Zen-Cart is an Open Source eCommerce software with a large array of features and can run a fair amount of traffic and product. The user interface and checkout process is nice and with proper planning, the product options can be customized to offer any product options one would need. This is a great system for the person looking to start an online store but not looking to move warehouse amounts of product.

This software can handle warehouse amounts of product, but one limitation is the lack of Administrator user permission restrictions. Any backend user has access to everything in the backend, so if you only have a couple of people using it, there generally isn't a problem, but if you have multiple employees needing access, it's nice to use a more robust software like Magento that can limit employees from sensitive information areas.

Zen-Cart has a very large number of features and can be customized from a product option standpoint, style however is lacking a little bit. Customizations to the look and layout of the site can be made, but it's more difficult to reach that point than when using other softwares. This should not deter you from using it as your eCommerce engine and it is far more robust, reliable, and secure than using a Content Management System with an "ecommerce plugin". When dealing with online shopping and credit information changing hands in a virtual world, it's best to choose a platform designed specifically for that purpose, and Zen-Cart is.

Product entry and adding images for products is relatively easy and so is tracking orders and customer activity, but for most users, a help sheet of instructions is necessary. It's user friendly, but not completely intuitive.

Even though this is a substantial system in what it can do, the server resource requirements are more than reasonable with the right configuration. This can be run on most standard hosting set-ups and database size does not grow at a rate that makes backups difficult. All things considered, this is a good core platform to work with and the cost of implementation is really tough to beat.