# Zen Cart Reviews **Vendor:** Zen Ventures **Category:** [Shopping Cart Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/shopping-cart) **Average Rating:** 3.9/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 42 ## About Zen Cart Zen Cart is truly is the art of e-commerce; free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. The ecommerce web site design program is developed by a group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think ecommerce web design could be, and should be, done differently. ## Zen Cart Reviews ### 1. Zencart - From great beginnings... **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dave H. | IT Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 17, 2022 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** The community and true open source ethos of Zencart are what made it a great choice for small-medium e-commerce startups. The core system is easily extendible for additional functionality, unlike other cart systems where these addons (plugins, extensions, modules - whatever you will call them) are chargeable, Zencart provides all plugins listed on their site freely. There is a great community spirit and developers actively help without reward. Without naming - there are a fair few other cart systems which have community forums, however, it's difficult to watch new users get lambasted over genuine questions. Zencart has to be one of the most friendly and helpful communities I've worked on. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Zencarts development cycle is my main dislike. New versions are rarely released, as an example version 1.5 has been going now for the past 11 years! Granted they have released sub-versions with small updates (including support for newer versions of PHP and MySQL which was lacking). I had been looking forward to getting my hands dirty with ZC 2.0 however this has been touted since 2014 and may have been abandoned or put on hold. Certain fundamental aspects that were lacking are now available, either included or through third-party plug-ins. Zencarts aesthetics are not modern, this becomes apparent after the initial installation - Although it is an extremely good card system, it takes a fair amount of work to bring the look and feel up to today's responsive/clean standards (both Customer/Admin side). However, there are plugins and themes which help get things going. **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Although I am a big fan of Zencart and it helped my company achieve all of its e-commerce ambitions, its lack of progression over the past 10 years has left it behind the curve slightly. It is still a solid/reliable e-commerce system and is still a viable choice if you are willing to put more time into development compared to other platforms. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zencart fit the bill for a very long time, providing a solid and reliable backbone for our e-commerce platform. The system was easy to maintain and could handle massive amounts of traffic and orders. ### 2. Once the greatest eCommerce platform, now needs to actualize **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Elba María M. | Small Business Owner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 26, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** It's Open Source, free, with a massive database of plugins for free, works out of the box, and includes practically everything you'll need to start your online store. It is maintained regularly, and the forum is a great source of information and to get help. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** There's not much integration with new apps in the market, so it's difficult if you want to sync or connect to those apps. Lack of good free templates. Some modules should have been integrated with the core code years ago, but they still not doing it (even with some plugins that were developed by a team member of ZC). **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have my store online, and I can sell tangible and digital downloadable products, as well as my services. ### 3. Good for large businesses, I wouldn't recommend for smaller ones **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bianca M. | Marketing Representative, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2021 ### 4. Good basic E-commerce platform **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 30, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** I appreciated the fact that Zen Cart flat worked. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Zen Cart was a bit basic, some of the more advanced features I would like in an e-commerce site were not readily available. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were using this to sell products direct to individual consumers. our primary business was B2B, so this was secondary business. ### 5. My experience with Zencart is overall okay. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Somnath G. | Lead Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 01, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Easy to start. Easy to setup and customise. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** I like to follow the established brands, like Flipkart, Amazon... I like their flow during a purchase and how they engage customers to purchase a product. Apart from technical aspect, I also see from business aspect, i.e., I just not like to build a ecommerce, I like to build a ecommerce that will convert in a brand later... So, looking from this perspective, I find some limitations. **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** I am not in a position to give suggestion to other users. I am also exploring it... Beside exploring, I love to develop. So, when I think of a new feature, I automatically try to build that in a HMVC module, so that I can re-use that anywhere. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** For small budget projects I use Zencart. That saves my time and effort. ### 6. Zen Cart is the best ecommerce software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** A.K.M Mahmudul I. | Assistant Vice President , Financial Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 26, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Zencart is the best software. easy to use. There is plenty of plug-ins available. Easy to install. It is opensource, so it is budget-friendly. it has an active user base that helps customer to solve any problem. It is easily scalable. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Sometimes the problem with code. Breakdown etc. It has not been as robust as other software. Need to be lots of updates **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Low cost and easily deployable.Lots of plug-ins available. Easy to setup **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** E-COMMERCE SOLUTION. Very low cost and easily deployable ### 7. Extremely satisfied and happy with the service. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dipesh S. | PHP Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Zen cart should be the first preference for anyone who wants to start their ecommerce business. Zen cart provides all the tools required to start the ecommerce business and run it smoothly. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** I just feel the need of more customizations in the Zen Cart platform. **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Please do use Zen cart. