There are a handful solutions in building an ecommerce website that contain all the features and utilities for expedient online shopping such as stock control, product catalog, shopping cart, as well as payment gateways.
You can go with the hosted ecommerce route, banking on BigCommerce or Shopify, for example, which will host your websites within their setup, server, upgrade, and maintain your website as long as you are subscribed to their service.
If however you are just getting started and have a very tight budget that does not have allowance for subscribed hosting, you can take the open source solution in its place. If you don’t mind inquiring into the technicalities and setting up your own ecommerce website, take a look at the following 10 open source CMS you can utilize to build e-Commerce sites for free.
1. UberCart
UberCart is a module that adds e-Commerce functionality to Drupal out of the box. UberCart can be utilized to sell numerous goods either physical goods like shoes, shirts and event ticketing, or digital goods like movies, music singles or software. If your site is powered by Drupal, this module is worth considering.
2. SpreeCommerce
With SpreeCommerce you can add, configure or replace any feature, having full customizability to create your store as you see fit. One cool feature it has is in-built subscription functionality, which facilitates customers that signed up to your store to constantly receive your services or products without having to repurchase the product.
3. ZeusCart
The ZeusCart default theme is built above Bootstrap which makes it fully responsive. Over and beyond the essentials like shipping cost calculators, payment gateways and shopping cart, ZeusCart is also fortified with features such as coupons, gift cards, advanced search functionalities, and SEO to make your website rank high in search engines.
4. CubeCart
With CubeCart, upon login as Administrator, it will show you a lot of details about your ecommerce site which includes stock and sales report. You can export these reports as spreadsheets. There are also many modules & plugins that you can use to extend functionality of your store.
5. ZenCart
ZenCart is built and supported by a community of designers, programmers, consultants and shop owners. If you are able to code you can contribute to the ZenCart project as well. In addition, you can also easily customize ZenCart’s source code in various ways to fit your needs. ZenCart works with just about all hosting providers since it only needs Apache, MySQL and PHP.
6. LiteCommerce
LiteCommerce can be utilized as a standalone e-Commerce platform or as a Drupal module. Design-wise, LiteCommerce comes with a smooth and clean user interface, powered with AJAX for lively interface. It is also highly customizable since it is built with modular architecture.
7. TomatoCart
Tomatocart utilizes Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) at the backend to present a powerful GUI akin to your PC. To boost SEO, TomatoCart implements Rich Keyword URL for products, reviews, categories, articles, etc. Rich Keyword URL comprises the name of the content in place of the ID. Tomatocart uses streamlined MVC for faster performance.
8. HeroCommerce
HeroCommerce is an extension for CMS platform called HeroFramework. The extension turn HeroFramework into a developed ecommerce platform. Download bundled package – HeroFramework + Ecommerce add-on – to install on your own server. The e-Commerce add-on ships with vital features like shipping, payment gateway, product inventories and so forth.
9. NopCommerce
NopCommerce is an open source e-Commerce built upon Microsoft technology, ASP.NET with MS-SQL database. Much like the others, nopCommerce has everything you need to get started to sell your products online, whether you are selling digital or physical goods.
10. Kartris
Kartris is also an ASP.NET based e-Commerce platform that have all the basics like shopping cart, inventories, back-end administration and payment systems. It is designed to run on Microsoft’s IIS web server, and feats the powerful optimization and caching features on the platform.
