15 Best Free Open Source eCommerce Platforms

When it comes to open source eCommerce platforms, there are plenty to choose from. Here, we look closely at the 15 best available, which should help guide you in the right direction. I’m not going to lie- finding the perfect platform is difficult.

Each one has its own set of pros and cons and has been designed with a slightly different user in mind. Uploading products and customizing your store can be very time-consuming, so make sure you have given several platforms a try before you make that final decision and integrate one into your site.

1. Magento

Magento 2 is one of the most preferred and popular eCommerce development platforms. You’ve only got to look at Magento’s client list to realize what an excellent piece of open-source software it is. Samsung, The North Face, Stussy, and Nespresso all use it to power their online stores. It’s used by 30,000 merchants and is the world’s fastest-growing eCommerce platform. You have to pay for the Enterprise Edition, which is packed full of extremely useful features, but the Community Edition, meant for developers only, is free to download and use.

Major Magento Features

• Seamless configuration deployment & configuration workflow
• Increased speed of production deployment
• Merchandise, marketing, content creation, and authoring
• Customers, loyalty, customer service, and store operations
• Local development template to ease cloud deployments
• Simplified build/deploy process management
• Cross Compatible, i.e., the native customer segmentation tools will work well with the native Page builder

Features get updated and upgraded as part of the core application, and you don’t need to take tension of any issue during the upgrade.

2. osCommerce

osCommerce is absolutely free under the GNU General Public License and caters very well to most people’s needs. Unsurprisingly, considering how easy it is to set up and run, it’s extremely popular, powering over 228,700 online stores. Such popularity does come with a significant downside, however- it makes it harder for you to differentiate your store from the thousands of others out there. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you’re going to need to use some of the 5,800 add-ons available, some of which cost money.

3. OpenCart

Not only does OpenCart look great, but it’s also extremely scalable. You can create an unlimited number of categories, sell an unlimited number of products, accept multiple currencies, use multiple languages, and choose from over 20 payment and 8 shipping methods. It’s user-friendly and search-engine-friendly too, so will help your prominence on Google. Customers can even review and rate the items you sell. It’s not as popular as osCommerce, so help and guidance are not so freely available, but it’s a darn sight better looking.

Major OpenCart Features

• Multi-location support, Content Filtering, and Automatic Backup.
• Support for multi-lingual, multi-currency, multi-delivery and multi-stores
• Order Management, User Management, Quote Management, Price Management, Tax Management, and SEO Management
• E-mail Marketing, E-mail Templates, Reviews, and Ratings.
• Filters, Users Access Controls, Dashboard, Role-Based Permissions.

4. Spree Commerce

Spree is an open-source eCommerce platform for Ruby on Rails. Using Spree’s extension system, you’ll be able to customize your store and mark yourself out from your competitors. Useful features include support for over 50 payment gateways, single-page checkout, and customs tax logic, which can save merchants lots of time and effort. It also comes with Google Analytics built in.

5. PrestaShop

PrestaShop is another robust, professional-grade e-Commerce solution that you can download, install, and use for free. On the back end, you’ll use a full-featured back-office application to manage your online business (including inventory, orders, shipping, and customers) in real-time. Your customer’s payments are sent directly to your commercial bank account using the latest security technology.

Major Prestashop Features

• Multi-lingual and multi-currency platform
• Inventory management features such as item tracking and out-of-stock alerts
• Large selection of Payment methods
• Sales and order statistics
• Customizable checkout process
• Compatibility with a large number of add-ons and 3rd party integrations

6. VirtueMart

VirtueMart, which has been designed to work alongside Joomla!, is a really neat cart that customers feel instantly comfortable with. Not only does it let customers buy things, but it also lets them create an account, add addresses and access their order history. Multiple languages and currencies, and unlimited products and categories are supported. 2.5 million people have downloaded VirtueMart so far and the vast majority are happy with the results.

