There are 100′s and 1000′s of free not so free shopping carts out there which make it very difficult to choose and decide what would work best for your business model.

You can spend countless hours just looking for the right solution and then end up even more lost and confused. But the best way is not by research but by trying it out yourself. So to save you some time, I’ve put a list of the best 4 carts here at the end of this page.

This list comes from my experience as a developer and setting up, installing, configuring and showing clients how to use the system. I also get a good amount of feedback from clients.

So here is my suggestion and this is the one I make to all of my clients. If you have just a few items to sell, let’s say 10 or less and you don’t plan on adding any new inventory, then the best and easiest solution would be Paypal.

Now Paypal has a few different option. The easiest one would be Paypal Standard. You can create “Buy Now” buttons and “Add to Cart” Buttons for each of your products directly in your Paypal account. Then you simply copy and past the code they provide to your current website. You need a Paypal Business account and a website to do this.

Make sure you customize your web pages to give your visitors easy access to your Paypal buttons. Display the price and any pricing details like shipping etc. prominently so there are no surprises. You can also ask an expert to help you customize your page for the best response.

Now lets say you have more than 10 products and you will be adding to your inventory on a regular basis. In this case you need a shopping cart software that will give you some flexibility and control.

Below are some of the top open-source e-Commerce solutions that give you features to help you manage your inventory, orders and shipping all without any technical knowledge. They are all almost too good to be free. You’ll need an hosting service and domain.

The reviews here are based on my own experience and feedback from my clients. These are all fairly easy to install and setup.

1. CubeCart. This is by far one of the most user friendly in a technical and not technical sense. Clients who I’ve set up CubeCart for find it very easy to manage and use. It’s just intuitive. I spend less time teaching them how to use it because they can easily figure things out. Customizing the look and feel is also pretty easy to do. It’s full featured and is very flexible.

   Cubecart has a paid and free version. The paid version does offer some additional features and depending on your needs the license fee can be well worth it.

   The only downside to the free version is that you have to leave the Cubecart logo on the footer and you can’t disable the login requirement.

2. Magento is also a good one. It looks great and has some excellent features. The downside is that many people report that it is slow in performance, even on dedicated servers. It’s not easy to manage and customize like some other carts out there. Beginners find it difficult to use. It’s just not very intuitive.

3. Zen Cart has all the features you need to manage inventory, but it’s a little lacking in customizing. And it just doesn’t have a very user friendly layout. It’s easy to use and manage though.
4. OSCommerce is a great one with full functionality in managing and also customizing but it is one of the harder ones to use. It really requires some good technical know how to set things up and configure the thing. Once it’s all setup though it’s easier to use and manage. It’s probably one of the best free carts out there.