Hey, I am planning on releasing a pet shop online soon, however, I would like to know what do you think would be the best script for me to use (i.e. cubecart, os-commerce). It must really be free or very cheap (i.e. $10ish) as I have a tight budget. I must be able to accept Paypal and major cc's and db's. I should also be able to have different tax on each item. The last main issue, I must be able to edit the email sent out to customers so I can add my own template. Regards, Josh
OScommerce would be one of the more popular ones. End of the day you'll have to get them running and test them for yourself. This will require a bit of work depending on your knowledge and who is doing it for you.
You may want to consider Magneto, if you haven't already: http://www.magentocommerce.com/ System requirements are posted here: http://www.magentocommerce.com/system-requirements My primary experience is not with e-commerce, but, due to activity with Joomla, I've run across Magneto. It is very well reviewed, and is Open Source/PHP-based. If you want to have a CMS front-end, there is a Joomla-Magneto bridge freely available, and Joomlart (http://www.joomlart.com) even makes commercial templates for Magento, which will get you up and running pretty quickly should you choose. I'm not sure about how licensing works, but it is free to download and use with no encryption, time-limited trials, etc. The community appears very active, with ongoing development, so you may want to check this out. In general, take your time and seriously demo each and every solution you are considering. Nothing beats actually taking a system for a test drive. Also, because you are dealing with commerce, be sure you understand the licensing requirements of each system, and find out whether you must purchase a license of some sort before using the product.
Have a look here: http://www.thetechyblog.com/top-ecommerce-packages/ Cubecart is good and they have a great support and mods site www.cubecartforums.org
If you did have money, Interspire's shopping cart is very good. Since you are on a tight budget, I'd go Oscommerce or Magento