Comparatively some years before, there were very few eCommerce Platforms. But now the time has been changed a lot and there are plenty of options available. Open Source platforms are less expensive and they have great customizable options for developing and launching an eCommerce store. In recent times there has been a lot of improvement in the Open Source E-Commerce platforms.
5 best Open Source PHP eCommerce Platforms:
-
WordPress:
WordPress with some useful plugins like the WooCommerce plugin allows you to sell anything, beautifully. Built to integrate seamlessly with WordPress, WooCommerce is the world’s favorite eCommerce solution that gives both store owners and developers complete control. With endless flexibility and access to hundreds of free and premium WordPress extensions, WooCommerce now powers 30% of all online stores — more than any other platform. With premium extensions, you can offer bookings, memberships, and recurring subscriptions. Perhaps you’d like to sell monthly subscriptions for physical goods, or offer your members a discount on digital downloads? It’s all possible.
-
Drupal:
One of the most common e-commerce platforms for any e-commerce website is Drupal. It offers different functionalities like multicurrency, multilingual making it a good option for e-commerce business. It has inbuilt caching functionality due to which it is having better performance and speed compared to other e-commerce platforms. Apart from that Drupal has its own security system built-in which means your site is protected at all times. When required Drupal has a strong online community to help you.
-
Magento:
Magento, on the other hand, is one the most preferred and popular Open Source E-commerce platforms. Some of the features that make Magento the most popular among everyone especially its SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and powerful tools for marketing and management of catalog. If we consider all this it creates an excellent shopping experience for the customers. There are versions available in Magento. One version you can say is a free version and there is a paid version as well for upgrading to more advanced features. Magento has great features which are very comprehensive and useful so you might not need any extensions. Magento has a feature using which you can send product alerts to customers for automated marketing. Multilingual sites can be created separately with Magento. The user interface can be customized as per the need.
-
PrestaShop:
One of the latest additions to Open Source E-commerce platforms is PrestaShop. It has made a place for itself due to its ease of use and stunning interface. It also does not involve much experience to install the plugin. It has a user-friendly interface and effortless inventory management that is easy to understand. It is a lightweight platform for e-commerce businesses and does not slow down your website. It has multi-vendor support which is required by a lot of businesses. On the downside, PrestaShop is not as robust as Magento and it is most suited for small to mid-sized businesses. You cannot cross-sell products in PrestaShop.
-
OpenCart:
Easy to use and lightweight E-commerce platform is OpenCart. It is free with a wide community to help. Generally preferred by startups and small businesses. In regards to cost, it is very low. OpenCart has solid features and large catalog functionality too. It works well for order processing. If we compare OpenCart with Magento it is generally faster because of its simple structure. OpenCart uses an MVC pattern and has great documentation. There are numerous themes available to customize your store as per your design needs. There is a number of plugins available to extend the functionality. Just a drawback is that OpenCart is older compared to other platforms which means it doesn’t have all the features you might be needing.
Conclusion: So here we’ve mentioned the most preferred Open source PHP E-commerce platforms which you can use as per your e-commerce needs, you can choose the best fit for your online business. It is essential to make sure that you have a perfect front and backend user interface, features on your website, loading speed, and scalability of your website. It doesn’t matter about your budget, you will definitely get a platform that will suit your requirements for the eCommerce development of your online business.
