July 20, 2009
By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
As the wedding season takes way, online identity theft is on the rise in both the US and Canada. E-commerce stores continue to tighten online security in hopes of mitigating the risk for their customers, but e-tailers most vulnerable remain to be those using open source or free shopping cart software. With closed source (paid) shopping cart solutions, merchants take comfort in knowing that their store is secure and constantly updated with new security patches by the cart provider. Free carts, on the other hand, require the merchant to make all of these updates and sometimes even code the updates on their own. This begs the question: As identity theft continues to grow online, are free shopping carts the wave of the past?
A similar question was posed to a group of eCommerce gurus on the WebProWorld Forum earlier this year. Overwhelmingly, while users agreed that open source shopping carts provide more flexibility for customization, they also agreed that what you gain in flexibility, you lose in security. In addition to this, open source platforms require an intermediate to expert level of development knowledge to truly make use of that flexibility. An X-cart spokesperson on the forum stated, “Important advantage of paid shopping carts is your confidence – confidence in the software future, in professional support. You can be sure that you will get assistance from the people who actually created the software.” So, while paid shopping carts provide a stable and secure future, there is still question in regards to the future of free shopping carts in a virtual world riddled with hackers hoping to steal the identity of the customers e-merchants are vying for.
Amy is the co-founder of ZippyCart. She went to school for film in Cleveland, Ohio and ended up working in the field of viral video marketing, which eventually led her to her real profession: SEO. When she's not writing for ZippyCart, she can be found out and about Seattle, WA.