7. Ubercart

Ubercart is specifically designed for people selling things like file downloads, event registrations, website access passes, and event tickets, rather than physical products. Like VirtueMart, which must be integrated with Joomla!, Ubercart must be integrated with Drupal. Drupal users will feel comfortable choosing the ideal modules and themes to customize their shop with, but if you’re not a Drupal user, I suggest choosing a platform that’s a little more straightforward.

8. Zeuscart

The best thing about Zeuscart is its user interface, which is rich, attractive, user-friendly, and generally less boring than most of the open-source UIs that I have to look at on a daily basis. Designed with small and medium businesses in mind, users can make the most of SEO-friendly URLs, gift cards, discounts, email templates, and tier-pricing, which makes it possible to decrease prices for bulk orders.

9. Afcommerce

If you want to keep your eCommerce platform really, really simple, then Afcommerce could be the option for you. It’s not particularly good-looking, neither on the customer nor the user side, but it works right out of the box and is ideal for beginners. It has a speedy one-page checkout, customer help pop-up windows, and customer accounts are generated automatically from orders.

10. Zen Cart

Easy to install, easy to customize, and easy to manage, Zen Cart is perfect for those who want a straightforward eCommerce platform without the fuss. It comes with a newsletter manager, discount coupons, gift certificates, and all the basic features you’d expect. Users can make the most of the numerous add-ons available to customize their store and make their admin experience a little easier. Too many add-ons, however, and the UI does get rather cluttered, which is a downside of the platform.

11. SimpleCart js

SimpleCart(js) 2.0 is no longer only for Paypal. It now works with Google Checkout as well. You can now add increment, decrement, and remove buttons to your cart. You can also rearrange items, change the HTML tags, and do whatever you like to display your cart how you want. No databases, no programming, no headaches. A simple javascript shopping cart in under 20kb that you can set up in minutes. It’s lightweight, fast, simple to use, and completely customizable. All you need to know is basic HTML.

12. Tomato Cart

TomatoCart is the new generation of open-source shopping cart solutions. It is branched from osCommerce 3 as a separate project. As web applications become more and more sophisticated, modern web 2.0 technology such as Ajax and Rich Internet Applications offers significant usability improvements and makes interacting with the web interfaces faster and more efficient.

13. CubeCart

CubeCart is great. It integrates really well into all kinds of sites and looks very professional from the customers’ point of view. CubeCart 3 is free and CubeCart 4, the premium platform, costs £110. There are a number of significant differences between the two: CubeCart 3 has 3 skins, CubeCart 4 has 5; CubeCart 3 has 4 payment steps, CubeCart 4 has 2; customer registration is mandatory in CubeCart 3, but optional in CubeCart 4, etc etc etc. I recommend investing in CubeCart 4 if you’re serious about using the platform for a long time, but suggest you give 3 a go first to see if you like the feel of i

14. RokQuickCart

RokQuickCart is a very, very simple cart for Joomla!. Its simplicity, however, is both a help and a hindrance as although it can be set up in minutes, it lacks some features which you’ll find in other platforms in this list, for example, it only accepts payments through PayPal and Google Checkout. Having said that, it generally looks good and the product image display is impressive.

15. StoreSprite

Despite being completely free, StoreSprite offers many features that you’d expect to find only on paid-for and more popular platforms. These include loyalty points, customer ratings, and reviews, status notifications, order tracking, special offers, best sellers, and shopper accounts. The main drawback of the platform is that your store will come with visible StoreSprite copyright notices unless you pay to have them removed.

Conclusion

Choosing the perfect eCommerce platform for your business needs might be challenging as a small business owner. But with the rise in popularity of online shopping, your business must be easily accessible to your customers regardless of their location. 

Open-source e-commerce platforms enable you to customize your site to your taste. Although some of them might be complex and confusing to non-developers, you can use some platforms without coding experience. 

If you still can’t find your way around a platform, there are online communities you can reach out to for help. Explore the options listed above—their features, pros, and cons—to find the best one for your brand.