Your opinions and couple Q's about cpanel shopping carts.

[TogaDave]

I've never really messed with shopping carts that much but I'm starting to get a few customers asking about them...

I can see that in one area of WHM (Service Manager) there is an option for me to add "Interchange", and then in another area of WHM (Addon Scripts) there is the option to add "OSCommerce", and lastly I see that in my cPanel's there is "Agora Cart".

Questions:

Are all 3 of those "standard" shopping carts?

Is there a reason why Agora doesn't show in WHM anywhere, but it's in cPanel's on my box?

In your opinion, should I avoid giving my customers access to install any one of those from their cPanel?

In your opinion, what do you think would be the easiest/best/most trouble-free cart to encourage customers to use?

Do my customers have to have an SSL certificate to make the carts work with their PayPal accounts and such?

Thanks very much for your valued opinions and thoughts on this.
Dave

[verdon]

I've never really messed with shopping carts that much but I'm starting to get a few customers asking about them...

I can see that in one area of WHM (Service Manager) there is an option for me to add "Interchange", and then in another area of WHM (Addon Scripts) there is the option to add "OSCommerce", and lastly I see that in my cPanel's there is "Agora Cart".

Questions:

Are all 3 of those "standard" shopping carts?

I can't really speak on Interchange, I shied away from it early on. I really disliked Agora. I found it too restrictive, a bit buggy, and pain-full user forums. OSCommerce is very popular, but I found the development/update cycle to be sporadic seeming and so on.

I did find a fork off of OSCommerce into a new project which I really like... zen cart at www.zen-cart.com. I find it to have a very active and responsive development community and public forums.

Note: any of these solutions require a developer to get going with. Your client's need to be aware of that.

In your opinion, should I avoid giving my customers access to install any one of those from their cPanel?

Yes

In your opinion, what do you think would be the easiest/best/most trouble-free cart to encourage customers to use?

I like zen-cart, but they need to have some knowledge to properly set it up and 'theme' it.

Do my customers have to have an SSL certificate to make the carts work with their PayPal accounts and such?

yes, if they want to have the URL to stay at their domain all the time. In this case, they will also need a unique IP. If they don't mind the url going to something like secure.myhostingco.com/~user/ during checkout, you can offere a shared certificate to all your customers.

My 2 cents

[TogaDave]

Thanks very much for your input verdon. I'm curious - when you say "any of these solutions require a developer to get going" would you mind elaborating a little bit more? I know it's a pain to type out big explanations, but maybe just something brief? The reason I ask is, I seem to recall a long time I once installed one of the carts in cPanel just to try it out, and I seem to recall it being fairly straight-forward as far as it becoming "live" and me adding a few fake products to it. Do you mean developer needed for skinning and other customization purposes, or is there a bit of code that needs to be worked through?

I'm also still interested in other people's opinions too in case anyone feels like throwing their hat in the ring. Thanks,
Dave

[gorilla]

osCommerce is the most powerfull and flexible choice out of the 3 options, agora and interchange are lacking , in my opinion !

[Infopro]

Another fork of OSC that looks very promising.
http://www.scriptconnector.org/

[verdon]

Thanks very much for your input verdon. I'm curious - when you say "any of these solutions require a developer to get going" would you mind elaborating a little bit more?

Sorry, I should have been more specific.
Yes, they're all relatively straight fwd to install and try a few sample products. That said, they all require some level of skill to really customize the look and feel. Some (many) customers also require other more complex setup, or custom or 3rd party mods and add-ons, such as wishlisting or cross-selling and so on.

Even if the client was content with the out of the box look, I'm yet to encounter an e-commerce client who didn't need extensive guidance just in choosing payment and shipping methods, not to mention configuring those as well as tax zones and such appropriately. I guess I'm just saying that if you're dealing directly with the merchant, count on a LOT of hands on

[bamasbest]

yes, if they want to have the URL to stay at their domain all the time. In this case, they will also need a unique IP. If they don't mind the url going to something like secure.myhostingco.com/~user/ during checkout, you can offere a shared certificate to all your customers.

Actually, with ZEN, if your customers are using paypal or another processor like 2checkout, a dedicated IP/SSL cert would not be required since all CC processing is done on the third party's secure server. If they intend to process payment via their own site, they would certainly want to offer their customers som assurances of security and would need a dedicated IP and SSL Cert.

[TogaDave]

Once again thank you all for your input, this is really good helpful info to know!