Drop shipping is a popular business strategy. Many businesses are choosing drop shipping to reduce storage space and save time. Many companies no longer need to worry about sales and products. These orders can be transferred to another platform. To meet this growing demand, many third-party platforms have been created. OsCommerce is one of these platforms that has gained a loyal following for several reasons.
What worked for others may not work for your business. Every business is different. Drop shipping has been a part of OsCommerce’s business for approximately 21 years.
It has made great strides in providing premium features to sellers since its inception. Every visitor to the site will find at minimum one product or service they like.
We want to make it easier for you to decide on the third-party platform. This review will help you decide if this is the right platform for your business.
What is OsCommerce?
This site, also known as Open Source Commerce, facilitates online commerce and store management. This website is self-hosted. OsCommerce is a vast online marketplace that has seen incredible growth. You can easily find the information you need by just browsing the site.
Because most plug-ins are not free, you can add as many as you like to your website. This feature allows you to customize your website as much as possible.
This platform offers multi-solution packages to its sellers. OsCommerce is a great online platform that offers high-end features such as order processing, stock and inventory management, template design, payment options, and more. It will make it easier to work on the site.
Pricing
Open-source software means that OsCommerce is entirely free to download and use. Instead of cloud-hosted carts, which require a monthly fee, or licensed carts that are available for an upfront charge, OsCommerce is entirely free to download.
Before you get too excited about your website, you should know that it will likely cost you some serious cash. You will need to hire a professional designer and developer to create your site unless you are a programmer. You will need to pay for security and hosting.
Hardware & Software Requirements
OsCommerce is a self-hosted cart, not a web-based one like Shopify. It means that you will need to pay for or provide hosting for your store. In the last few years, OsCommerce released two versions: 2.3.3 and 3.0. V3.0 is still in beta, so you should stick with v2.3.
Exclusive Features of OsCommerce
OsCommerce is an effective and legit website for online business management. However, it is crucial to understand how OsCommerce works as well as the features it offers. Although the interface is easy to understand, it can take some effort on your part.
This OsCommerce review will guide you through the site and its services.
Here’s a detailed description of its features:
1. Support from Community Forums and Expertise
This platform has a steady increase in sellers and store owners. It is expected to continue growing. There are currently 355,677 digital store owners. This large community makes it easy to get help if you have any questions or are having trouble with specific features.
You will find active forums on the site, where you can find knowledgeable, passionate, and helpful people eager to share their knowledge with novice store owners. It is not easy to learn how to sell online. However, OsCommerce forums will help you.
2. Self-Hosting
This site is a self-hosted e-commerce platform. You will need to manage many other aspects of the business. Hosting, maintenance, and site server will all be your responsibility. It can benefit you if you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, or have programming/coding knowledge.
3. Front-End Management (Product Listing and Cataloguing)
OsCommerce lets you create a detailed and concise catalog of your products and services. Their website states that you can create a complete product catalog with around 10000 products. You don’t have to worry about exceeding the limit.
It is a great feature because it means that OsCommerce interfaces and sites offering similar services can sometimes charge additional fees.
4. High-End Stock Management
OsCommerce allows you to track your stock and update it as needed.
5. Order Processing
It allows you to process, manage and track orders efficiently. It ensures that your customers are satisfied.
6. Payment Processing
PayPal is automatically linked to the payments made on this site. It is easy to understand why PayPal is one of its major partners. It is also one of the most trusted and popular platforms for international online transactions. Sage Pay integrates with the site.
There are also other payment options available. All you have to do is add them in the Ad-Ons section. OsCommerce lets you accept more than 1000 transactions online in one day. It is quite a lot.
OsCommerce Advantages
This site has many services and products that you need to search for. It can be difficult and time-consuming to choose the right seller for your online shop, given the number of sellers and products available. A thorough OsCommerce review with all its pros and cons can help you choose the right seller to host your online shop.
