Free shopping carts

One of the first decisions my clients, who plan on selling products online, have to decide is which shopping cart solution will be best for their website.

Many of my clients working with a limited budget choose to use Mals-e free shopping cart. This option is free and includes a secure connection to accept credit card payments.

You simply visit their website, sign-up for a free account and start adding snippets of code to your website and your online store is ready to accept orders. Mals-e includes an easy-to-use online admin area where you can edit the colors of the shopping cart, personalize email invoices, manage orders, etc.

The main downside to using this cart is that you either have to have HTML knowledge to add the code to your web pages, or you have to pay someone who does to do it for you.

Another option is to use a script (either CGI/Perl, PHP or ASP)Â and while there are literally hundreds to choose from (which range from free to thousands of dollars) ZenCart is my favorite shopping cart script available.

The script is free to download and it is much easy to work with and customize than it’s closely related competitor osCommerce (which some of my clients do opt to use as it is still a good (free) shopping cart option).

ZenCart allows for multiple shipping and payment options, and is completely ran by an easy-to-use admin control panel where you add/edit/delete products with the click of a mouse. No HTML skills are needed unless you want to customize the cart appearance dramatically. ZenCart includes a mailing list and automates the entire ordering process for both you and your customers.

If you are looking for a simple shopping cart option and plan on using PayPal as your only accepted payment method, than I would recommend using the shopping cart PayPal includes for free with all business accounts. It’s easy to use and they generate the HTML code for you (you simply paste it into your pages).

If you need help choosing a shopping cart that’s right for your business, please feel free to contact me with questions. I am also available to help you set-up or install a variety of shopping cart scripts for a very affordable price.