There are many shopping cart solutions available than the ones listed here below. These are just a few that I liked more than others for some reason or another. Most of these solutions are suitable for small online e-commerce sites. I did not cover all the features available in each cart—just quickly introduced them—more as a quick reference for me to find them later if I ever needed to.
Free Solutions:
FatFreeCart: In some ways FatFReeCart is similar to PayPal cart but with an Ajax capability. FatFreeCart is based on e-Junkie, which is the pro paid version.
Bakesale: Bakesale is a simple cart with products catalogue, optional quantity control and more
Freeway: Freeway is a free e-commerce platform, which enables you to sell products, events, subscriptions and services
PrestaShop: I actually liked Presta???s backend. A few backend actions were not that user-friendly and could have been simplified but as a whole I think PrestaShop offers many decent features. My biggest problem with it was. not finding where I could change the default currency from Euros to AUDs. (Looking at their current site now, their demo shop shows $ options, so I guess it was just me.)
quick.cart: Flat-file cart: Quick.cart is a PHP cart available with backend admin area that relies on flat-file database. Basic version is available for free with two additional paid versions (pro and extended).
Paid Solutions
DragDrop Cart: An Ajax powered cart, which costs $30.
Hosted Solutions
Shopify: Three years ago I created an online shop using Shopify in about three days. It was great. The shop was hosted on Shopify’s servers. It had slick templates provided and good video tutorials to get the new user started. For revenue, Shopify took a small fee as transactions’ percentage. Furthermore, the guys at Shopify update the admin backend regularly and since I signed up, they offer more valuable information and statistics to the shop’s owner. However, about a year ago, Shopify changed their pricing policy. They still offer a free account with no transaction fees but limited to ten products. Any more than ten products, and the user is charged a monthly fee and a transaction’s percentage fee.
FoxyCart: FoxyCart is another hosted solution that can be integrated with ModX CMS.
Tutorials
Bulletproof Ajax: Example case study from Jeremy Keith’s book
NetTuts: Build An AJAX Powered Shopping Cart
Both the above examples show the basic functionality of a shopping cart that can be extended using a backend database.
The Watchmaker Project: Building a simple PHP shopping cart: A tutorial that goes over building a simple PHP cart class.
Have I missed any other good cart solutions that do not cost too much?