Comparison between Magento and Zen-Cart Ecommerce System

“What shopping cart do you recommend?” is the number one query we get. An easy enough question, but the answer depends on your business and your requirements. To make your choice simpler, we’ve compared the features of our two most popular carts, Zen Cart and Magento
Magento
Magento (community edition) is a free open source shopping cart started by Varien in 2007. 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. 1. highly flexible coupon and pricing functions 2. comprehensive filter functionality (filter products by) 3. multi-store as standard 4. ability to create and edit orders in admin 5. large number of high quality modules via Magento Connect 6. no need to hack core code 7. impressive template system Magento sometimes gets a bad press for being too complex and server resource-intensive. Both are fair comments, but should not put you off considering Magento. With the right developers on board and a high-end hosting environment, Magento can provide extensive functionality at open source level.
Zen Cart
Zen Cart is an open source project started in 2003, based originally on osCommerce. Zen Cart impresses with its realiability, solid feature list and ease of use, making it ideal for shop owners who intend to handle development themselves. 1. highly reliable 2. includes all standard features to sell online 3. easy to understand templating and PHP structure 4. suitable for coders beginning with PHP 5. light footprint making it very accessible for shared hosting environments 6. friendly forum 7. active development team That Zen Cart has been around since 2003 however shows in its PHP coding structure. However this downside is exactly what makes it accessible to beginners in PHP and makes it an ideal first cart for new coders.
Comparison between Magento and Zen-Cart
Both Magento and Zen Cart run on the LAMP environment (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). Zen Cart is quick to install and is kind to shared hosting environments. Magento is more demanding and requires a high-end hosting enviroment. Zen Cart is usually quick to learn by simply “going in and playing around” whereas for Magento a guide or read on the wiki will help you to get your bearings.
	Magento	Zen-Cart
Requirements	PHP5.2 MySQL4.1.20+, InnoDB, cURL	PHP4.0+ MySQL4.1.14+
Open Source?	Yes	Yes
Unlimited products?	Yes	Yes
Fee?	None	None
SSL support	full SSL	full or shared SSL
Knowledge level for coding?	advanced	intermediate
Magento has multi-shop as standard, a feature very rarely seen with other carts and a comprehensive templating system. WYSIWYG editor is missing but easily added. Zen Cart is a reliable cart with all features necessary to sell online.
	Magento	Zen-Cart
Multi-store	Yes	No
Multi-Lingual	Yes	Yes
Support for Multiple Currencies	Yes	Yes
Tax Rate support	Yes	Yes
iPhone optimised	Yes	No
Template system	Yes	Limited
WYSIWYG? Page content management	Yes	Limited
Email template management	Yes	No
Administration Permission System Roles and Users	Yes	Add-on
One-click installs of modules	Yes	No
Magento impresses with the product filters whilst Zen Cart makes it easy for new shops to get started quickly.
	Magento	Zen-Cart
Batch Import and Export of catalog	Yes	Add-on
Google Base Integration	Yes	Add-on
Layered / Faceted Navigation for filtering of products	Yes	Limited
Product comparisons	Yes	No
Product reviews	Yes	Yes
Bundled products and stock control for attributes stand out with Magento. Zen Cart however has some good features if you want customers to call for price or only use it as brochure-type site.
	Magento	Zen-Cart
Multiple Images Per Product	Yes	Yes
Reports	Yes	Limited
Bundled products (show several products on one page)	Yes	No
Up-sells in Shopping Cart	Yes	No
Stock Control	Yes	Limited
Products can be marked as free or Call for Price	Add-on	Yes
Min or max quantities and units	Add-on	Yes
Probably the most important section for online shops these days. Magento has created an comprehensive discount functionality making it very easy to run campaigns. Gift Certificates however are not included in Magento, but they are with Zen Cart.
	Magento	Zen-Cart
Google Site Map	Yes	Add-on
URL Rewrites	Yes	Add-on
Meta-information for products and categories	Yes	Yes
Discount Coupons	Yes	Yes
Catalog Promotional Pricing	Yes	Yes
Multi-tier pricing	Yes	Yes
Customer groups each with its own pricing structure	Yes	Add-on
Wishlist	Yes	No
Newsletter	Yes	Yes
Gift Certificates	No	Yes
Getting the checkout right is crucial for sales conversions. Magento recognises this by offering one-page checkout and the ability to buy without having to open an account (guest checkout). It also comes with Google checkout and PayPal as standard. Zen Cart on the the other hand offers a solid standard checkout.
	Magento	Zen-Cart
Delivery / Billling address	Yes	Yes
One-Page Checkout	Yes	Add-on
Checkout without account/Guest Checkout	Yes	Add-on
Shipping to multiple addresses in one order	Yes	No
Integrated with Google Checkout (Level 2)	Yes	Add-on
Creating orders in admin is often required e.g. for orders taken by phone and Magento offers this as standard. Zen Cart does make order management simpler though by allowing you to create your own order statuses.
	Magento	Zen-Cart
Manage orders from admin	Yes	Yes
create, edit orders from admin panel.	Yes	Add-on
Create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order to allow for split fulfillment	Yes	No
Order statuses	Preset only	Yes
Have you used Magento or ZenCart? If yes, what are your experiences? Let us know by sending a comment below! Or you can contact us on ezeelive@gmail.com for Ecommerce Portal Development