If you try to ask this question on some forum or newsgroup, you will surely get many replies. Everyone will present you his favorite. My first developed online store was created with standard osCommerce platform. After three or four projects, I started to work with CRE Loaded and used it frequently for years. Although it was also an osCommerce fork, it had many advantages. I switched to Magento™ early this year and this is my final choice.
Let’s look at the popularity of those platforms now.
Google™ Trends is a great tool to check some platforms popularity by comparing it to the competition. For my short analysis, I compared:
Here is the graph:
As you can see, osCommerce still remains the most popular eCommerce platform. However, you can notice that this popularity is fading. ZenCart is stable for the past two years. And my previous favorite, CRE Loaded (much better solution than ZenCart in my opinion), is very low. Its popularity is also fading even after their team put great effort into a new website and identity.
Now, take a look at blue line. My prediction is that sometime in Q1 2009, Magento will become most popular eCommerce platform. It will surely kick osCommerce off the throne where that fat duck was sitting for many years. It was about time. 😉
