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Zen Cart

Veteran open-source online store software

E-commerce Platforms ★ 425 stars Medium setup GPL-2.0

Zen Cart is a long-standing free, open-source online store management system written in PHP. It is community-driven and known for stability and extensive customization through plugins.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Long-running stable codebase
  • Large plugin library
  • Flexible pricing and promotions
  • Community-supported

Pros & cons

Strengths

  • Proven track record
  • Runs on modest hosting

Trade-offs

  • Older architecture
  • Dated default templates

Is Zen Cart secure?

2 known vulnerabilities affect Zen Cart's latest release (v2.2.2) according to OSV.dev; the most severe is rated medium.

Affecting v2.2.2

AdvisorySeveritySummary
CVE-2026-108826MediumZen Cart PayPal IPN paypaldp.php zen_db_perform sql injection
CVE-2026-108829LowZen Cart Module Configuration modules.php sql injection
  • Most recent fixed advisory CVE-2024-5762, published 2024-08-21 (784 days ago)

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

Zen Cart replaces

Self-hosted Shopify alternativesSelf-hosted osCommerce alternatives

Health badge

Maintain Zen Cart? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 74 · good

Markdown
[![SelfHostIndex health score for Zen Cart](https://selfhostindex.com/badge/zen-cart.svg)](https://selfhostindex.com/app/zen-cart/)
HTML
<a href="https://selfhostindex.com/app/zen-cart/"><img src="https://selfhostindex.com/badge/zen-cart.svg" alt="SelfHostIndex health score for Zen Cart"></a>
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   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for Zen Cart
   :target: https://selfhostindex.com/app/zen-cart/

The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

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