For the last year we have compiled monthly statistics on the top Open Source eCommerce programs, including several free or nearly-free proprietary programs that are sold for less than some OSC programs. "Open Source" means free to look at and to modify, not free of cost: about half of the top OSC programs reviewed are sold for a fee.
The statistics we compiled include the raw Google search results for each of the programs. Over time the results become more meaningful as trends and rankings emerge. We discuss the methodology at the end of this report.
OsCommerce has enjoyed a long reign as the most popular Open Source eCommerce (OSC) program, with Zen Cart close behind. While osCommerce and Zen Cart still remain the most popular programs in terms of Google's raw search results, Magento and several other newer carts have been rising rapidly. At the current rate, Magento is projected to overtake osCommerce by August, 2010.
The Contenders
We followed twenty-three programs over the past year, which represents approximately 50 million Internet pages both at the beginning and at end of the reporting period, for a consistently stable industry population. The programs researched include: osCommerce, Zen Cart, Magento, XT-Commerce, Cube Cart, X-Cart, PrestaShop, Quick Cart, Ubercart, CRE Loaded, CS Cart, osC-Max, Shopify, Virtue Mart, Zeus Cart, EOS Online Merchant, osCommerce Project (now osQuantum), Lite Commerce, Open Freeway, Dash Commerce, OSC-SS, IOMPI, and JadaSite.
In terms of number of pages, seven of the OSC programs gained a significant number of pages over the last year, thirteen programs lost, and two programs (Cube Cart and osQuantum (formerly the osCommerce Project) held steady throughout the year.
In terms of rank order, osCommerce and Zen Cart remained at the top, the Russian-based X-Cart dropped three slots to end in sixth position. This allowed California-based Magento, the German-based XT:Commerce, and the UK-based Cube Cart to each move up one position.
The Biggest Winners
Magento is far and away the winner in the page popularity contest, more than doubling the number of pages over the past year. This is a rate of nearly a half million pages added each month. Magento 1.0 was released in March, 2008.
But PrestaShop jumped the highest in rank order, leaping five positions from 12th to 7th. It wasn't even in the Top 10 one year ago. PrestaShop 1.0 launched in July 2008, the most recently released program we studied.
XT:Commerce gained at a rate of nearly 200,000 pages added each month. However, due to stiff competition the program dropped in rank by three positions to finish the year in sixth place.
| Top | Ten E-Carts | for 2009 |
| Rank | December 2009 | January 2009 |
| 1 | osCommerce | osCommerce |
| 2 | Zen Cart | Zen Cart |
| 3 | Magento | X-Cart |
| 4 | XT:Commerce | Magento |
| 5 | Cube Cart | XT:Commerce |
| 6 | X-Cart | Cube Cart |
| 7 | PrestaShop | Quick Cart |
| 8 | Quick Cart | CRE Loaded |
| 9 | Ubercart | Ubercart |
| 10 | CRE Loaded | osC-Max |
The number of pages on UberCart slightly increased from 629,000 to 740,000. However, it began and ended the year in ninth position.
In the up-and-coming-new-programs category, EOS Online Merchant increased from nearly 27,000 to 58,200 pages. However, due to changes in positions of other programs, it decreased in rank from fifteenth to sixteenth.
The Biggest Losers
During the last year, the popularity of osCommerce plummeted 54 percent, losing 16 million pages. At the time of this report, the Grand Dame of the OSC world still has more than twice the number of pages as Magento. However at current rates, osCommerce and Magento will each have 11 million pages next July, and by August Magento will have surpassed it.
Zen Cart also steadily declined in popularity, sliding from a peak of 11 million pages down to slightly more than eight million by December 2009. This is a run rate of a quarter of a million pages lost every month this year.
The Zen Cart team has promised a new release each year since 2007; however, in April of this year it gave the vaporware a new number — Zen Cart 2.0 — and still did not release it.
CRE Loaded dropped only two positions, from eighth most popular to tenth. However, it lost about half the number of pages it had at the start of the year. It began with about 1.5 million and ended with about 600,000 pages. The CRE Loaded team made some marketing blunders that were not well-received by their market and, despite many mea culpas, apparently never regained their audience.
They also shifted their strategy to focus on a payment module program called CRE Secure and doggedly pushed store owners about PCI Compliance, but the marketing messages were confusing. The typical online store owner will learn confusing industry acronyms when necessary, not when it is convenient for vendors.
Likewise, osC-Max dropped two positions, from 10th place to 12th. It lost about 25 percent of the number of pages it had a year ago. The osC-Max team made no major changes over the past year, so the losses are likely due to the general migration toward Magento.
Virtue Mart, formerly known as mambo-phpShop, lost about a thousand references per month over the last year, starting and ending the year in fourteenth position. Virtue Mart is an OSC program designed as a plug-in for the Mambo or Joomla content management system.
LiteCommerce is a light version of X-Cart. The group lost about 13% of page references over the past year. Interestingly, the team has focused its attention away from both Litecommerce and X-Cart on a new, 100% AJAX-based program called ECWid that can be integrated with any web site in about five minutes. We will report on and begin following this program through the next year.
Shopify lost nearly 100,000 pages over the course of the year, dropping from 312,000 to 215,000. Shopify is a hosted ecommerce solution - no installation required - for small online retailers built on Ruby on Rails. It was started in 2006.
Holding Steady
Cube Cart and osQuantum maintained the same levels of page popularity throughout the year, ending the year with a non-significant change in number of pages related to their programs.
Cube Cart is available in both a free version and a for-fee version. Originally released in 2003, it has maintained a small feature set that is very stable. While it is not based on osCommerce, many of the functions are very similar and therefore familiar to those migrating from osCommerce programs.
The osQuantum group (formerly the osCommerce Project) came out with a bang a little more than a year ago when a splinter group of osCommerce programmers became weary of waiting for the next release of osCommerce to make its way through the group's bureaucracy. The group quickly finished the current version of osCommerce and added some valuable security features to it.
However, marketing and/or copyright issues caused the group to suddenly withdraw their finished version and re-focus their energies on their own program, osQuantum. The group has been quiet for the past few months, apparently hard at work.
Methodology
We performed a Boolean Web search on the same date each month for each of the top OSC programs. Boolean searches use mathematical operators, i.e. AND, OR, NOT and (), to get the most accurate results possible. Repeating the same search over time allows patterns to emerge and thus makes the data more meaningful. Our results and rankings are based on the total number of Google results pages reported for each program at the time the search was conducted.
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