Is NopCommerce the best ASP.NET e-commerce solution?

E-commerce sector has been in fashion and on boost for a while now. That’s why there are many debates over choosing the right open source solution for it. Let’s try to figure out why nopCommerce could become your choice. If you are an ASP.Net developer, you might want to graciously add and/or argue with something. In any case, welcome aboard 🙂 and let’s get to the point.

“NopCommerce is among the top 5 featured e-commerce apps on Microsoft Web Matrix, downloaded more than 395,000 times from there and witnessed more than 883,142 source code downloads from Codeplex.”

The main feature of this software is that it is very easy to manage and quite user-friendly. This was the reason why nopCommerce created a buzz in the market soon after it was launched. Unlike others, nopCommerce is not written in PHP or Pearl rather, it is completely written in ASP.Net 4.0 and nopCommerce developers have provided the backend of SQL 2005 which even today is considered as very powerful database management platform.

NopCommerce is an open source e-commerce solution that contains both a catalog front-end and an administration tool back-end which is easy to work with for anyone with basic computing and administrative skills.

The various features that have made nopCommerce so popular are notification via sms, live chat, multiple language support, one page checkout procedure which ensures a low bounce rate, billing and shipping detail, mapping the products in the appropriate categories and sub categories. You have control over features such as discounts, coupons, wish lists, tax options, shipping methods and much more.

Speaking about other Nopcommerce features that seems quite prominent to me, they are:

• availability of exchange rate system that is based on the real time prices and multicurrency support (this has greatly helped the shoppers across the globe to shop freely irrespective of their current location);
• multi-store and multi-vendor support (this also allows online store owners to sell their products without the need to stock inventory and ship orders);
• drop shipping (enables the assignment of vendor details to a product).

Additionally NopCommerce is one of those few open source solutions that have been built keeping Search Engine Strategies in consideration with the use of friendly URLs, properly structured content and products to enable potential customers to find your store.

And last but not least nopCommerce is supported by fastest growing user community which has increased the technical as well as informative aspect of the solution.

With so many advantages listed, inadvertently a question arises if there are any pitfalls with this solution. And for sure there should be some. For instance it appears to have heavy server requirements and tends to require more design and development expertise than other shopping carts.

And what are your thoughts about nopCommerce? Please share your experience of using this e-commerce solution. Many thanks in advance!

%d bloggers like this: