In simple English
This is a ready-made online shop that lets you sell physical or digital goods. Many different sellers can list their products on the same site. Customers can view the shop in several languages and pay with PayPal or bank transfers. It costs nothing to download and run, but you need your own web hosting and a MySQL database.
What it is
A complete shopping cart software built on the CodeIgniter (a PHP framework, which is a collection of pre-written code that helps developers build websites faster) framework. It includes product management, customer accounts, an administration panel, and multiple store design templates.
What it is good for
Solo builders who want to launch a multi-vendor marketplace or an online store quickly without paying subscription fees to hosted services.
- Supports multiple independent sellers sharing one storefront.
- Comes with built-in PayPal and bank transfer payment options.
- Includes a fully featured administrative panel to manage orders and stock.
- Requires an active PHP server and a MySQL database to operate.
- Uses an older web framework structure that may feel outdated to modern developers.
- Customising the design requires familiarity with PHP files and CSS templates.
Shopify
Apache
- woocommerce/woocommerce11k stars
A popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress that adds full shopping cart features.
- PrestaShop/PrestaShop9.2k stars
A heavier, dedicated open-source e-commerce platform for larger online stores.
- hledgerorg/hledger4.8k stars
Double-entry accounting over plain text files, with command-line, terminal, web and editor interfaces.
- akaunting/akaunting10k stars
Self-hosted invoicing and expense tracking, with the double-entry accounting sold separately as an add-on.
- ledger/ledger6.1k stars
Double-entry accounting from a plain text file, run from the command line, with no database of any kind.
1. Create an empty MySQL database on your server. 2. Open the project in your web browser and follow the on-screen installer. 3. Enter your database details and click Install.