These problems will disappear if you rely on the expertise of the OsCommerce sellers. Their interface makes sellers with high reviews and credibility visible to more customers, thereby attracting more of them.
OsCommerce offers many unique features that will attract customers and convert them to sales. Here are some of the benefits:
1. Detailed Categories and Subcategories of Products
Beautiful descriptions of each product and service are provided on the site. They are neatly divided into subcategories and categories. It is infinitely easier to locate the product you want, even though there are many products.
2. Promos and Discount Deals
OsCommerce offers fantastic discounts and promos that you can use when placing your order.
3. Shopping Cart Integration
OsCommerce makes it easy to modify and update your shopping carts and wishlists. You can add or remove products as you wish. You can shop at multiple online stores while still using one checkout.
This feature allows integrated stock management, accounting, and tracking systems, making it easier to deliver faster and more effective products. Some users reported that Olark Live Chat was integrated with OsCommerce.
This add-on allows you to integrate all aspects of your business, including billing, insights, developer tools, account management, and more. Olark also comes with a chatbox packed full of great features to improve customer satisfaction and engagement, such as customization, automation, and live chat analytics.
4. Inventory/Stock Management
OsCommerce requires you to set up inventory management software. API2CART is a popular inventory management software that many users use to manage their extensive inventories. You can download a demo session for free.
The integration process is flawless, efficient, accurate, and precise. Orders can be imported from other sales channels. You can also import orders from additional sales channels. It will be synchronized across all eCommerce/open-source commerce platforms from which you sell.
This add-on makes it easy to manage shipments and order updates, which will make your professional life much easier. This feature is often overlooked in OsCommerce reviews.
5. Amazing Collection of Amazing Templates
OsCommerce offers a wide range of templates. You can customize them and make your store your own by using them. To find the right OsCommerce design for your store, you can browse this list.
You will get a basic design when you first open a store. You can also use the free templates that are available.
6. A variety of Ad-Ons
OsCommerce has been generous in sharing its add-ons with other members of the community. Many businesses have made this site their home and have enjoyed a successful operation thanks to these add-ons.
You can get around 9166 additional add-ons for your online store management.
OsCommerce Disadvantages
OsCommerce has many advantages. OsCommerce reviews would be biased if they didn’t also highlight its disadvantages. Many OsCommerce users complained that many of its features were too tricky and time-consuming.
Here are some of the things they have complained about on the site.
1. Unreliability
Many online shops have criticized OsCommerce for their poor experience. Users felt OsCommerce was unreliable because of the many add-ons and features.
There was so much to offer, yet there was nothing. There were many active communities that could assist, but it was too difficult or time-consuming.
2. Pricing Plans
OsCommerce’s expensive plans can often mean that you don’t get enough return on the time and hard work you put into it.
Pricing plans can be prohibitively expensive. Even if you do purchase the plan, you will soon realize that you don’t use half the OsCommerce features. The realization dawns that your money could be used for more worthwhile purposes.
3. Lack of Technical Support
This site will be helpful to many business entrepreneurs who have some programming knowledge. This site is beneficial for those who are looking to save money hosting their own website.
Online store owners with no programming or coding experience may find self-hosting difficult and might opt out of OsCommerce. These people may discover OsCommerce’s lack of technical support to be a significant disadvantage.
4. Security and Software Updates
Store owners must manually update software and add-ons in order to keep them current. This task can sometimes be too time-consuming, and, often, security breaches get piled on top.
Final Thoughts
OsCommerce is a great platform that makes it easy to exchange goods. You can pick which features you want to prioritize within your business by choosing from a range of add-ons. The disadvantage of having so many options is that they can all be confusing.
Although there are some drawbacks to this site, it’s a great site for starting an online business and engaging in online commerce. There are a few features that will help you run your online shop efficiently. Be careful when choosing the right product for your business. Every business has unique needs and priorities. This OsCommerce review should have given you a good idea about OsCommerce.
