Like anyone else, I have my opinions about which shopping carts I like and don’t like. While to an extent that comes through on this site, I do try and remain neutral and not state strong opinions (which I have). I’m going to make an exception.
osCommerce, please, shut down and let your users move on.
osCommerce is possibly the single most widely used shopping cart package on the web. It was started in 2000 – 10 years ago now, and the last major release was 2 years ago! This is the internet folks, 2 years is an eternity. That version wasn’t exactly cutting edge either.
osCommerce is bloated, clumsy, has terrible templating (well, basically no templating), and without adding a bunch of often incompatible and poorly documented add ons, is pretty useless out of the box.
As best I can tell, osCommerce has a few main users:
- Amateur programmers who see it in cPanel and use it because it saves 20 minutes to install.
- People whose ecommerce startup is so poorly funded they can’t afford a few hundred dollars for a commercial package (not saying you need to go commercial, but often in my experience price is the main reason for choosing osCommerce – if you are so poorly funded your business is almost certain to fail).
- People who just blindly accepted the recommendation of their web developer, who has been using osCommerce for 5 years and doesn’t want to learn a better package.
Now, don’t get me wrong, osCommerce can do the job. However, any customizations will take several times longer than they will on a well designed package. It’s lagging behind in technology. Yes, I know about 3.0. But what decade will that be released? And will it really be that good?
If you are price sensitive, there’s a lot of modern free packages available – for example, Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop and many more.
I don’t want to undermine Harald, the leader of osCommerce, who has lead the projects since its inception. He’s done a lot of awesome work. But I think it’s time to move on to those who can release more than once every few years, who have up to date technology and have an infrastructure based on latest techniques – 2000 was a loooong time ago!
Flame away….