Ecshop is a good one, but only if you understand chinese: ecshop.com I have analysed several carts and ecshop is my first choice among others, simply because its expandability and flexibility is amazing.
there are alternatives to magento...but they do not have so many features like magento... i'm not a programmer so i can not develop scrips or features...so in my opinion magento is the most complex open source cms...if you don;t need something with a lot of features you can use alternatives, depend what you need...
Give FORTUNE3 a shot, you have a 30 day free trial and has some great SEO features and very user friendly. GOOGLE CHECKOUT also I think now has a shopping cart if im not mistaken?
magento is very good. But there is a big learning curve for sure. But it is a very stable ecommerce. I recently designed an ecommerce using magento and my customer was very happy with the performance.
There are so many to choose from and it is difficult to listen to recommendations when most people have only tried a couple of different ones. My own preference is Prestashop due to the great usability and excellent support. oscommerce has always caused me trouble as has ZenCart. I have paid for Cubcart before and found it satisfactory but very slow with support issues.
I recommend checking out Opencart. It's another free feature packed cart that is relatively new and seems to be well maintained.
I have been using shopsite for about 10 years. I wish they offered instock status, but its reliable and easy to customize.
Most of the recomendations are good. However, if you let us know the time consuming aspects you found with Magento (design, config, adding products, content pages, etc.) it might help with a more specific recommendation. All free open source carts have little to no support but have active communities. -oscommerce- i would ovoid as there are now too many much better options -Zen Cart, oscMax, CRE Loaded- all good options. have been around for years. include most features. have very active communities (zen and cre are larger then oscmax...but now that CRE is going more of a paided platform oscmax is looking a better option and growing its base well) CRE also has some paid support options from their team which are more in the $50/month range for light support if needed. -Virtuemart- if you want more of a CMS option -outside of Magento some of the newer platforms making a similar buzz are Open Cart (bigger in Europe but getting more US growth now), Presta Shop, and Big Commerce ....but if it is an issue with learning the cart the best advice is just to look at the above carts and maybe a few others and try to demo them before install.