So how do you decide between the Ecommerce systems -  Zencart, Magento and osCommerce?  Each of these are excellent systems.  If you try to ask this question on some forum or newsgroup, you will surely get many replies - many contrasting opinions and still no conclusive winner.

Deciding on a ecommerce system is not a simple decision - but it is a critical one for your business.  Today we are going to take a look at the court of public opinion - what is the world saying about these systems.  This is NOT a scientific approach - but will provide information to help you better understand the universe of products.

In order to estimate the popularity of these systems we took a look at these three product names using Google Trends.  You can take a look yourself at the most current data with this link to Google Trends showing Ecommerce Templates.  Zencart, Magento and osCommerce.

Using the chat below you can immediately gather some great background information on these products and how they compete.

Taking a look at the top chart which shows search volume on these three brand names we deduce that:

osCommerce is the oldest product since it existed in the beginning of 2004, with Zencart coming on the scene in 2004 and Magento as the newcomer in 2007.
osCommerce has been the industry leader, at least in terms of brand name and recognition, for the last five years.
Zencart has never acheived the popularity of either the other two products.
Magento popularity has grown by leaps and bounds in just two years.

The bottom chart shows news references for these three brand names and the results are similar.  In particular you will see how Magento has received substantially more press in the last two years than the other products.

Part of this is because osCommerce and Zen Cart - both great products - stumbled in terms of releases in 2008. The maker of industry giant,  OsCommerce disappeared for most of the year, finally to have a fresh and enthusiastic new osCommerce Project team pop up and complete a new version in record time. Likewise, the Zen Cart team announced a new version for launch in February 2008 that never appeared.

Of course, neither popularity nor release schedules will prove that a product will be match for your application.  However, it does help you to identify how established and how strong will the community support be for these products.

In future blogs here at CustomWeb2 we’ll be talking about additional features and differences between these products.  Popularity and community are just one aspect for comparison.

Related posts:

1. Ecommerce Solutions - Pros and Cons
2. 10 Reasons to Love Magento
3. CW2 Shoppe osCommerce Theme
4. Announcing the Magento Slider Extension
5. Introducing the Magento Slide Show Extension