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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
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This reviewer was offered a nominal gift card as thank you for completing this review.
Invitation from G2. This reviewer was offered a nominal gift card as thank you for completing this review.