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Setting up a complete ecommerce business needs to have a lot of plugins and tools required which I had to collect/setup on my own earlier when I had my business running on its own. But, Zen cart independently resolves all these issues. ### 8. Responsiveness in Zen cart Websites **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Maryam N. | Professional Freelancer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 22, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** In the beginning, the websites made with zencart was not responsive. But as new updates come they introduced responsiveness in the website. This feature revolutized the zencart. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** The user dashboard should be updated and make it more easier to find the things. Most of the time, the options are not visible. So make things clear, cleaner and sober. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zencart is helping us to make amazing and beautiful ecommerce website. And we can also add different other options in it. ### 9. Easy to Manage and operate **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 16, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** It is very simple to work ZEN CART. Installation, configuration, customization all are very easy, simple, user friendly and well managed. Admin panel is also easy to operate by any non technical person. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Few configurations in the admin panel about product attributes, need to be improved and takes little time to understand and to work on. Multi-store functionality should be introduced. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** not working right now, but have worked on enough. Fresh installation, customization through coding, creating new products. All these worked have been done for e-commerce portals. ### 10. Fantastic, Easy and excellent eCommerce, Easy to used and customize. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jasobanta N. | Product Owner, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** ZenCart is very easy to customize. We build a Saas out of it, in merely 4months of time to accommodate hundreds of stores and more than 500 vendors at once. Managing Catalog, Order, Customer and integrating Payment methods are very easy. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Code maintenance can be improved, keeping the development still simple. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating single host and handling multi-domain e-commerce sites. the Benefits would be resolving and giving an alternative to Shopify. ### 11. Good Platform to work **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rajeev S. | Sr. Web Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** - Open Source - Complete Control - all eCommerce Features - Good in Performance - Secure **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** - Layout is not good - You will not easily upgrade - A non-technical user cannot customize - Not much user friendly **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** - Secure - I am easily able to make the e-Commerce site ### 12. One of the best E-commerce platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rajesh F. | website developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** It is having all the functionalities every e-commerce website needs. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** As I am working with Zencart for the last 10 years, I see it is improved so far year by year, and nothing to dislike **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** I was able to do seamless integration of E-commerce websites ### 13. It's great e-commerce platform based on php but i use opencart. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kamalesh T. | PHP Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Opencart is best platform for e-commerce **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Zencart is also good platform it will surely future for e-commerce **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Well I'm recommending using zencart for e-commerce purpose as an IT person. Zencart will be future for e-commerce. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's opencart based so we can built any custom thing we want to improve store ### 14. Zen Cart is a good framework to create an online store for selling products. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 19, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** It is a fully featured ecommerce framework in php with MVC code structure. It is a open source and easy to understand for code level modification. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** In 2021 it seems to be a outdated framework. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Created an online store. It can be installed and set-up by anyone with the most basic web site building and computer skills. ### 15. Zencart is great product but it lacks the responsiveness which is required in today's market place. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Waqas Y. | Web Application Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** can customize it templates pretty easily. also its open source. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Really have to findout stuff when stuck somewhere. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Its somewhat flexible so you can customize it and also there is a plugin for every thing so benefits are huge imo ### 16. my friend nadeem to share this post **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** amir s. | CCTV CONTROLLER, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 11, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** zend cart is most reliable platform for online shoping **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** some bugs here in this cart to support shopping **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** it will make sure after online transaction ### 17. Worked in a couple of projects in Zan Cart and found it a bit unorganised code. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** mahesh s. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Settings available are very useful and very little bugs. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Organisation of code is not good. Difficult to understand what is where. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zen card makes easy to build e-commerce websites. ### 18. Easy and efficient open source ecommerce platform. Recommended for developers and shop owners both. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ayushi A. | PHP Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Easy handling user interface. Also, I like the support. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** I don't think about any dislikes in zencart. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** When it comes to customer experience with some modified versions, zencart is easy to deliver that. ### 19. Zencart using as a platform of eCommerce website **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 08, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** outlook of template. ease of use of the modules. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** I found nothing to dislike.all module are amazing to use **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** na **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** i designed an eCommerce website using zen cart. Very easy to learn and customer interface is good. ### 20. easy to understand the flow **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 03, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** 1. very easy syntax. 