How to choose a shopping cart for a small online business website?

Hi,
I've seen several shopping carts for online businesses such as zent cart, paypal, etc. I don't know how best to choose one for a website I'm going to have developed in the near future for a small online business i'm seeking to launch.

1. Which shopping cart is best for a new online small business from home? Recommendations and why?
2. What is the difference in these carts that allow customers to pay online?
3. Do these shopping vehicles have different fees associated with each?
4. Any other helpful information on this that I should be aware of/look into?

Thanks!

There are a lot of different shopping carts out there. Compatibility (with credit card merchant accounts, PayPal, etc) is a key as well as expandability (what other services do they offer/bundle). Without going into greater detail here, try:

http://www.ebusiness.answers-not-ads.com

1. For flexibility, use shopping-cart program (not from other site). Free for download at http://theclickinfo.com/shopcart.go

2. Pay online allow customers use realtime system for buy and pay.

3. Different services so different fees

4. Connect your shop cart to online pay service like paypal.

okay i shoudnt really be telling you about this guy , i think hes nuts for giving this away for FREE but we all have to be fair , anyway here is the link http://www.perlisbooks.com/birthdayprese...
good luck and enjoy ...

I like os-commerce ( http://www.oscommerce.com )

Why? Because I know it. Differences sometimes depend. Probably mostly in how you navigate and work the program.

Os-commerce is free. You just need a web hosting account (available through us ;) )

Make sure your web hosting account has MySQL database. A cron job would be good as well (cron jobs are basically timers for setting up your website to do a task automatically).

John
ceo and founder of http://www.eventurebiz.com

When I set up my own site I had very similar questions to those that you have asked. To answer, I will share my own experiences and thought process with you. I hope that is useful for you.

1. There is probably no single best shopping cart for new home based small businesses. It will depend a lot on your own situation. In my case, after doing a lot of research I ended up with a short list of X-Cart, AShop and ezimerchant. To narrow the choice down further, I ended up considering criteria that was important to me. I wanted Australian based support, which ruled out X-Cart. I wanted to be able to make and preview changes without those going live. Because I travel a lot, I wanted to be able to make changes while not online. I wanted to be able to make my own design changes. All three of those requirements ruled out AShop because it is an online shopping cart. I ended up choosing ezimerchant because it met all of my requirements. It even worked out to be a cheaper choice, which was not a primary consideration, but a nice bonus.

2. I wanted to initially use my existing eftpos terminal as well as PayPal to process payments. Later on I wanted to change to real-time credit card processing. All of the solutions I looked at offered this functionality. I particularly like the PayPal express checkout option on my site.

3. Yes. Every shopping cart solution has its own set of fees. Some are free (OS Commerce for example) but require you to have stong programming skills and lots of time to set them up and configure them. Others charge an up front fee (X-Cart for example). Most have an up front fee plus ongoing monthly fees. I ended up paying about $500 for the ezimerchant software plus about $30 per month.

4. Take advantage of free trials. Most providers offer them. Try to phone support during your trial period to get an idea what support is likely to be like after you buy the software.