Best Shopping Cart System

I need some help. I own seven different online costume retail stores. Currently all of my sites are using a paypal account as the credit card processor. This year was bigger than expected and the volume im doing cant be handled by paypal. Im looking for a cart and a back end system that can handle most of the following. If any of you have good experiences or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

Shopping Cart
- allow multiple shipping options (first class, priority, express)
- allow fed ex, ups, usps integration
- International shipping options
- calculate shipping by weight
- be able to add in extra $2 packaging and handling charge
- able to print shipping labels

- easy system for filling orders that are placed (could orders be automatically printed)

- able to see credit card # to charge for additional items or shipping changes
- able to do phone orders

Back End
- easily seach by name, date, etc
- see if refunded, what order is, if shipped, tracking info
- Inventory Tracking

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If you have any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You
Tom Fallenstein

I'm using Volusion for my sites and it can do everything on your list. I don't record credit card numbers, but I am still able to make adjustments. It has a very flexible shipping systems with links to all the major shippers (UPS, FedEx, USPS). You can also add a handling charge. I have mine set to add an extra charge on very small orders, but not on large ones.

I dropship so can't tell you firsthand about inventory, but the system seems good. It has the ability to track items with various options - for example red shirts in size large.

The backend is excellent providing the ability to print shipping labels, add tracking numbers, automatically e-mail customers, etc.

It is a bit pricey when compared with other systems, but for me it's worth the extra money.

They offer a free trial so you can check it out to see if it meets your needs before your buy.

-Ramprof

We use OSCommerce, I believe it can handle all of that (plus, it's Open Source, so you can modify the code to sort your needs)

I think you should consider osCommerce, you can install, configure, and modifie it with reasonable fee they are little SE friendly too, supported by different payment gateways. If your business is located in EU countries you can consider chronopay as another payment system as you're looking for.

I'm not really a user of shopping carts myself, but a lot of successful people seem to be happy with 1shoppingcart.com

OScommerce is worth the price, but I'm not a big fan. Yahoo offers a very robust hosted solution, depending on your budget and needs. It does everything you want and much more, but the platform is unlike anything else out there and takes some getting use to if you are going to set everything up yourself. If you have some money to have a pro set it up for you, I think it offers a compelling solution.

I have bulk of clients using yahoo's ecom solution.
It is a good platform, it does has support problems.

Since they take a percent of sales, customers generating the most sales get a higher level of service.

You can complety crash your site/business if make a technical error and you are don't have the leverage to get to support to address it.

You really need to have a good tech person on your side that has experience on the platform to guide you.

Myself, I defer my clients to a person that has been working on the platform for many years, and not only understand the platform but also the internal structure of yahoo's support system.

try out Zen Cart it is a fork of osCommerce with better functionality out of the box constantly being updated and cleaner code. Highly recomended just swapped over a store to this from osCommerce.

if Zen Cart is the choice , it is easily install from your cpanel using Fantastico ... very easy... I myself playing with all the script provided by the hosting company to find to see the features for all the script.

i always like www.x-cart.com. very good one.

ZenCart is based on OSC possibly they have taken core files from OSC and are proceeding along a different development path. BTW it is easy to set up and customize as compare to OSC.

The best value... you get superb support for the money.

The others - solid design and lot of open-source developers for custom work - but you have a fair 'not really supported' learning curving... but since free you can't complain either.

MIVA - is even better - but costs $5K and about another $5K for all the module upgrades... highly scalable.

Try Mals E commerce ...
www.Mals-e.com
Good luck!

There is a shopping cart system for joomla called virtuemart, its based on the old phpshop.

osCommerce. It is clean and lean. No features you don't need. And you can add any you do need. Plus open source so you can make it do whatever you need it to. It can grow alongside your business.

But no matter what, never rent when you can buy. Having your source is the #1 criteria you should look for.

So that 27 years application development experience talking