E-commerce application comparison: osCommerce vs Zen Cart

osCommerce and Zen Cart are two of the most popular free shopping cart solutions. But which one is better? Which one of these two would be more suitable for your needs. In this article we have tried to make a comparison between osCommerce and Zen Cart.

* osCommerce:

pros:

- easy installation;

- a lot of additional contributions which greatly expand the application’s functionality;

- sufficient documentation and forum support;

cons:

- the installation of most contributions requires changes in the application’s code and this may lead to problems;

- new versions and upgrades are released very rarely;

- older versions do not work properly with MySQL 5;

- the installation of a new template is actually a complete new osCommerce installation;

- upgrading osCommerce is not an easy task;

* Zen Cart:

pros:

- easier to use with more intuitive admin area;

- more secure;

- more modules included in the default installation;

cons:

- mediocre default templates;

- upgrading Zen Cart is not an easy task either;

- fewer additional modules/contributions;