The Good And Bad Of OpenCart Development

Starting an online business can be a tedious process. With multiple platforms like Magento, Volusion, Shopify, etc, it often becomes difficult to choose the right shopping cart solution for your e-store. One such platform that has gained much popularity is OpenCart. As per the latest reports pouring in, about 912,437 websites have already benefited from OpenCart. This is not that surprising, owing to the numerous advantages OpenCart has to offer.  

The e-store setup process, however, can be a bit complex, which is why you can always opt for an OpenCart development company. Doing so will ensure that you not only embrace the pros of this eCommerce solution but are also able to deal with the cons if any.

On that note, here are some pros and cons of OpenCart:

Pros:

• OpenCart is free

One of the best reasons to choose OpenCart is that it is completely free to use. Being an open source PHP-based platform, working with OpenCart is easy and budget-friendly.

• Multi-lingual shops

OpenCart is the best choice if you’re planning to deal with people from different countries. The easy-to-use interface allows you to create online shops in multiple languages. The product names and customization of characteristics can be easily done in different languages.

• Mobile responsive

When you opt for OpenCart, you won’t need to design an eCommerce store separately for the desktop and the mobile. It already has a mobile-friendly interface, which also allows you to make changes to your eCommerce store simply via a tablet or a smartphone.

• Complete control

Out of all the available eCommerce solutions, OpenCart is the one that gives you total control over your website in the best possible way. It offers a great deal of flexibility to eCommerce site holders and offers a wide range of features to keep you ahead of the competition at all times.

• Easy setup

One of the reasons why online business holders like to go for OpenCart is that the installation process is very easy as compared to other CMS platforms. Being open source and free to use, customizing it is also straightforward.

• SEO friendly

It is easy to integrate SEO with your OpenCart store and make it rank higher in the Google search results. You can create an SEO URL from scratch in OpenCart. In addition to that, the admin panel has a Google Analytics dashboard extension that can be used to enhance your visibility.

Cons:

Despite the benefits that OpenCart offers, there persist some disadvantages as well. Some of them are mentioned as follows:

• Incompatible modules

Setting up and installing OpenCart is an easy process, sure, but the problem swoops in when the modules and add-ons you’re working on don’t function well with each other. The conflict between the plugins and new extensions makes managing an OpenCart website a rather difficult process.

• Product import

OpenCart poses a problem when you want to import more products on your website. For example, if your website has 100 products and you want to add 10 more to the list, then adding those 10 new products will remove all the previous 100. This is because OpenCart works on the principle of adding new products directly to the MySQL file, which replaces the items already present in there. Though this problem can be corrected with the use of a plugin, it still is a major concern.

The pros of OpenCart development do go on to highlight the fact that it is a beneficial choice when setting up an eCommerce store. The cons are there too, but most of them are fixable with the use of an appropriate plugin or an extension.