With online commerce booming, many small businesses are looking for an inexpensive way to set up shop and sell online. However, selecting an e-commerce solution can be a difficult exercise.
Among the free open-source offerings often considered is Zen Cart, which bills itself as “the art for e-commerce.” Zen Cart is spinoff of osCommerce, an earlier open source product.
Zen Cart’s selling points are that it is free, rich in functionality, and has a vibrant community of supporters. While Zen Cart has its devotees, mastering the product seems to require a compatible personality, strong constitution, and tenacity.
Many developers find Zen Cart complex, confusing, and difficult to customize.
Typical is Justin, who writes, “having tried to customize Zen Cart for a small business client recently, I have to be honest and say that I found the current version of the system well nigh unusable. The admin interface is extremely complex, very difficult for non-technical clients to understand, with far too many options.”
Similarly, writes Deborah, ”I have been using Zen Cart for a year now. Didn’t know it would be so confusing,”
A good number of developers also complain about the difficulty of getting support, which is limited to online forums. Says Ma128, “”I set up my shop using Zen Cart. It wasn’t easy and like others have said already the Zen Cart forums help you but i often had to ask questions multiple times because they gave answers in tech talk when i wanted help in newbie terms.”
A common complaint is the difficulty changing the look and feel of Zen Cart’s skins. Almost all Zen Cart critics agree that the solution is unattractive out of the box and requires customization, but the effort required to change the look and feel has soured many users on the product.
Said Luciano, ”I have been trying to build a webshop with this for weeks. I can honestly say I hate Zen Cart. It probably works fine if you use it out of the box with no extras and don’t care about how it looks.”
The development time and cost required to configure and customize a solution is the gotcha of open-source software in general. If Zen Cart stumps professional developers, a small business owner with limited technical expertise or resources will also be challenged.
In this case, hiring a consultant to configure and support the system is required, which can be expensive. If you do hire a consultant, look beyond the installation cost. These solutions tend to require upgrading and revisions, so be prepared to shell out a continual stream of cash in consulting fees.
Also be wary of consultants who promote Zen Cart as simple and easy with no drawbacks or weaknesses. They likely have a vested interest in selling you their services to configure Zen Cart.
Bottom Line: Zen Cart boasts many satisfied and dissatisfied users. It may be worth considering if you are willing to accept it as is, have the constitution to learn the program and wrangle with it, or have the budget to hire a consultant to help configure and support the solution.
