A couple of years ago as many businesses started operating online, the eCommerce websites and eCommerce content management systems took a great rise. Magento stormed the market as an open source shopping cart and got very positive response and many developers jumped on board. It was full featured and highly configurable that many were very enthusiastic about it. However, it has started losing its glamour when people with little or no programming skills tried and was very slow and difficult to use. Many issues have also come up regarding its use by many small businesses that have left many looking for alternatives. Since Magento was purchased by Paypal/eBay in an attempt to make profit from it, the low cost open source development has also been commercialized. The business owner has to pay at least 75 percent more for magenta development over other development for shopping portals. Many small businesses have started spending more to keep their stores properly maintained than they had anticipated for free software. Also, a good number of people find the design management and store very complicated and lacking in some features.

Small and medium size online businesses are the main seeking alternatives to Magento and great news to such business is that the New Year (2013) listed many great Magento alternatives. The following are top Magento alternatives (2013) that are currently being used for eCommerce website development.

1. ZenCart:

This is a free open source shopping cart software. It is an online shopping cart solution that has been developed with a different perspective in eCommerce web design and responding to user needs. It is based on PHP with MySQL backend and HTML components. The online store management system also provides support for numerous languages and currencies.

2. OpenCart:

it is also a free open source shopping cart solution. It is designed with many features as most users desire and is very easy to use. It comes with a free documentation, allows automatic image resize. It supports over twenty payment gateways and more than eight shipping methods. It is also designed to be search engine friendly and a good shopping cart alternative.

3. Drupal:

It is a content management platform that powers millions of applications and websites. It is very easy to use as even people without programming skills can do the basic website installation and administration. It runs on any platform that supports a database and a web server that is capable of running PHP. It is very suitable for feature-rich eCommerce web sites as it comes with lots of pre-configured themes and modules. It is also an open source product.

4. OsCommerce:

it is also an open source program for online store management. It is a great shopping cart with features such as order history, full search capability shopping carts and many others that are essential for online shopping websites. It can be used on any web server that supports PHP.

5. CubeCart:

It is a complete software solution for eCommerce. It offers very intuitive control and store management. It has many great features that an eCommerce solution should have and thus it is a good fit as Magento alternative.

6. GoodBarry:

It is an eCommerce solution that provides a shopping cart, content management, business analytics and email marketing.

7. Digistore:

It is one of the latest eCommerce and shopping cart solution. It is a comprehensive content management system that handles high compress and multipage tiff documents. It is features document encryption and user defined indexes for fast search and record keeping. It supports multi-language data entry, auto-archive and data backup/restore making it a top alternative for Magento.

8. VirtueMart:

it as an open source product too designed as an extension of the Joomla content management system for an eCommerce solution. It was formerly known as the Mambo-phpShop but was branded after Mambo became Joomla. It is developed in PHP and supports a MySQL database for storage. It is a good alternative for Magento.

9. FatFreecart:

it is another free open source shopping cart that can be easily integrated into any website or blog by just copying and pasting without any installation procedures. It is developed by the team that developed the E-junkie shopping cart. It supports several features that are essential for online business such as shipping and product variations.

10. BrandLive:

The BrandLive shopping cart and eCommerce solution are developed with all user requirements in mind. It has great features which makes it a good magneto alternative.

11. Freeway:

It is another top Magento alternative that is developed by Softpress Systems Company. It is a web design application that allows users to create shopping cart through Mals ecommerce system and the FreeWay Action suite.

The above are the main top alternatives for Magento trending this year but you can still find more that may interest you. You can search the internet for more information about them and to determine the best alternative for you.

Written by Mark Wilston: Mark Wilston works with PixelCrayons.com, an India-based outsourcing and consulting firm. PixelCrayons offers extended teams to its clients, helping them to reduce Time To Market (TTM) and enhance Return On Investment (ROI). With services such as CMS web management and eCommerce development, PixelCrayons helps clients define and leverage their offshore strategy, offering them “value for money”. One can hire Magento developer here for effective eCommerce development.