Possibly rising as a solid open source e-commerce option, Spree recently released at version 0.9.0.  Spree utilizes Ruby on Rails, a framework optimized for rapid development and flexibility.

Commerce platforms are a niche all their own. While broader content systems can certainly integrate commerce, with shopping carts, payment gateways and other plugins, all too often the result is decidedly piecemeal.  If the focus of your site or project is all about a good shopping experience for your online customer, then going with a dedicated e-commerce system might well be the better ticket.

This can come at a price though. For some time I’ve been watching Magento, another e-commerce platform that runs on the more traditional PHP/MySQL structure.  Magento is open source as well, but the fully supported Enterprise Edition needs a minimum of about $10k per year to license and that doesn’t include server needs.

That might be a great deal for businesses who can gain ROI in a short time with a lot of online orders, especially considering the high price tag of other commercial solutions. For others, the decision might come down to a gamble that straight-up implementation under the open source version is worth a try.

And like so much else, the choice comes down to evaluating complexity of your intended application and the speed with which you need to go to market.