Many professional web developers including myself use the Fortune3 shopping cart software to create online stores for our clients. But you can only use this shopping cart program if you host with them. Although Fortune3 software popularity at Download.com, Zdnet, and Tucows.com goes far beyond all other shopping carts, there is now a new reality; prices of broadband and web servers have dropped dramatically, so we must push for independence to keep competitive.

We have been asking Fortune3 for a stand-alone version that can run in any web server. We are constantly bringing to their attention the inconvenience of the hosting dependency and the recurrent monthly fees. Many of our clients want to host in their own servers, building a growing concern among us.

Fortune3 says that it will not be easy to release a stand-alone version that will provide all the functionality of their hosted shopping cart, as the stand-alone version would be a HTML code generator instead of a database-driven Ecommerce engine. In other words, they don't want to sell their shopping cart engine.

We must wait and see. Fortune3 never really announces their upcoming releases, but they listen. They are constantly releasing new versions of their software, so I wouldn't be surprised one of these days we'll have it.

About the Author

Mark is the development director of CommerceTree, an e-commerce development firm based in south Florida. Mark has a degree in computer sciences from FIU and 8 years of expertise in developing e-commerce sites for small and medium size companies.