osCommerce is a complete e-commerce solution that contains both a catalog frontend and an administration backend. Although osCommerce offers a plain set of commonly used tools and modules, its big online and growing community provided thousands of add-ons, modules and branch specific tools throughout the years.

 
The plain version comes with a default template that can be easily changed by purchasing a design through the hundreds of sites that offer osCommerce templates.

There are e-commerce solutions available that derived from osCommerce, like Zencart, CRELoaded and osCMax. These solutions are nothing more then osCommerce stuffed with many contributions.

Using mentioned packages can lead to following problems:

• Unsafe coding contributions
• Extra weight, since not all contributions might be needed
• More confusion for operator and customer by offered options
• More time needed to implement a needed contribution due to code complexity

• Administration / Backend Functionality
  • Supports unlimited products and categories
  • Add/Edit/Remove categories, products, manufacturers, customers, and reviews
  • Support for physical (shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products
  • Administration area secured with a username and password
  • Contact customers directly via email or newsletters
  • Easily backup and restore the database
  • Print invoices and packaging lists from the order screen
  • Statistics for products and customers
  • Multilingual support
  • Multicurrency support
  • Support for static and dynamic banners with full statistics
• Customer / Frontend Functionality
  • All orders stored in the database for fast and efficient retrieval
  • Customers can view their order history and order statuses
  • Customers can maintain their accounts + Addressbook for multiple shipping and billing addresses
  • Temporary shopping cart for guests and permanent shopping cart for customers
  • Fast and friendly quick search and advanced search features
  • Product reviews for an interactive shopping experience
  • Foreseen checkout procedure
  • Secure transactions with SSL
  • Number of products in each category can be shown or hidden
  • Global and per-category bestseller lists
  • Display what other customers have ordered with the current product shown
  • Breadcrumb trail for easy site navigation
• Product Functionality
  • Dynamic product attributes relationship
  • Automated display of specials
  • Control if out of stock products can still be shown and are available for purchase
  • Customers can subscribe to products to receive related emails/newsletters
• Payment Functionality
  • Accept numerous offline payment processing (cheque, money orders, offline credit care processing, ..)
  • Accept numerous online payment processing (PayPal, 2CheckOut, Authorize.net, iPayment, ..)
  • Disable certain payment services based on zones
• Shipping Functionality
  • Weight, price, and destination based shipping modules
  • Free shipping based on amount and destination
  • Disable certain shipping services based on zones
• Tax Functionality
  • Flexible tax implementation on a state and country basis
  • Set different tax rates for different products
  • Charge tax on shipping on a per shipping service basis