osCommerce, which is available for free download on its corporate website is an open source ecommerce solution and is admired by a large chunk of population. It is equally flexible and popular shopping cart system with extensive list of features and customization choice. On-line store front managers, basically owners have ample choices to make their online store robust, with all features and yet flexible to use, according to their need. If you are planning to open up an online shop, then you can put osCommerce in your consideration. As it is an open source and has been released under GNU general public licensee, it is free to use and easy to download. The setup of osCommerce is simple and quick. osCommerce provides you functionality freedom from administrator end, customer end or front-end, product end, functionality end and payment end. Its comprehensive product catalogue front end and administrative end makes it comfortable for both shop owner and customers to carry out there business swiftly. What does an osCommerce installation requires? If your requirements are pretty ordinary and are not with some special requirements than your osCommerce will be able to run on PHP 4.1+ enabled web server running on Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows environments. osCommerce Advantages: You can find many add on modules for your e-shop. Large community of osCommerce developers are continuously working on developing more and more features oriented modules, plugins and widgets. A broad line of credit card processors and shipping services are supported by osCommerce . You can insert as many products as a real megastore can have, or even more. Its data base is well indexed and is able to keep millions of products, with their information. Some weak points about osCommerce: The only weak point of this ecommerce solution is that it needs technical knowledge to install and manage. You can have list of features installed but if you are not comfortable with modifying files than at least you must hire someone. People who are new to osCommerce may experience some trouble due to lack of technical knowledge. Hosting: Normally every web hosting company provide assistance for osCommerce installation. But if you like to confirm beforehand then you can check it yourself. If a web hosting company includes MySql it should satisfy the requirements for osCommerce installation as well.