2. Structured 3. Many inbuilt functions available. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** not sure if there is any may be some auto implemented payment gateway could be useful as in opencart **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** we have created a frontend and webadmin of our ecommerce site. ### 21. Great software for most e-commerce applications **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** The admin / backend is still one of my favourites due to the layout and ease of use. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** If I had to choose I would probably say the basket / checkout system could do with updating **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** No problems at all ### 22. I had somehow good expereince with zen cart. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Arts and Crafts | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Zen Cart is lightweight and easy to use. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Not many tools and plugins available, so to get any task done, will need to create a module. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** I create the solutions for the clients, so I help them to set up e-commerce stores. ### 23. Zencart is good or basic eshops **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Electronics | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** I like base of zen art. Is easy to learn for product content managers **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** When you want to code new feature it can make some trouble with “clean code” **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Trouble with complex shops to structure files and code ### 24. It's Nice **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** It's structure , user friendly and user accessiblty **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** I have not found anything. That I dislike **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Yes I will suggest to use zen cart **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's SEO friendly websites environment and MVC structure ### 25. Nice product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2021 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Easy and effective way of checkout. Fast loading of page **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** nothing found till now. All things are very nice. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** free, user- friendly, open source shopping cart software ### 26. Zen Cart a powerful open source cart **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rick F. | Owner/CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 26, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** I started with Zen Cart back in 2001, and since then I still have at least one ecommerce store on the platform, https://scentia.theoutletseason.com. At the time it was a huge leap from OSCommerce where it's derived, but with a much more robust approach. As an engineer for me it's pretty straightforward, download the app and configure your server, or hosted shared account, however for newcomers it can be intimidating when you start customizing it, there's a whole community supporting this as this is completely open source, most plugins are free you just need to understand a bit of php, and follow the instructions, It's a free shopping cart, for someone starting in ecommerce, and a really fast solution for someone like me in the tech world and with decades of experience. Through the years the cart has evolved, and many revisions are deployed, also the active community is aware of the algorithm and policy changes, so it updates portions of the core based on that, and since mobile first there's a solution for responsive design, one of its weak points, because the template system, was originally table based, with css, but it has been evolving, and more features are incorporated, it has everything you need in a complete package, with payment and shipping modules, all kinds of pricing systems, to accommodate holidays, discounts and cross selling, and even paid premium plugins and services. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Despite been evolving there's not a clear integration with bootstrap, as the initial responsive design, was based on Foundation instead, and the classic responsive template that's offered is kind of limited, templates have to be modified from the code, no visual interfaces that move blocks around, it's a pain to upgrade, because of the modularity and the fact that sometimes you have to edit the core code, to add some functionality, makes difficult to upgrade as a series of steps need to be followed that are time consuming. The community sometimes is reluctant to answer some questions related to the code, as most of them are developers or charge for their services they keep most tricks a secret. **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** As this is free open source software, it requires a bit of knowledge to get it to its full potential, and sometimes, you need to spend on specific solutions, to make it work. Other than that is robust, stable from scratch. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** I had and have full deployed ecommerce solutions, with a pleasant modern design and many features found only on hosted solutions like Shopify or BigCommerce, that are incredible expensive once you realize to do something meaningful you have to spend on expensive plugins and never control your code. Zen Cart allows this and more for free or minimum spend. I have a solution, I developed, that uses automated inventories that uses the platform and it allows daily automation or twice a day updates directly from my vendor's stock. Zen Cart is very easy to customize to use it and it works flawlessly. Existing plugins allow a really flexible operation and there's always new plugins that can be tested and installed. The core code is been updated, and soon version 2.0 will see the light of the day, With it's modularity you have a full fledged ecommerce cart with maximum capabilities in an inexpensive and easy to use package that allows easier deployment and full PDCC complaint, which is amazing when you have many transactions. ### 27. Zencart so much better and easier to use than I thought **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** AngelfishUSA D. | President, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2018 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** So many add ons available for free. Almost anything I could need. And even for a novice easy to customize. Adding and updating products is a breeze. The information on the admin home is great letting me know how many visitors, and detailed information about how long... and how many pages they clicked on. Integration with Square, Paypal was flawless. Even customizing my shipping add ons was pretty easy. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** The only thing that it is lacking so far is detailed sales tax reporting. I cannot seem to find anything that will give me a report by county or zip code. And I need that for reporting sales tax in Florida. **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** This product will do more than you could ever need. Runs flawlessly. And almost no upfront cost. Detailed reports, analytics, and more. