Robust, open-source, great for online shops

What are the best aspects of this product?

I have been using this for almost a decade, and I still trust this for some online shops. It has come as a big revolution from its predecessor but is a lot more powerful in terms of functionalities. I haven't experienced difficulties when starting to use Zen Cart too. I only need to download the app and install it to begin setting up my hosted shared account or own server. Moreover, I've observed how the platform has improved a lot through the many years of using it. It is now an all in one online shopping cart solution with a flexible payment tool and dependable shipping management. I can also use any price format, such as discounts, holiday packages, cross-selling, and paid premium services and add-ons. Zen Cart also has many useful free integrations that are easy to use, as long as you have knowledge about PHP and follow the guide accordingly. One of the biggest problems of Zen Cart, however, is its seemingly daunting functionality for newbies. Thankfully, there is a whole community of developers and users of this open-source platform. They are all willing to help anybody anytime. The people in the support community have enough information about the entire platform and new updates as well. This makes an active thread for updates to become possible. Zen Cart also has some problems in terms of responsiveness of interface because its design runs on a table system encoded through CSS. However, it was solved with the developers' help in the community, which has become obvious with the release of mobile first.

What aspects are problematic or could work better?

Zen Cart doesn't have a plugin for Bootstrap even after its significant updates. Instead, its design is running on Foundation. The default responsive template also lacks many capabilities. This pushes users to configure the template using programming codes, especially that it doesn't let users drag blocks on a visual interface. Upgrading the platform is also a problem since it has a lot of modules. Moreover, in some instances, it demands you to tinker with the codes when setting up new features. This is somehow consuming a tremendous amount of time for me to complete. And I have noticed that some developers in the community don't answer some questions. This happens because some of them are developers that are paid to do their work. Thus they don't share some information with others.

What specific problems in your company were solved by this product?

Zen Cart helps me run complete and fabulous online shops. It has cool features that could have been very expensive when using other popular e-commerce platforms. Those options require me to spend big on integrations without giving me a good grasp over the codes. But Zen Cart has efficiently made everything affordable and easy. Personalizing Zen Cart is easy and seamless. It has helped me develop custom tools such as an intuitive inventory system that automatically updates itself twice each day. Such a tool directly updates inventories straight from my actual stocks. Zen Cart also has cool plugins that are adaptable enough for me to come up with efficient operations. More integrations are regularly coming, too, as well as a new Zen Cart 2.0 version. It has a very functional set of modules that make Zen Cart a useful and complete solution. It is super affordable, easy to set up and use, as well as PDCC compliance. It makes Zen Cart perfect for handling a large number of transactions.

Are you a current user of this product?

Yes