What is Zen Cart Hosting?

Zen Cart is an ecommerce application that is distributed as free software under GPL2. Zen Cart Hosting is usually offered as a component of regular web hosting plan and can be provided as default software in ecommerce hosting solutions. Web hosting providers and developers prefer Zen Cart software due to its customizability and ability to match wide array of ecommerce platforms. It also offers huge scope of improvement by addition of extensions.

Zen Cart provides added advantages over osCommerce due to availability an extremely customizable layout system backed by use of templates. Zen Cart hosting provides clients with the latest offering that has enhanced features including guest checkout and prompt newsletter subscription facility. If a hosting provider has included osCommerce as part of hosting plan, users can easily convert data into the format for Zen Cart by obtaining scripts. Zen Cart Hosts ensure that users are offered quick and easy installation and swift setup of shop to make the online venture up and running within a short span of time.

An additional advantage of Zen Cart hosting is that ecommerce merchants are able to provide wide range of language and currency options to their customers. Users of Zen Cart hosting are able to offer broad array of merchandise including physical and digital products and periodic subscriptions.

What is Zen Cart?

Zen Cart is a free website builder and ecommerce management system combined. Its capabilities and features are expandable because it makes use of pre-built modules. Plus, its license is open-source, so the code can be tailored to suit your needs.

What kind of hosting do I need to support Zen Cart?

Zen Cart has minimal requirements and most Linux-based hosting service will suffice your needs. To be able to run Zen Cart, your server needs to operate on a standard “LAMP” stack (Linux operating system, Apache web server, and support for MySQL and PHP).

Are there any drawbacks to using Zen Cart?

Zen Cart is not meant for beginners or novice users. An unexperienced user can find it difficult to customize or tweak the design of the store and also the functionality without adequate programming knowledge.

It is also infamous for its subpar SEO friendly nature. Websites designed with Zen Cart are more difficult to optimize and consequently might not perform as well as other sites built on SEO-friendly platform.

Not all themes support mobile devices and it has no official support team. If you are using Zen Cart you have no other option but to rely on community support.

Is Zen Cart the same as OSCommerce?

Though Zen Cart and OSCommerce started as one and it was only in the year 2003 that Zen Cart emerged from OSCommerce. Still, they are both free and licensed as free for distribution. There are many differences between the two despite the fact that both run on PHP and MySQL.

OSCommerce’s back-end can be at times outdated and clunky, while Zen Cart’s has been designed to be more intuitive and user-friendly. Either platforms can be scaled using plugins and modules, although OSCommernce is a bit bare-bone and seems out of the box. Zen Cart has more key functionality embedded in its core. Some of these functionalities include coupons, reviews, payment processors, coupons, and newsletters.