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** live website. online store. Blog/forum. It has helped me gain exposure on search engines. All my customers find it easier to use and stay online longer which creates more business for me. ### 28. Free open source shopping cart **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** jim p. | Freelance Photographer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** A popular online store management system that has been around for a long time. It works with most payments gateways and can be installed on any web hosting platform. there are templates and plugins available to customize the store look with no coding. zen cart is free and open source. you can obtain the source code and make changes if you are a coder. good support via the community in the product's forum. Documentation is available on their website. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** User interface may be confusing at first. Zen Cart advanced features requires technical knowledge especially setting up all the web store security settings. But that is in my opinion not major limitations for a free full featured solution. **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Should be on anyone's short list when planning on adding e-commerce to their PHP, MySql website **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Create a full featured shopping cart on your web site relatively quickly and easily ### 29. Great and Easy Online Shopping Cart Solution **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anup S. | Senior Software Developer, Biotechnology, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** I love the fact that ZenCart is an Open Source option and it can be customized easily. A little bit of PHP information is all that is required **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** The support is slow to respond, but I wouldn't complain about that since it is an Open Source solution **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** I would really recommend Zen Cart in case you have a new Business and do not want to spend too much setting up a Shopping Cart and payment gateway. Please Go for it , you will not regret it. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Online Shopping Cart and payment gateway is easy to setup and this is really good for small business or a new start up ### 30. Limited customer support, makes it difficult to use **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** jennifer h. | founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** You can edit a lot of the dashboard, so that it's fairly customizable. It worked well for our three-person team, but as we grow I hope that we'll need something with more capabilities. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** because it's open source, it has a very cheap feel/not very intuitive. this means there's no customer support when you need help, but there's a beginners guide online that you can substitute. **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** get your own tech support or hire someone with IT/tech support background. The platform itself works well, but once you hit a roadblock you're going to have to figure it out on your own! Very inexpensive, so this worked for us/ we could afford in-house support for a couple months to transition into the program **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** it was really good startup software for our online store, and it meant we could manage our store pretty well when it was still very small-scale. this works well for those with their own IT support or someone with tech support background knowledge. ### 31. Not the best option **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Markus M. | Project Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** nothing beats a windows client application to access your website. it is fast and convenient for your team. I've used it in the past with other ecommerce software and it worked perfectly. But with Zencart it did not work 90% of the time. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** lots of crashes and doing your own database modification will throw the application off. should use better caching and not rely on the server to reply for each request. did not update or work well at all. Everything installed fine but when had to update products it did not work at all. Also imported a customer csv file and totally messed up my database **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Needs more work to be able to step up to the next level. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** instead of using the web interface to access the e-commerce application a client desktop application will makes your life easier ### 32. May have found what we were looking for! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Management Consulting | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** I like that it is easier to use than most! And works with various hosting services! Easy to implement too! **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Could be a bit better on the technical side though! Takes some "adjustments" in getting it in place & up & running! **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Coming from hearing so much about other softwares; all good & bad, we decided to just try on our own & ventured out & found this! So far it seems to be good! As I already stated, it takes a little bit to set up (& I wish it was a tad less "technical") it seems to be pretty good! I am not too technical when it comes to things like this (even though I built the website), so it was a bit of a "challenge" at first; though then things rolled! Going to keep going with it & see where it leads! I think it will work good though for our needs & wants! **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed an easy to set up & not too technical process. It's a bit to do but now that we are up it isn't too bad! We are new to it but so far so good! ### 33. Still a great open source ecommerce platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Scott C W. | Founder, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Zen Cart is free and open source. The only limits to what you can build are your imagination. Robust community support; frequent security updates; large portfolio of contributions. Easy to find developers who are skilled in customization. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** More high quality templates are badly needed. Vendors provide a few but work in this area has been lacking. **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** If you want total control over your cart and need to do integration with external systems, Zen Cart is a great choice. