--- title: Zen Cart Reviews meta_title: 'Zen Cart Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 42 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Zen Cart works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 3.9 review_count: 42 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-12' parent_category: name: E-Commerce url: https://www.g2.com/categories/e-commerce --- # 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 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. ### 4. 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. ### 5. 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 ### 6. 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. ### 7. 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. ### 8. 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. ### 9. 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. ### 10. 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 ## 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/zen-cart-review-4567314?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-21+19%3A35%3A37+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=c277fc93-b229-446d-afb8-b1ef12b382dd&secure%5Btoken%5D=56b2494ccee5719f391bbc2b8f984b965d56cd44ec0d8ca0c2b0b516c932e0ca&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)