But It's Free!

If you search online for "shopping carts" you may notice many people talking about Oscommerce, a free, open source PHP based shopping cart. Oscommerce's biggest draw is that, well, it's free! And everybody likes free stuff, right? In addition, Oscommerce is open source, so there have been many contributions made to the software, and many hosting companies use Oscommerce.

Many people like Oscommerce, but it's certainly not for everyone. A programmer who is very proficient in PHP programming skills might be able to use Oscommerce to create the store of his dreams. But for those who aren¹t great PHP programmers, Oscommerce can be extremely difficult to use. If you need to customize the design of your store, and you aren't proficient in PHP, you might be in trouble.

Also, because Oscommerce is a community project, owned by no one and everyone, there is no guaranteed support for it. This could be a nightmare for a store owner if something goes wrong with his store.

An asp.net solution, such as BV Commerce, is a better choice for a merchant with limited to no programming skills who needs a reliable solution that is easily customizable and has guaranteed support. Unlike Oscommerce, BV Commerce comes with payment gateway/merchant accounts to accept payments, and includes real time UPS and Fed Ex shipping rates, both invaluable features for online retailers.

A store owner could certainly hire a PHP programmer to create and maintain his Oscommerce store, but it would be cheaper and safer in the long run to use an out of the box solution like BV Commerce, that maintains its own staff of programmers for bug fixes and updates.

At the end of the day, don't be lured in by words like "free." Although Oscommerce can work for the experienced PHP programmer, it's not for everyone. Remember that you get what you pay for!

Roxanne Grandis is a Creative Director with BV Software, makers of the award winning BV Commerce Shopping Cart Software and other ecommerce related products. Roxanne has created content for some of the largest online stores including Godiva.com, Carolee.com and Ragu.com. She holds both a Master of Teaching and Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from NYU.