Which Ecommerce shopping cart software to use?

I am a real fan of Open Source software, and there are some great projects around, however up till now the e-commerce category has missed out. Nearly all of the open-source e-commerce systems I have checked out are just big piles of spaghetti code, that not only make development and maintenance of online shops a headache, I consider them to be grave security risks.

Magento has actually been designed - that has got to count for something! While with other projects I wince when I look under the hood, with Magento I am being pleasantly surprised by each new aspect I look at. In fact, I think there is a lot I can learn from this well implemented system. It is now only a preview release, and it is already light-years ahead.

Magento is a professional product, and you see that in both the development cycle and the quality of the code. In the forums the Magento team (at least so far) has been professional and responsive, not paranoid and elitist (osC) or whiny (Zen Cart). And Magento has features every store needs, which ZC just doesn’t. (osC doesn’t either, but then development essentially stopped on osC years ago . . . at least development that makes it to the public). ZC misses some core functionality that I can’t continue to live without and don’t feel like programming myself. I’m tired of wading through hacked-up code; it makes my hands itch to fix it, but I’m definitely not reinventing the wheel. Magento is a breath of fresh air there; the code has a solid, well-programmed feel and from what I can tell, it’s modular in a way ZC never will be (because osC wasn’t).

Magento is waaaaay easier to install than Zen Cart and osC (or at least it was for me). CharliesBooks is right in that an installation guide covering possible stumbling blocks (such as having mod_rewrite enabled, and how on earth you fix that if you’re *not* a technical person) is vital for software that caters to a general public. From what I’ve seen, Magento has every intention of providing that kind of assistance to its users; it’s just early in the game.

Magento has better functionality and the GUI look professional even with the default theme, like everyone else said create a better overall user experience and be the pioneer in using Magento.