Open source/free ASP.NET E-Commerce engines

Nowadays there are very many open source and free ASP.NET E-Commerce engines available on the web.

Some of these offerings have both open source as well as licensed versions while others are completely supported by the open source community.  In addition, some of these offerings are based on newer technologies such as ASP.NET MVC while other products are based on the older ASP.NET platform.

Here are just some of the available ASP.NET E-Commerce engines that I have found:

• ASPXCommerce--http://aspxcommerce.codeplex.com/
• VevoCart--http://www.vevocart.com/features_comparison.aspx
• nopCommerce--http://nopcommerce.codeplex.com/
• VirtoCommerce--http://virtocommerce.codeplex.com/
• Kartris--http://www.kartris.com/

Changing the database connection string in nopCommerce

In most ASP.NET Web Sites/Web Applications, you expect the database connection string to be stored in the connectionStrings element in the Web.config file.

However, while using nopCommerce, you will notice that there is no connectionStrings element in the Web.config file!!

Therefore, where do you change the database connection string for nopCommerce?

The database connection strings is actually stored in a file called Settings.txt.  This file is located at the root of the App_Data folder in the website.

You can simply change the database connection string in this file to point to a new database (for example when migrating from a development environment to a staging or production environment).

Getting Started with AspDotNetStoreFront

If you are setting up AspDotNetStoreFront as your ASP.NET E-Commerce engine, you may have some initial trouble getting started with setting up your site and then knowing where to begin setting up your site.

Therefore, here are the steps that I followed to get an AspDotNetStoreFront site up and running:

1. Install AspDotNetStoreFront by folowing this article: http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-479-installation-guide-windows-vista-windows-server-2008.aspx  For some reason, they do not have an updated installation guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012/2012 R2, but the main difference is applying the "IIS_IUSRS" account instead of "Network Service"
2. Once you have been set up, you should immediately log into the Admin Console by following the instructions here: http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-474-the-admin-home-page.aspx
3. Now that you have logged into the Admin Console, you will need to perform some customizations.
4. Under the Configuration menu select --> Site Configuration Wizard.  This will allow you to enter all of the relevant basic data about your AspDotNetStoreFront (ASPDNSF) site including Payment types and Payment Gateways.  If you need to specify a Payment Gateway such as Authorize.Net, you can click on the "Configure" link next to the appropriate Payment Gateway and then enter the required information.  Only after doing this will you be able to select the Authorize.Net radio button.
5. Beneath the Configuration menu, select Email and enter the necessary details for your Smtp Server.
6. Beneath the Configuration menu, select Shipping-->Shipping Methods to configure 1 or more Shipping Methods for your products.
7. Now to customize the content of your site, click on Content-->Manage Topics. Some of the common topics you will want to customize are the following:  
• HomeTopIntro
• Template.Header
• Template.Footer
• Template.Logo
• EmptyCartText
• Copyright
• Template.TopNavigation
• Template.VerticalNavigation
• PageNotFound
8. You may have to customize some additional "built-in" strings that are used in ASPDNSF, so you can do this by select Content-->String Resource Mgr.  For example, I needed to change the text for the following String Resource: product.CallToAction.IsRecurring
9. For additional customizations, you may need to go into Configuration-->Advanced-->AppConfig parameters and alter some values to support functionality that you might need (such as for Recurring Orders)
10. Now that you have set all of this up, you can now begin setting up Products.  However, you will need to set up at least 1 Manufacturer before you can create your first product.  Therefore, from the Products menu, select Manage Manufacturers.  Create at least 1 Manufacturer.
11. Now from the Products menu, select Manage Products.  You can then begin adding products.  If you need to add a Recurring product, you need to first save the product and then select "Show Variants" and enter the Recurring Interval on the "Recurring" tab.  You can read more about Recurring products here: http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-459-recurring-orders.aspx.  Unfortunately, the documentation and screenshots are a bit outdated, so this is how the Recurring screen should actually look like in the most recent release of ASPDNSF (v. 9.4 as of this writing):

That should be it!  You should now be up and running with your basic AspDotNetStoreFront web site!

Commercial ASP.NET E-Commerce engines

Here are some of the commercial ASP.NET E-Commerce engines I found while searching on the web:

1. http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com/default.aspx
2. http://www.znode.com/
3. http://www.bvcommerce.com/buy-bv-commerce.aspx
4. http://www.dotshoppingcart.com/Page/Buy.aspx
5. http://www.ablecommerce.com/Shopping-Cart-Software-C20.aspx

ASP.NET E-Commerce engines with Recurring Product Support

I evaluated a significant number of populate e-Commerce engines and amongst them I only found a very few with recurring product support.

If you are familiar with ordering from Amazon.com, Amazon offers the ability to order items such as groceries on a recurring/scheduled basis.  With Amazon, you can even specify the frequency on which you want the order to be purchased and shipped to you.

Unfortunately, with all of these ASP.NET-based e-Commerce engines, none of them offer the level of sophistication as is offered by Amazon.com in terms of recurring product support.  All of them simply offer the ability to specify a product as a recurring product and specify a recurrence frequency.

The products that I discovered that provide recurring product support are the following:

• AspDotNetStoreFront--http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com/default.aspx
• VevoCart--http://vevocart.com/
• nopCommerce--http://www.nopcommerce.com/

Not surprisingly, all of these products exhibited product defects in their ability to support recurring products:

• AspDotNetStoreFront--While checking out, a customer is unable to actually view the frequency on which the product recurs.  Instead, the product is indicated as simply being a recurring product and that is all the information the customer is provided with in their shopping cart.
• VevoCart--While checking out, a product that has recurring support, a customer is not even able to select a payment method to pay for the recurring item!!
• nopCommerce--While nopCommerce definitely displays the best overall feature support for recurring products, it is limited to a single item in the shopping basket for checkout and I was never able to successfully integrate PayPal Direct or PayPal Standard to pay for my items on checkout.  The only successful payment gateway I was able to integrate was Authorize.Net.

Hopefully the above issues will be resolved in future releases of these products.  but for now, I have not yet found any "ideal" ASP.NET-based e-Commerce engine which even comes close to the features and functionality provided by Amazon.com for recurring products and orders.