It's very important before you begin reviewing software and services to be to be very specific in what you actually want the cart to be able to do. It may be that you really don't require all the bells and buzzers offered by high end packages - if this is the case, then a good package will cost around the $US180 .
Some companies offer free shopping carts, but bear in mind that nothing in this world is truly free - read the fine imprimer.
One of the best free ecommerce solutions around is Oscommerce, an online shop e-commerce solution under on going development by the open source community. Its feature packed out-of-the-box installation allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with absolutely no costs or license fees involved.
Another powerful ecommerce solutions is Zen CartT , free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart system. The software is being developed by group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think e-commerce could be and should be done differently.
Some "solutions" seem to be complicated programming exercises instead of responding to users' needs, Zen CartT puts the merchant's and shopper's requirements first.
Similarly, other programs are nearly impossible to install and use without an IT degree, Zen CartT can be installed and set-up by anyone with the most basic computer skills .
CubeCart is an eCommerce script written with PHP & MySQL. With CubeCart you can setup a powerful online store as long as you have hosting supporting PHP and one MySQL database.
AgoraCart is a powerful online shopping / e-commerce solution that offers a wide range of out-of-the-box features that allows online stores to be setup in simple fashion for the beginner, yet it offers high power ecommerce, flexibility, and modular features that an experienced programmer or web designer will appreciate after seeing AgoraCart's full potential.
AgoraCart is available for free as an Open Source based e-commerce solution released under the GNU General Public License