[mgriffin]

I'm currently evaluating shopping cart software for a new store to sell downloadable music. I've been operating an ambient music record label since the 90s, including an online store where I sell CDs (not just from the my label but many others in the same genre). That store runs on Miva Merchant, and I want to continue to continue selling CDs on the existing store while at the same time opening up a downloads-only store (on a new domain) to help clarify for customers and competing labels that the download store is not completely tied to my label's identity.

A couple years ago I bought a license for CubeCart 4 and set it up. It worked, with a few glitches... then before I got around to working out all the kinks and getting the store ready to go live, I got side-tracked with other projects. The download store idea has been simmering on the back burner for too long.

Now that I'm ready to get back to finally doing the work necessary to get the download store running, CubeCart seems like the wrong solution. Yes, there's a new version 5, and I can upgrade for only $50, but when I tried installing the free trial upgrade to version 5 to see if I should just stick with it and try to make CubeCart work, it "broke" the store's functionality completely. Other reviews online confirm CC5 has serious problems, so I'm ready to throw out my investment in CubeCart and try something entirely new.

The two applications that seem most appealing to me, and seem to be getting good reviews, are CS-Cart and LemonStand. CS-Cart appears more established, with a broader user base, while LemonStand is newer and has some nice-looking Ajax features.

One thing that's difficult to tell from the online demos is just how a store would (or wouldn't) function if the product in question were fairly large (say, 100-300MB) Zip files for download. I'd love to be able to look at an existing download store using one of these carts to sell big downloadable files. Otherwise I'll probably just pick one at random and install the trial version and see if I can get test orders to function smoothly... then if that works, buy a license and start trying to make it look nice.

Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks,
Mike Griffin
Hypnos Recordings
http://www.hypnos.com

[Aleksey]

Hi Mike,

Please feel free to install the free developers copy. Downloading large files should not be a problem, but uploading could require some extra PHP settings in .htaccess or php.ini to allow large files (post_max_size, upload_max_filesize: http://php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php).

Thank you