Why I'm Quitting Zen Cart

[swguy]

As a reminder to all users, this is a forum about Zen Cart. Agitating for other carts is a violation of forum rules, and will get you banned. If you want to talk about WooCommerce, they have their own forum, so please go there.

[Nick1973]

As a reminder to all users, this is a forum about Zen Cart. Agitating for other carts is a violation of forum rules, and will get you banned. If you want to talk about WooCommerce, they have their own forum, so please go there.

While Zen Cart needs further development, it is still by far one of the best open source self hosted options for ecommerce. Yes there are some flaws in some parts of the cart, but it does much more than other carts in an easier way. You do need to understand PHP and MYSQL, plus CSS and HTML etc to make it work well for you. But there are good reasons to use Zen Cart, over and above other carts that I shall not mention.

For a start it has great tools for SEO that you have FULL control over. Also, it is FREE to download and FREE to set up. Unlike others that tie you into a monthly payment plan or simply cost astronomical amounts if you want to make them work properly for your website. Not only that, many of the modifications on Zen-cart.com are FREE too, unlike others that charge each time you want to add something on. And where others mods are FREE, you often find that they don't work as you wish and you end having to either pay for a premium version, or try to re-work them so they work well for you. So if you end up having to Pay, pay pay....your bill for setting up your shopping cart can become quite high by the time you get it live. AND then you have to make it earn money...BUT, what happens if it doesn't work as you thought and you end up having to ditch it and its cost a fortune to set up? You don't have this problem with Zen Cart, as the cost for setting it up is relatively low, even if you get a developer like myself to design it for you.

The template system for Zen Cart is also responsive and meets mobile standards. Once you start digging into it, you actually realise that it is very user friendly. There are lots of other template systems out there that aren't so user friendly. The idea of the Responsive Classic Template, like Template Default and Classic, is that the clutter is minimal. This makes it easier for a developer of a template to design around the code and develop in a professional way.

Why would you want to use a template that looks like someone else's brand anyway? When your business should be concentrating on creating its own brand. Hence the requirement to design a template from scratch and work with the template system developed in Zen Cart for this kind of development. And believe me, the template system in Zen Cart is hugely expansive and made for creativity. Unlike other carts that offer more or less the same layouts and you are limited to putting graphics where they say or how they say. Hence why some all look the same apart from the actual graphics.

[mesnitu]

Why I'm sticking to zencart :
https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread....-and-I-m-sorry

[Nick1973]

Why I'm sticking to zencart :
https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread....-and-I-m-sorry

There's another great reason, the code in Zen Cart is optimised and lightweight. Making it faster than other carts that become sluggish once they reach a certain level. You don't have this with Zen Cart. Plus it has mods to make your site run faster as well. I am fully aware of how slow the one you mentioned in your other post can become. It is a nightmare in all honesty. And I refuse to use it.

[mesnitu]

It is a nightmare in all honesty.

It's a crime!

[swguy]

Tortures of the damned. I feign deafness when I am asked about it.

[ianhg]

If zencart is not suitable for your business, you should try to migrate to another cart and find a platform such as zencart to woocommerce

Good luck on that one then!
Tried that for a favour for someone, cost money for basic add ons. Constant updates. Never again.

[Nick1973]

Good luck on that one then!
Tried that for a favour for someone, cost money for basic add ons. Constant updates. Never again.

Ha ha is that a joke? Even worse, Storeya and then stay there for the rest of your business duration because you can't move away. Suckered in like!

[Elemi]

Interesting read, thanks everyone, as it's been a while since I was in here... Great to see some familiar names on this thread. :-)

I have the dreaded upgrade to do... from 1.3.9h to whatever it is now... yeah yeah I know, but life gets busy and other priorities take place... and I have a new website to write as I'm branching a section of my business off, and have been trying to decide what to do.

I am pleased to say after looking at some Zencart templates online, that some are looking very pretty... so now I'm stuck trying to decide which one to go with.

However, my biggest issue I have is payment modules, as I have to do stock checks first as my inventory system is in MYOB AccountRight (manual on my pc) and then request payments... otherwise I could be forever crediting people when it gets busy. Is there an easy way to repopulate stock rather than going into every description? Can I add different quantities to attributes?

Does Zencart now allow for the product page to show when it was last updated, as well as when it was created? I'm busy updating my descriptions with clinical research, and I would like them to show as being current as my site has been going since 2006; prior to that it was with Online Merchant (1999).

That's my 2 cents worth from Middle Earth :-)

[torvista]

The best way to get an answer to a question is to post one question in a relevant thread or section of the forum. Your post has nothing to do with this thread, which deters people from answering and making the thread even more off-topic.