PHPCart Shopping Cart Review

It’s not readily apparent who or what is responsible for phpCart. A cursory search of the Web yields nothing in Wikipedia or from other standard competitive descriptions/reviews, and the phpCart Website has no “About” information.

So this reviewer sent an email note to the sales department as follows:

I’m doing a review of shopping cart software, and I find very little information about the origins of phpCart or who owns and/or has the responsibility for its core-code integrity.

[When I write a check to you on your shopping cart on your Website, who cashes it… just a bunch o’ guys?] Will you be so kind as to supply some background information, possibly even some third-party reviews of phpCart?

We’ll see if I receive a reply on that. Otherwise, I’m going to assume that the “who” of phpCart is “just a bunch of guys.” That fact, I’m guessing, won’t make the average buyer of shopping cart software overly confident. It appears the latest release configuration is “4”.

Functionality and Features

You download the product from the phpCart Website, at which point you may proceed to configure it. A demonstration page is accessible from the Website. All the instructions for download and operation of the demo seem straightforward enough, yet based on command-mode interfacing.

General Observations

In addition to a customizable template system phpCart includes the following:

• Nonresident credit-card database

• Coupon-creation capability

• Add shipping per item or per order

• Edit all aspect of the cart via the easy-to-use Admin Panel

• Ability to accept credit card or manual/check payments

• Simultaneous multipayment gateway support

• Unlimited number of products

• Encrypts credit card info (if you take manual credit cards)

The Website makes a point that phpCart is not a front-end application. This means you will need to design your own product pages with special "Add to Cart" links or buttons. A link-generator tool is available from the phpCart site.

Functionality

Probably the best selling feature of phpCart is its “highly customizable” template system. That and the fact that phpCart incorporates no credit card account number database, but relies on the services of a number of common “payment gateways,” such as PayPal, WorldPay, eWay and so on. This relieves the user of the need for storing credit card information.

The following table shows some of the basic characteristics from a review page that is indicative but possibly not completely current:

Limitations

Even though the system has plug-in architecture, maintenance of code integrity and version control for customized derivatives of the source still present challenges. phpCart is open source; there are a number of other companies that prepackage some of the shopping-cart features that typical larger businesses need.

Certainly some of these companies are going to be able to satisfy your needs, but going with a derivative company gets you away from the free situation. In the long run, having a dedicated supply of geeks will be necessary for tailored implementations.

Support and Documentation

Free technical support is through online knowledge base and user forums only; priced phone and email support is offered by phpCart staff for a somewhat bewildering range of fees from the phpCart pricing page.

As a collaborative project, phpCart enables community members to actively participate in developing documentation for the levels of phpCart users. As with most open-source products, the documentation occurs in conjunction with the development community’s discussions.

I was able to find a document on the site: phpCart 4.6 Documentation. It looked fairly thorough but a quick glance shows grammatical and even spelling errors, usually an indication of non-native English writers or that developers are trying to do double-duty as writers.

Conclusion

Free software is always tempting, but for most larger installations, you will need to spend considerable internal and third-party cycles and ducats for assistance in implementing and maintaining this capable but geek-centric system.

Rating 3 stars (out of 5)

The main beef against phpCart appears to be its lack of a sophisticated range of features that larger enterprises typically require. A top-ranked e-commerce solution can be found with Premium Web Cart, which is full-featured and usable. It is also built on the latest Web technologies and comes to you in an affordable suite of options designed to grow your business.

Best Wishes,