OpenCart That Sells — Not Just a Default Install With a Theme

OpenCart is a standalone PHP eCommerce platform — no WordPress dependency, lighter than WooCommerce, and free. It's a good choice if you want an eCommerce-focused platform without the WordPress overhead, have an existing OpenCart site to maintain, or need specific catalog features that OpenCart handles well. WooCommerce makes sense if you're building on WordPress. Shopify is best for stores that want a fully managed platform and are fine with paying monthly fees and accepting Shopify's constraints. We build on all three — we'll give you an honest recommendation.

A custom theme with standard payment and shipping setup runs ₹1–2.5 Lakhs. A store with custom extensions, integrations, and a large catalog migration typically runs ₹3–7 Lakhs. Multi-store setups add to this depending on the number of stores and catalog complexity. Fixed-price quote after the planning session.

Yes. OpenCart handles catalogs with tens of thousands of products without issues — the key is correct database indexing, caching configuration (Varnish/Redis), and image optimization. Default OpenCart out of the box is slow with large catalogs; the performance issues are solvable with proper server-side configuration. We benchmark performance before and after optimization.

OpenCart's default URL structure (/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=57) is unindexable in any meaningful SEO sense. We configure SEO URLs (/brand/product-name), set up canonical tags, meta title/description templates per category, breadcrumb structured data, XML sitemap, and robots.txt. For existing stores, we also handle redirect mapping from old URLs to new ones so no ranking is lost.

A simple extension (adding a field, a custom shipping rule, a report) runs ₹15,000–40,000. A complex extension (a full B2B pricing module, an ERP integration, a custom checkout flow) runs ₹50,000–1.5 Lakhs. We scope based on what the extension needs to do — not a flat rate per extension.

Depends on why you're asking. If your store is running fine and just needs new features or a refresh — stay on OpenCart, it's a capable platform. If you need Shopify's app ecosystem, subscription products, or want a fully managed platform — migration makes sense. If you're on an old OpenCart version (1.5.x or 2.x) with years of customizations, we'll audit whether upgrading in place or migrating is the better path before recommending either.