Free CMS which was designed only for online stores. With its help, you can quickly deploy a website and start selling your products. The CMS itself provides a sufficient number of functions, and tools, and has very wide possibilities for customization and expansion of standard functionality by installing various modules. Literally immediately, after installation, you will already have a small store with test goods.
In theory, it is enough to just slightly correct the template, add goods, add a description, and you can go into battle, but in practice, of course, everything is not so.
It is also important to understand that there are different builds of Opencart. We are talking about ocStore, OpencartPro, MaxyStore. They look the same, but there is still a difference. For example, modules can work differently.
Pros of OpenCart:
Availability. This word means zero price for purchasing a CMS and the fact that it can be easily installed and will work on most hostings with a standard environment (php, mysql, apache, etc.).
Wide functionality. By default, a lot of options are immediately available for organizing your store. The catalogue has no restrictions on structure and volume. Categories and subcategories are quite easy to arrange into the structures you need. You can organize the pages by brands or/and manufacturers. Based on the parameters of the product, filter settings are available. But the most interesting thing is that one engine allows you to work with several independent stores.
Multilingual. If you need to create a website in two or more languages, then this is quite easy to do in OpenCart. It is enough to connect an additional language in the settings and fill in the information in two languages when creating a product.
Modules. To expand the current functionality, and to add some new features, there are modules. There are both paid and free solutions. Of course, you will have to pay money for the best and high-quality modules, but it’s worth it. If you have any questions, you can write to the author and, as a rule, they are willing to answer and come to the rescue.
SEO promotion. The entire basic set of SEO parameters is available. If necessary, you can extend SEO tools through the use of modules.
Cons of Open Cart:
Difficulty in learning. You won’t be able to figure out the admin panel in 5 minutes. Some elements are not intuitively clear—you will have to figure it out, google, and test for a long time. Beginners with this CMS can not cope.
Incompatibility issues. Sometimes it can happen that the engine has received updates, and one or more installed modules stop working because there is no compatibility with the engine version.
Expensive customization. If you have a big task of customizing the store or expanding it, then be prepared to set aside a tidy sum to pay programmers.