy $229 x-cart gold yes yes
Virtual Gift Cupons yes yes yes
Physical Gift cards yes
SEO urls yep yep yes
Xhtml compliance yes yes Yes
Real time shipping estimation yes yes Yes
Payment gateways Paypal, google checkout, 2C0, worldpay, Money borkers, beanstream Supports almost any gateway you can think of.
Shipping Compatibillity UPS, FedEx, Canada Post, USPS, DHL

·  Real-time USPS, FedEx and UPS shipping calculation from one location

·  Unlimited number of custom-defined delivery methods

·  Flate rate, weight, order total and per-item based shipping

·  Different weight limits for different delivery methods

·  Markups for realtime shipping

·  Mark your products as “free shipping” products

·  Promotional “free shipping” coupons to your customers

·  Add handling/freight charges

·  Handle international, domestic and local shipping

·  Ability to clone a zone and all zone information

·  Restrict shipping by location

·  Allow your customers to choose delivery methods

·  Support for downloadable goods (e-goods)

·  Customizable tax calculation

·  Product-specific taxes

·  Taxes & shipping fees depending on client’s location

·  “Tax exempt” feature

·  GST/PST (canadian tax system)

·  Canada post shipping

  • Integrated for real-time shipping rates from:
    • UPS, UPS XML (account rates), FedEx (account rates), USPS and DHL
  • Shipping to multiple addresses in one order
  • On-site order tracking from customer accounts
  • Multiple shipments per order
  • Ability to specify allowed destination countries per method
  • Flat rate shipping per order
  • Flat rate shipping per item
  • Free Shipping
  • Table rates for weight and destination
  • Table rates for product sub-totals and destination
  • Table rates for number of items and destination
Multi- Currency no no yes
Export to Quickbooks yes yes no
Showcase Sites http://www.x-cart.com/featured_clients.html http://www.x-cart.com/featured_clients.html http://www.magentocommerce.com/showcase
Extensive Reporting yes yes yes
Template Engine Smarty
Multiple Admin Levels No Yes Yes. Can create multiple sites and restrict roles for staff and stores
Private Sales/ Events and permissions no no Yes, restrict catalog, create events for limited time sales.
One page checkout yes yes yes
PDA Optimized yes yes Iphone optimized
Payment features
  • Accept payments in any currency
  • Allow payment via several online payment modules
  • Payment systems (including PayPal payments)
  • High variety of real-time credit card processors (over 100 payment gateways)
  • Check processors
  • Manual (offline) credit card processing
  • PayPal payments
  • Google Checkout as an alternative to X-Cart’s standard checkout
  • Predefined set of payment methods (offline): checks, purchase orders, phone orders, wire transfer and etc.
  • Authorize/Capture processing mode for several payment gateways
Gift Certificates/Cards (Physical and Virtual) Enterprise Only

·  Integrated with Authorize.net

·  Integrated with Google Checkout (Level 2)

·  Saved Credit Card method for offline payments

·  Accept Checks/Money Orders

·  Accept Purchase Orders

Order Management
  • Discount coupon codes and gift certificates
  • Full inventory control
  • “Out of Stock” Messages
  • Quantity discounts
  • Retail and wholesale price
  • Limit minimal order amount
  • View, edit, create and fulfill orders from admin panel.
  • Create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order to allow for split fulfillment
  • Print invoices and packing slips
  • Call Center (phone) order creation
    • Includes ability to create new customer, or select existing customer and view shopping cart, wishlist, last ordered items, and compared products list, as well as select addresses, give discounts and assign custom prices
  • Create re-orders for customers from administration panel.
  • Email Notifications of Orders
  • RSS feed of New Orders

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