Does anyone know what the difference between the two is?

I need to put an online store do you know which one i should use. That is easier to use?

Personally I don't use either, mainly because my customersare not keen on them. They both work, but to my knowledge Zencart has been developed at lot more than OSC, and may be a bit more easy to use for the novice.

There are dozens of shopping cart systems available - what made you choose those?

Both systems can be testet at http://www.opensourcecms.com/. Not it is just a matter of trying it out and pick one

OSC was the core engine, the mny "fork" projects were developed based on it, among those are CreLoaded and ZenCart
CreLoaded is OSC with bunch of the most necessary mods already installed.
ZenCart claims that it has gone a very different way in coding which makes it better than Cre and OSC (I havent looked at its codes, so I dont really know if it's as good as it claims to be)

Overall, Cre is better for non-coder who dont have much knowledge about computer stuffs, Zen seems like the choice for ones who prefer stability (Zen default templates are awefully ugly)

I have used Zen Cart and have found it easy to modify. The template structure and override structure make it very easy to install mods and customize your site. The dev team and forum are very helpful and you can find most questions already answered in the forum.

I use Zen at www.rugsale.com - and I like its features. Zen was developed from OSC and is easy for a designer to customize.

I know this is not answering your question but have you looked at cube cart?

I just did a test install of version 3x. Not sure about changing the templates but the basic management from the backend looks pretty simple. Except for creating the DB the install script does all the initial work.

It is one large upload. and took forever to unzip locally. 1394 file and 12MB on my hard drive.

Not planning on using that install. Might let you play with it if you want. The site I mean.

I have to throw another vote out for CubeCart. I have used it for a little while now.
Can see a fairly modified store at http://www.ecarttemplates.com

I would be happy to offer assistance with skin modification. I am also pretty familar with adding mods to this cart as well.

Choosing between the two - I'd say go for zen cart. It's more advanced than oscommerce. Should you need to switch fm other shopping cart - you may consider cart2cart service. It automates migration fm shopping cart to shopping cart.

We use oscommerce and have found it suits us. Loads of contributions available to customise your store but you do need to be confident following technical instructions to add contributions to it. If not you will need to pay someone who knows what they are doing. It is very easy to break your store by adding a modification incorrectly.

Hi,

My choice is neither oscommerce nor zencart. I would prefer to go with Magento. If you put all selection criteria next to each other, Magento shopping cart will turn out as full-fledged eCommerce platform.

It's also a great technology as point of view SEO which helps your custom Magento website to gain high rankings in Search Engines like Google. It gives you Auto generated Google Sitemap, Meta for your products and category pages and much more…

I agree with shennon here,

Magento is probably the strongest e-commerce platform I have seen yet. They have fantastic file management and coolest theming procedure.

In fact I have 2 platform installed - Magento and Zen Cart for my up-coming project on my server ( hostmonstor ).

BUT, eventually Magento is turning out to be a big heavy monster which is very SLOW!!! , even a homepage with static blocks takes long time to load.

Even though I have same amount of test data on both of them Zen Cart seems to load up pretty fast.

I think I am moving with Zen Cart with this one, the site is fairly simple and Zen Cart seems to have everything I need.

Kaushal

I'd say Zen Cart all the way. It's a bit of a learning curve to start with but once you get into it you can see why people get hooked and it's their cart of choice.

The difference between oscommerce and zencart is very big. There are differences in features and architecture.
Oscommerce is pretty simple to start with and easy to add contributions to. Zencart requires more hands on to adding features, but it comes with lots of them by default.

Both carts are very stable an ran by many live sites.

They are both good. You won't be sorry if you choose any of them. However magento beats them.