OpenCart is an open source shopping cart with a clean, uncluttered admin and a front end that works well out of the box. It has been installed on hundreds of thousands of sites and remains one of the more approachable ways to start selling online without paying a monthly platform fee.
It is quick to get running. A standard install gives you a working catalogue, checkout and order management in an afternoon. The admin is laid out sensibly and most shop owners find their way around it without training.
Multi-store is built in. One OpenCart installation can run several storefronts, each with its own domain, theme, products and prices, sharing a single admin and a single set of orders. Very few carts include this without an extension.
There is a large extension marketplace. Payment gateways, shipping methods, themes and functional add-ons, both free and commercial.
You own it. The software is free, the data is in your own database on your own hosting, and there is no revenue share.
OpenCart’s biggest practical issue is extension compatibility across versions. Because extensions modify core behaviour through OCMOD, two extensions that both alter the same file can conflict, and an extension written for one minor release may not work on the next. Keep the extension list short, buy from developers who are actively maintaining their work, and test upgrades on a copy before touching the live shop.
The other point worth knowing is that upgrades between major versions are not trivial. Moving between 2.x, 3.x and 4.x involves theme and extension work, not just running an installer. Budget for it rather than being surprised by it.
OpenCart is a PHP and MySQL application, and like any shopping cart it is database heavy. Every category page, filter and search is query work, and the difference between a fast shop and a slow one is usually the server rather than the software.
Our shared hosting servers are configured for e-commerce workloads and are tuned for MySQL throughput rather than for packing in as many accounts as possible. You get a choice of PHP version so you can match what your OpenCart release and its extensions actually need, free SSL certificates, and caching available where your store can use it.
The things that most often make an OpenCart store slow are worth stating plainly, because they are all fixable: too many active extensions, product images uploaded at full camera resolution and scaled down in the browser, a database that has never had its logs and sessions cleared out, and a host that has oversold the server.
OpenCart maintain their own demo store and documentation, and there is an active community forum where most common questions have already been answered.
If you are choosing between carts, it is worth reading our pages on CubeCart and WooCommerce too. We host all three and we have no reason to push you towards the wrong one. Tell us what you are selling, roughly how many products, and where your customers are, and we will give you a straight answer.
All our shared hosting plans are pre-configured for OpenCart, and migration from your current host is free.