Zen Cart™ - Putting the dream of your own business within reach of anyone!

Why use Zen Cart® Shopping Cart software for your business?

Built-in Functionality

• No restrictions: on quantity of products, nor sales volumes, nor admin users
• Product variants with specific pricing and stock control
• Wholesale / B2B sales for trade customers
• Discount coupons
• Gift Vouchers
• Group Pricing
• Quantity/Volume discounts
• Multiple pricing options: sales / specials / percentages / fixed prices, for individual products or specific categories
• Multi-language
• Multi-currency
• Payments by PayPal®, AuthorizeNet®, Square®, Cash on Delivery, Bank Transfer, Check/MoneyOrder
• Multiple shipping options
• Comprehensive tax rules
• Mobile ready
• Meets modern accessibility standards out-of-the-box: 99% Lighthouse
• Freedom to use your own domain name
• Unparalleled community support...there are few questions that have not been answered already over the years
• Comprehensive Documentation.
• Compatible with modern PHP versions
• Code is under constant development (see the progress in GitHub)

Optional Functionality with Free Plugins

• Bootstrap 4 template
• One-page Checkout
• Payment: Braintree, E-ComProcessing, eMerchant, Invoice, Paytrail, SecurepPay, Stripe, Vivawallet, Zelle, Crypto/iDEAL/CC/Klarna/BanContact/Payeer
• Shipping: Australia Post, Canada Post, DHL Express, Fedex, Royal Mail, Shipstation, UPS, USPS
• Image management
• Short Codes (like WordPress)
• Import/Export of product data/customer data/order data
• Google Analytics
• XML Sitemaps
• Google Merchant Center
• Structured Data
• Static ("friendly" urls)
• Sales Reports
• Package-Delivery Tracker
• VAT Exempt Customer (EU)
• and many more!

Optional Functionality with Commercial Plugins

• CEON Advanced Shipper
• CEON URI Mappings Manager

Open Source vs Commercial ecommerce platforms?

There are dozens of open-source shopping cart programs available, but none come close to the options, features and stability available with Zen Cart®.

And as for the commercial programs, watch as the fees ramp up to match your sales! At some point you'll jump ship, so why not start with an unrestricted solution?

Why not to use Zen Cart® Shopping Cart software for your business?

Zen Cart is open-source: it is licensed under GPL2, meaning you are free to modify the source code however you like. However, this freedom to customize the functionality and behavior can be overpowering. It can be your DIY solution or you can contract any PHP developer.

This extends also to the visual side of Zen Cart, it includes a responsive template, which is very functional but maybe not so visually exciting. But it's not hard to update it with your own CSS! An optional Bootstrap-based template is maintained under constant development to provide a minimalist framework that is standards- and accessibility-compliant far in excess of any other cart.

Zen Cart® is function over form, but you always have the freedom to add or change whatever you wish.

If you want a hands-off experience and prefer waiting for some online support person to fix your site when they break it with silent "upgrades" that they haven't done, then Zen Cart is not for you.

What do I need to use Zen Cart®?

The lowest level hosting solution that offers PHP, Apache, and a MySQL database is usually sufficient to get started. Maybe your hosting even includes a Zen Cart® one-click auto-install for you to try (which is ok for a tryout but never to develop).

You can also install it on your local computer for offline development (requires a web server installed on your computer).