The success of osCommerce and Zen Cart is secured by a great and active community where members help one another out and participate in development issues reflecting upon the current state of the project.

Open Source software provides an opportunity for people to work on software with others that share the same interest, exchanging ideas, knowledge, and work with one another, to expand and improve the solution.

The motivation for working on Open Source software originates at different sources, which include working on the software for fun as a hobby, to make the software meet own requirements, and to bring commercial interest into the software.

It is this combination of motivations that has brought together a team of developers to successfully make what osCommerce and Zen Cart are today - and what they will be in the future - and an active and growing community, with each person having their own unique requirements but ultimately sharing the same goal: to use the software and to make it a better solution.

Open Source software always remains open providing the opportunity for anyone that is interested to work on it, at any time.

Because Open Source software is open, it provides a choice. The choice to use the software, the choice to learn the software, and the choice to join, share, and participate in a community - a community full of enthusiastic supporters that want to see the software grow and succeed.

It is this very reason why Open Source software is successful, and most importantly, why it works.

General Functionality

• Compatible with all PHP 4 versions
• All features enabled by default for a complete out-of-the-box solution
• Completely multilingual with English, German, and Spanish provided by default

Administration / Backend Functionality

• Supports unlimited products and categories
• Products-to-categories structure
• Categories-to-categories structure
• Add/Edit/Remove categories, products, manufacturers, customers, and reviews
• Support for physical (shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products
• Contact customers directly via email or newsletters
• Easily backup and restore the database
• Print invoices and packaging lists from the order screen
• Statistics for products and customers
• Multilingual support
• Multicurrency support
• Automatically update currency exchange rates
• Select what to display, and in what order, in the product listing page
• Support for static and dynamic banners with full statistics

Customer / Frontend Functionality

• All orders stored in the database for fast and efficient retrieval
• Customers can view their order history and order statuses
• Customers can maintain their accounts
• Addressbook for multiple shipping and billing addresses
• Temporary shopping cart for guests and permanent shopping cart for customers
• Fast and friendly quick search and advanced search features
• Product reviews for an interactive shopping experience
• Forseen checkout procedure
• Secure transactions with SSL
• Number of products in each category can be shown or hidden
• Global and per-category bestseller lists
• Display what other customers have ordered with the current product shown
• Breadcrumb trail for easy site navigation

Product Functionality

• Dynamic product attributes relationship
• HTML based product descriptions
• Automated display of specials
• Control if out of stock products can still be shown and are available for purchase
• Customers can subscribe to products to receive related emails/newsletters

Payment Functionality

• Accept numerous offline payment processing (cheque, money orders, offline credit card processing, ..)
• Accept numerous online payment processing (2CheckOut, PayPal, Authorize.net, iPayment, ..)
• Disable certain payment services based on a zone basis
• Shipping Functionality
• Weight, price, and destination based shipping modules
• Real-time quotes available (UPS, USPS, FedEx, ..)
• Free shipping based on amount and destination
• Disable certain shipping services based on a zone basis

Tax Functionality

• Flexible tax implementation on a state and country basis
• Set different tax rates for different products
• Charge tax on shipping on a per shipping service basis

Global E-Commerce Ready

• multiple language support
• multiple tax support
• multiple shipping methods
• multiple currency support
• multiple payment methods

Customer Status Modes

• unrestricted shopping
• must register to view prices
• must register to view prices and merchandise
• showroom only

Catalog Status Modes

• showcase mode without prices
• showcase mode with prices
• normal shopping mode
• down for maintenance mode

Categories and Products

• unlimited category depth
• physical merchandise
• downloadable virtual products
• products can reside in multiple categories
• product options as dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes, and text input

Customer Retention Tools

• periodic newsletter in plain text or HTML
• order status emails and records in the customer account
• referral tools
• gift certificates

Promotions, Sales and Discounts

• individual special prices
• global sale reductions
• category-wide sale prices
• discount coupons
• customer group discounts
• quantity discounts
• one-time charges
• minimum and maximum purchases per product
• prices by attributes

Powerful Administration Tool

• configure your minimum and maximum values, image sizes and customer details
• choose which layout settings to use for the spotlight listings
• pick which details to show on your product details page
• edit your policies pages with HTML (if desired)
• add, delete, move, link or copy your products
• create and manage your product attributes
• manage product reviews, featured products, specials and storewide sales
• shipping and payment module installation and management
• price and taxation control
• banner advertising controls
• newsletter creation and sending
• content management tool, easily add new content pages

Fully Customizable Catalog Templates

• XHTML 1.0 compliant - nearly table-less layout
• change the colors, fonts and many graphics using Cascading Stylesheets
• add, move, remove sideboxes via the Admin Tool
• template overrides that do not get overwritten during upgrades
• override functionality without having to learn PHP
• create as many different looks as you would like and choose them from the admin