An online store gives you the opportunity to sell your products internationally and direct to the customer. osCommerce has two main elements: a shop front and an administration interface. The shop front is what a customer sees when they go shopping and includes many features such as quick find, bestsellers, what's new, multiple language and currency support and much more.
The administration interface is where the store owner will go to manage their osCommerce store. It's straightforward to add products, customize the store, manage stock and integrate with online payment gateways. It really is a lot easier than you might imagine to get your retail business online, try the demo links at the bottom of this page and see for yourself.
The key features of osCommerce as of Preview Release 2.1, are detailed below.
Customer Functionality |
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Customer accounts |
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Customer address books (other shipping destinations) |
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Order history |
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Temporary (not logged on) and permanent (logged on) shopping carts |
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Search catalog for products or manufacturers |
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Product reviews by customers |
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E-mail notifications |
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New checkout procedure |
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Secure transactions with SSL |
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Number of products in each category are shown |
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Bestseller lists |
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Display what other customers have purchased (relating to the current product displayed) |
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Designed for user-friendliness |
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Administrative Functionality, as of Preview Release 2.1 |
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Add/Edit/Remove categories, products, manufacturers, customers, and reviews |
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Categories-to-categories structure |
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Statistics for products and customers |
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Dynamic product attributes |
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Tax zones, classes, and rates |
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Configuration parameters in database for remote editing |
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Not tied together with the catalog module (admin module can be installed on another server) |
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Payment and shipping modules |
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Connection to oanda.com's currency exchange rate servers for multi-currency shops |
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Decide what to display (and the order) in the product listings |
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Backup tool |
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General Functionality, as of Preview Release 2.1 |
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PHP3/PHP4 compatible |
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Out-of-the-box functionality |
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Becoming modular |
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Localization: English, German, and Spanish; plus contributions
- Dynamically generated product pages from store's database
- run an html based store with no database (requires visitors to have cookies enabled or not leave shopping experience before completion)
- link to products and categories directly from any site or html page
- customizeable store home page
- customizeable product headers and footers
- upload and store static html pages for product info, store policies, etc.
- Options files with multiple option sets may be created for use in a single or in multiple products
- Discounts can be offered based on number or individual products ordered and/or order totals
- Automatic links built to html files such as warranty, privacy policy and other pages.
Ordering
- order confirmation pages with images or without
- order confirmation emails to store owner, 2nd email address as well as the customer
- customizeable order forms
- Supports multiple gateways and payment types. Customer is allowed to chose by clicking on a button
- Support for AgoraPay , Authorize.net, iTransact
 , IntelliPay, Verisign's PayFlow, PlugNPay, PsiGate, eWay (pro members only), Cardservices LinkPoint, Offline/Manual, ProPay (manually), EFT/ACH checks, and standard PayPal using a final total amount for ease of use. Click Here to see the complete list of payment gateways supported as well as more information about each gateway.
- Supports multiple payment gateways simultaneously
- sales and local taxes can be configured on 4 levels
- Supports Shared and Dedicated SSL transactions on the same server
- Variable tracking for purposes such processes as insurance costs
Shipping
- Supports real-time USPS, UPS and FedEx shipping rates
- Custom shipping logic that can handle just about anything you can think of if you don't wish to use real-time shipping options. Shipping logiccan be configured price per item, flat rate per shipping method, priced by weight, by percentage of total order amount, and in virtually any combination with a little know how.
- Ship by weight or by flat rate
- Add base handling fees
Store Management
- Use the online store manager with your browser.
- add, edit, delete products online
- online product image uploader
- set up taxes, shipping logic, payment processing, and store location variables online
- automatic .htaccess setup with click of a link
- database imports and exports for comma (.csv), tab, and pipe delimited spreadsheets for easy catalog editing
- Online tracking logs
- Online error logs
- GNuPG and PGP setups
- Configure Payment Gateways online
- add multiple and/ or variable option files to product entries
- Basic option file creator/editor available
- added controls for static html page based stores (expanding and does not require a database)
- Add custom data fields to order forms without changing script (x-comments)
- Multiple Store Manager logins to control access for different levels of store admin personnel (paid add-on)
- Track Net Profit for plugging into Affiliate Reporting Programs (thru image calls, paid add-on).
- 5-10 configurable user fields for product/store configuration such as profit tracking, indicating specials and featured products, showing additional images, and more. Pro version has 10 fields with link to convert an existing agora.cgi or commerce.cgi database if old style database is detected.
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