As a long time web designer I’ve seen a number of eCommerce options over the years. Checking out online has been a major stumbling block for many businesses, most of them stymied by the expense of merchant accounts and the need for programming. This has typically been beyond ordinary the expertise for the average entrepreneur, consultant or small business. In the early days, you had two major options:

1) You could build and code from scratch.   This required a great deal of knowledge in various coding languages. You also needed the ability to design a user interface that was both functional and attractive. You could start with a template, but in the end, you were limited by the depth and breadth of your own knowledge.

2) You could pay a vendor with pre-built systems.  This was not only extremely expensive but rarely allowed you freedom to create any sort of pleasing design as it would have to conform to their limited options.

Open Source eCommerce shopping carts are easy to implement and cost nothing to obtain. These online e-commerce solutions are available under the GNU General Public License. They all contain a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionalities that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved.  Most of the  Open Source solutions provide an e-commerce platform, which uses PHP web scripting language and the fast MySQL database server.

Does this combination sound familiar? It should if you’re familiar with WordPress, which uses the same combination of technologies. With no special requirements, these eCommerce carts typically are able to run on any PHP enabled web server running on Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS, and Microsoft Windows hosting environments.

In addition to the obvious advantages of these open source stores, there are active user forums where you can get answers to most of your questions. You also have the ability to change your store design by choosing a new template in your administration panel.

The most popular solutions are ZenCart, OScommerce & CRE Loaded.  But there are many other ones to choose from. For a complete list, refer to this eCommerce shopping cart article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Open_Source_eCommerce_Software.

While large companies will always need a custom built solution for their online stores, the average small business no longer needs to wads of cash to have a quality store developed.   The use of a free OS solution along with an inexpensive design template will have you selling online for pennies on the dollar compared with a custom built store.  Even if you don’t feel you have the skill set to work with the OS solutions, you can hire any competent developer to implement it for you.  Sure you’ll be charged, but the price will be a small percentage of what you would have paid.