Magento and Volusion are two of the most popular ecommerce platforms used by big businesses. However, you need to pay for license to use these powerful tools. Smaller businesses don’t have to worry though as there are several open-source solutions that you can set up on your site for free. We already touched on Drupal Commerce and Ubercart but not everyone might be willing to latch on to a new platform. WordPress and Joomla users, for instance, may feel more at home if they could just build on their blog or existing platform and add ecommerce capabilities. Thanks to the various plugins available, this is possible but a few precautions must be considered.
First, you need to check when the plugin was last updated. Recently updated ecommerce plugins are not only important to ensure compatibility with the latest version of the platform it is designed to build upon but it also gives an added security assurance. When it comes to ecommerce sites, security should be more of a priority and that is exactly why the big companies trust reputable commercial ecommerce solutions. If you really cannot pay for ecommerce functionality, the least you can do is see how dedicated the developer is in releasing security updates. The change logs may tell that story.
After that, you just need to back up your site and give each of these solutions a try so you can figure out which platform best suits your needs. If you plan on upgrading to a commercial solution like Magento in the future, it is recommended to see if the commercial platform offers a migration script from your chosen free platform for a smooth transition.