Integration Review

What is AbleCommerce?

AbleCommerce is a complete ecommerce software program that allows merchants to sell shippable or digital goods on the internet. Using your browser, you can securely connect and manage your store, customers, and orders from anywhere in the world. This is a full ASP.NET application that installs easily into any capable website.

AbleCommerce ecommerce software was invented in 1993, and first sold in 1994 under the name of 'StoreBuilder'. For over sixteen years now, AbleCommerce has been focusing on one thing - to create an easy-to-use shopping cart system that is full of features, customizable, and affordable for new merchants. This has been the philosophy of AbleCommerce since the beginning. AbleCommerce continually demonstrates they have the experience and readiness that you simply will not find any where else. AbleCommerce knows the online marketplace is always changing and their preparedness to deal with that is their specialty. Our development team is always looking forward to future technologies so AbleCommerce software will always meet, or exceed the highest standards for online ecommerce.

Visa certified. Secure PA-DSS v1.2 software.

The fact is, all shopping cart applications must be certified in order for their customers to comply with the mandated Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). PA-DSS is the Council-managed program formerly under the supervision of the Visa Inc. program known as the Payment Application Best Practices (PABP).

AbleCommerce software was officially PCI certified under the new, and stricter, PA-DSS v1.2 standards on June 1st 2009. AbleCommerce was one of the first shopping cart software products to be certified under the new PA-DSS certification process. PA-DSS certification requires exhaustive forensics analysis by an independent certified testing agency. Be careful of other solutions that claim they are 'compliant' - it is not the same. Visa.com maintains a list of PABP Validated Payment Applications on their website.

July 2010 is the deadline for Phase 5 of the 'Payment Application Security Mandates'. This VISA mandate states that 'Acquirers must ensure their merchants, VNPs and agents use only PA-DSS compliant applications'.

AbleCommerce recommends merchants using a non-certified solution to start making plans to meet VISA's requirements before the deadline. Using a 3rd party payment system such as Google checkout or Paypal Express may be a solution but will result in decreased sales conversions.

Well written using ASP.NET standards

At the core of the AbleCommerce shopping cart is the CommerceBuilder® engine, a set of compiled .NET assemblies that provide an object framework for ecommerce transactions. The objects provide a friendly interface to link web scripts to the database. This framework is extremely flexible and well documented to make it simple for merchant developers to create a truly custom shopping experience.

CommerceBuilder is written completely in C#, one of the most widely used .NET languages. Version 7.0 is designed specifically for use with the .NET 2.0 or 3.5 frameworks. It is also written to work properly within ASP.NET Medium trust, which is necessary for many common shared hosting environments.

On the scripting side, AbleCommerce has employed a new web design framework built on extensions of ASP.NET Themes and Personalization features. Using this framework, merchants can make many modifications to the store without sacrificing the ability to upgrade to new versions of AbleCommerce. It also makes it easy to create, share, and install new themes that can completely change the look, feel, and behavior of a store.

For more information, see the Developers feature page.