There are many open source shopping cart software available over the internet. A common question arises – which software should be used? The demand for Magento Development and Zen Cart Development is on the rise as both offer tremendous advantages. However which one to use depends on the different businesses and requirements. Well, here is a quick comparison of the two most popular shopping carts i.e. Zen Cart and Magento.

Zen Cart is an e-commerce solution that was launched in 2003. It is based on Oscommerce. It is one of the most rewarding e-commerce systems, which is based on PHP language, MySQL database and HTML components. Zen Cart supports different languages and platforms. Zencart CMS can offer one the ability to easily edit categories, images, products, data related to customers and reviews. It has an easy to understand templating and PHP structure.

Magento was introduced in the market in 2008 by Varien, a web development company in Los Angeles. Magento impresses with its extensive feature list. Most functions which need to be added on with other carts come as standard. It’s ideally suited for companies who need a professional online shop presence.

Magento scores over Zen Cart when it comes to setting up multiple online stores. Online merchants can manage multi-stores from a single administration panel. Also, magento is optimized to be used on smart phones like iPhone while Zen Cart is not. Both support multiple languages. Magento has a brilliant templating system while Zen Cart’s templating system is limited.

With Magento one can add modules with one click. This is not possible with Zen Cart. Magento also has an excellent e-mail template management system while there is no such thing in Zen Cart. Both Magento and Zen Cart can run on the LAMP environment (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Zen Cart is quick to install and is kind to shared hosting environments. Magento is more demanding and requires a high-end hosting environment. Zen Cart is usually quick to learn by simply “going in and playing around” whereas for Magento a guide is required.

Magento sometimes gets a bad name for being too complex and server resource-intensive. But this does not undermine its importance. With the best Magento Developers on board and a high-end hosting environment, Magento can provide the best functionality at open source level.

With Zen Cart one cannot compare products while with Magento that is very much possible. Magento shows several products on one page. It also has a very good layered navigation for filtering of products. Zen cart offers gift certificates while Magento does not. One can ship to multiple addresses in one order with Magento. Creating one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order to allow for split fulfillment is easy with Magento.

No doubt Magento has more features than Zen Cart but it is hard to customize with its extensive use of XML and OOP and also it isn’t as robust as Zen Cart. A common complaint about Magento is its slowness. Biztech Consultancy is a leading Web Development Company based in India. We specialize in Magento Shopping Cart Development, Zen Customization, Magento Custom Module Development and Magento Customization. Our team of Magento Developers offers the best e-commerce solutions to our clients worldwide.