There are about as many popular ecommerce software platforms out there as there are web design companies so how do you make heads or tails out of what is best for you, your company and your budget?

To begin there are 3 main categories of ecommerce software; Open Source, Hosted and Custom.  The following explains the differences between each.

Open Source

These are ecommerce software that are free or relatively inexpensive. Examples would be Oscommerce, CRELoaded, Xcart, Zencart (all which are based off of Oscommerce platform but modified in different ways) and Magento to name the popular ones. 

Pros:
Great way to have an affordable custom designed site
Usually a large assortment of features
There are templates available at affordable prices
Designers are easy to find and usually affordable

Cons:
Designs are not overly flexible and looks can be limiting or boxy
Admin consoles are typically confusing and hard to use
Stability issues and numerous patches and updates

 Overall this is a good cart for those needing an entry level cart, but plan for frustrations and problems and the time needed to sorting out how the admin console works.

 Hosted

Hosted solutions would include any that provide you the software hosted on their server.  If you were to leave you would not be able to take the cart with you.  Examples would be Volusion, ProStores and Yahoo Stores. 

Pros:
An all in one price for everything
Ongoing support
Stable platform
Feature Rich

Cons:
You can’t take it with you, you can pay and pay and pay and in the end never own the site.
Can be costly - Designs with Volusion can average $2000
Boxy and inflexible - designs can be limited
Pricing based on the number of products carried
SEO Unfriendly - Volusion is known to be SEO friendly however ProStores and others are difficult to make fully SEO friendly
Hosting Costs - Volusion is very well known for their expensive Bandwidth, in other words if you have a popular store expect to pay for all that extra traffic

Hosted solutions are great for those that want full support and don’t feel comfortable having to manage a hosting company and web designer, however in the long run it will cost you much more than running your own site on your own hosting account.

The perfect solution would be to look for web design companies who offer their own shopping cart, hosted and supported but offer a contract term so that after some period of time you will own the cart outright.

Custom

Custom doesn’t necessarily have to be a custom hand coded shopping cart, you aren’t likely going to find many of those these days with the availablity of top tier shopping cart software like Miva, NetSuite, PinnacleCart and others.  These shopping carts however typically have a some very high price tags starting at $1000 up to $10,000 and even higher.  These sites typically offer a more flexible design than the boxy look of an open source and are stable and feature rich.

Pros
Flexible designs
Feature rich
Stable
Easily incorporate video and flash
Search engine friendly
Unlimited products

Cons
Costly to have designed
Support and additional design work may be costly based on the limited number of design companies that are experienced with the software

Overall these are the best shopping carts, but lower top tier carts start at $1000 and up and are the perfect step up from an open source cart when you are ready to move up.

Key things to look for in any ecommerce cart is that it’s search engine friendly and has the features you need for your specifc products.