Creating a website is one of the fundamental things to do on the internet nowadays. Everyone would like to have a website but may not have the proper tools or know how in order to get it done. One of the first things would be to grab a template and start from there. This is the best way for beginners to get their feet weight in the world of creating websites and website design.

If you opt to begin an E-Commerce Shopping cart, you have multiple open source solutions laid before. E-Commerce is growing stronger with dozens of e-commerce frameworks and content management systems. Multiple e commerce solutions like Magento, Open Cart, Zen Cart, PrestaShop and Virtuemart, osCommerce, BigCommerce provides complete control to develop your online market place more safe and comfortable. To choose the one that suits best for your business is not easily judged by yourself without help of your web developer.

In a small extent, this article is designed to mention about three types of CMS that are ready for people to use, and often debated about, are Joomla Virtuemart vs Magento vs Prestashop.

Joomla Virtuemart

- Open source
- Good Speed
- Same template system as Joomla i.e. you need Joomla to run it
- Upgrading is easy (unless you modified files you should have not modified)
- Back office is simple and well displayed. It uses the Joomla look as it is running piggie back off Joomla.

Magento

- Open source
- Best Admin interface
- Creating templates is very well structured
- Many extensions and themes
- Enhance shopping experience
- Regular updates with bug fixes and new features
- Flexible and customizable
- Fully loaded with features (product management, inventory, marketing, SEO,etc)
- Multiple storefronts, languages, currencies, taxes
- Numerous payment and shipment options
- Big community, talented and growing very fast

Prestashop

- Full on open source
- Good speed
- Creating templates is simple using smarty template engine
- Fairly easy to upgrade
- Many add ons and templates
- Back office fairly simple to use
- Creating templates and modules requires a small learning curve
- Approach to backoffice is different hence it is not as intuitive as it could be.

All of the above, you just have to be sure to pick out the right open source CMS for you and have a clear goal in mind. Cmsmart Marketplace would love to not just buy our templates with extensions and join in the discussion but understand our products as well; the best way to do that is to go online and get started with us!