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Any sort of ecommerce solution can be built: digital/physical, inventory/drop shipping, simple products/complex variants. ### 34. Zen cart a tool for use **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rohit E. | Director, Strategy & Client Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** I like that it is fully customized and you have the freedom to host it on any server. It is very flexible to host in any server **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** It doesn't have formal support and has complex up-gradation **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Be sure how it works before implementing, Its easy to use and understand and can resolve a lot of queries and concerns **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has helped me with multi-language support. It has also helped me with easy pricing changes to facilitate sales. I have realized that it can be fully customized and has good e commerce features. ### 35. Free, but you get what you pay for **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew C. | Technical Recruiter, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Free, good community that can help out easily **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Outdated UI, tough to navigate, can be complicated for new users **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Just be wary that since the product is free, the quality you will be getting isn't *excellent.* **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** eCommerce shopping cart solutions ### 36. Very user friendly check out solution for anyone **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** I liked that this was easy to put on my page and it worked quickly and easily with little fuss. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** I didn't really dislike anything about this program, but I did not use it in depth for a very long period of time. **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** I would recommend this product to anyone who needs an easy shopping cart for their small online business, we used it for a nonprofit and we had only about 10 items in the store and needed something that people could easily use. This worked great. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed an easy to use cart for our small store online, and this worked perfectly! It installed easily and allowed us to easily accept payments for items. ### 37. Quick Easy Set up and Quick connecting to your payment processor! **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2018 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** This is basically a plug and play ecommerce script that deploys itself and has an easy walk through installation. Easy to add products and send mass emails to all of your customers at once all through the admin back end. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** The interface on the back end seems a bit outdated, although it still does a great job. There is very little support for this software as it is open source and your only real hope is digging through forums. Plugins are user submitted and **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** If you haven't used open source softwares such as these maybe install these on a local host and test around with it a bit. paypal even allows you to do Sandbox payments which are basically faux payments to test your system! **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Adding products to our online store quick and fast. Expanding is easier with tons of plug ins. But careful as all these are user submitted and may not always work. You can also create sales very quickly either by item, item categories, or even your entire site by dollar or percent amounts, creating coupon codes is extremely easy as well. ### 38. Free Ecommerce Platform **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Goods | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Once that site is set up it is easy to use. Plus it is free which is great! Lots of plug in options to customize your cart,. It is a great open source platform. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Not a good fit if you are not tech savvy. There is no phone support only emails which makes trying to figure out an issue very difficult. I found it very difficult to set up my store with them and I have opened a few eCommerce stores in the past **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** Make sure you are very tech savvy or know someone who is **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Hoping to open an online drop ship store ### 39. Open Source E Commerce Program **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Randy N. | Data Analyst, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Free to use and highly customizable for the team **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** It's a little bit difficult to use at first, but after some time we got the hang of it **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** We're solving the issue of inputting and exporting items in our stores. It's a lot more efficient to use this tool ### 40. Interesting but not a daily basis **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Trina M. | Junior Designer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 06, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** There is a strong user community which helps understand And I can customize it however I like! **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** There isn’t too much customer support when I had troubles **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Finding products ### 41. Best eCommerce platform **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** Its Free to use. It has got a huge amount of customization options and a strong user community for help. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** The UI is old making it a bit difficult to use. **Recommendations to others considering Zen Cart:** It's free to use and got backed by a strong user community. Though the UI is outdated, its still one of the best eCommerce applications available. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use ZenCart in our shopping site as a shopping cart software. ### 42. Good e-commerce **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Zen Cart?** It's a good e-commerce, very easy and intuitive, very good program to create your professional looking online store. **What do you dislike about Zen Cart?** Maybe you need to add some extra features with more options but in general it's fine. **What problems is Zen Cart solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our benefits have been that we have created two online stores and they are working perfectly, we like it very much. ## Zen Cart Discussions - [What improvements have been done in the last few years?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/36900-what-improvements-have-been-done-in-the-last-few-years) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [How much does Zen Cart cost?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-much-does-zen-cart-cost) - 1 comment - [Why use Zen Cart?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/why-use-zen-cart) - 1 comment - [View Zen Cart pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/zen-cart/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-27+19%3A55%3A01+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=84324712-3adb-438a-a6bd-486a87f09331&secure%5Btoken%5D=6769f21da6b449e79fbdc64578ecc99c721a6c10340f9dd1f50f9b36b9557910&format=llm_user) ## Zen Cart Features **Administration** - Reporting - Cart Management - Shipping Information Collection **Integrations** - Payment Gateway Integration - E-commerce Platform Integration - Email Integration **Cart Management** - Multi Cart - Products - Templates - Embed ## Top Zen Cart Alternatives - [OpenCart](https://www.g2.com/products/opencart/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (95 reviews) - [PrestaShop](https://www.g2.com/products/prestashop/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (149 reviews) - [Ecwid](https://www.g2.com/products/ecwid/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (397 reviews)