Compare to Other Carts

Note: Creo Commerce has a one time $99 license fee, and can be installed on any of the hosting packages we offer.  Installation within 24 hours of purchase.  You can add Creo Commerce during your hosting signup, or any time afterwards.

How Does Creo Commerce Compare to Open Source Shopping Carts?

That’s a fair, and important, question! You need to find the system that’s right for you.

Is Creo Commerce right for you? It depends on what you need and your budget. This page will help explain some of the various point to consider before choosing your website management and ecommerce system.

“Open Source Cart Systems” compares the general features or resources available for carts such as osCommerce, Zen Cart, and Agora. This is not intended to be a comprehensive comparison but just a basic overview of some good things to consider and plan for when deciding what cart will work best for you.

1. Installation and Hosting

Creo Commerce: is a hosted solution. This means that you don’t have to install the cart or find a web host. Sign up for hosting with Creo Communico LLC, add the Creo Commerce system to your order, and your cart is installed by us on your new web space. You receive a complete hosting space with cPanel and email.

Open Source Cart Systems: you must choose a website host that the cart you choose can run on and make sure the host meets the requirements and then install the cart. Some hosts do offer easy-install of open source carts (like Fantastico, which is also available on the cPanel of Creo Communico LLC accounts). If the host you choose does not have easy-install options, you’ll have to download a zip file from the open source cart’s website, unzip the files, make some configuration edits, create and associate a database with the cart, upload all the files using an FTP program and then set permissions correctly on the files. Or you’ll need to hire a designer or programmer to do this for you.

2. Simplicity and Ease of Use for Whole Site Management

Creo Commerce: customized by Creo Communico LLC specifically for work at home moms to give you a solution to manage your entire website with, not just the ecommerce shop. You can easily (just a few clicks!) create a professionally formatted frequently asked questions page, article library, links page, events calendar, guestbook, site map, custom error page, and more. It also creates and formats your catalog pages for your categories and products, and within just two clicks you can change the template or layout of any of the categories. So you can use multiple product layouts and customize each category. We chose a wonderful, powerful WYSIWYG editor to integrate into Creo Commerce so it’s easy to professionally format your text and you don’t have to learn HTML to do it.

Open Source Cart Systems: usually created by programmers and can be complicated to learn to use. They generally manage only the ecommerce part of a website, sometimes with basic support for creating a few pages. Some include basic WYSIWYG open source editors or have plug-ins available to add them and some require you to use HTML to format your product descriptions.

3. Support Options

Creo Commerce: Help from real people who are committed to supporting you is only a help ticket away. You can also find a searchable knowledgebase, flash tutorials and step by step picture tutorials on the support pages. The comprehensive user guide for Creo Commerce is free for clients. So support won’t cost you anything extra and you’re guaranteed to get a response to your questions.

Open Source Cart Systems: Support is not included for open source cart systems. Most carts offer user to user forums where you can ask questions, but there is no guarantee of a timely response, or any response at all. Paid user guides are available for some carts for additional costs. With open source carts if something strange happens or you accidentally crash your shop, you’ll have to hope that one of the volunteers on the support forum will have time to help you, or you’ll have to pay a programmer to fix it for you.

4. Easy to Customize

Creo Commerce: created to be quick and easy to customize. You have 38 built in templates to choose from so you can get started fast. And there’s no uploading files or unzipping downloaded template packages to use the built in templates, it takes just a few clicks to switch the template. You can also easily add your own design — create your design, add some basic plug in codes, and you’re all set.

Open Source Cart Systems: depends on the cart. Zen Cart is now using Smarty Templates. If you have the time and desire to learn some basic php codes and are willing to research which files to edit where to get the changes you want, it’s customizable with a moderate learning curve. osCommerce is tougher to customize, has a steeper learning curve, and you’ll have to spend time tracking down which file contains which pieces and what text. Just to edit the front page, you’d need to edit the separate files for the stylesheet (CSS code), the header, the footer, the left side bar, the right side bar, the main page template, and then the language files are split into multiple files as well as the boxes in the side bars.

5. Total Costs

Creo Commerce: because Creo Commerce is bundled with hosting and support, your only costs are the initial $99 license fee, and your hosting fee. You can use a built in template free, design your own, or hire a designer to create one for you (costs vary). Because customization involves only one file, many designers can create and implement your template at a more affordable cost. Since Creo Commerce’s checkout is through the secured, PCI-Compliant Mal’s E-Commerce you don’t need to pay for SSL or PCI-Compliance scanning.

Open Source Cart Systems: your cart may be free, but you need to budget for some additional costs. Monthly hosting at a reliable host that can run the cart is generally about $10/month. Customization of open source carts is tricky with the multiple files that need editing and pricing for custom designs will vary based on who you hire to create the design. Since the majority of web hosts will not provide support for software/scripts such as carts installed on their servers, you’ll need to either spend time searching for answers through Google or online forums, depend on a friend or designer to help you, purchase a user guide book at additional cost, or hire a programmer to help you with questions. If you accept credit cards you will need to purchase an SSL certificate which is a yearly fee depending on your host (generally ranges from $50 and up), make sure that the store checkout and admin are safely secured, and pay for PCI-Compliance scans quarterly (for example with HackerSafe which is $149/year). As you can quickly see, the costs add up.

Still on the fence? Get more info for a better decision: Take a quick look at the introduction page. Read a brief overview of how it works. Look at the full feature list for Creo Commerce. Compare Creo Commerce to other carts. Read the “Right for you?” page. See exactly how the design your own template feature works. Visit the Frequently Asked Questions page. See some live websites powered by Creo Commerce. Check out support options including demos of the WYSIWYG Editor.