They are sleek and visually appealing. First, the drag-and-drop editor lets you add, remove, and reposition page elements. For more in-depth changes, you can edit the visual properties of individual items. Where customization tools are concerned, this is the most complete online shopping cart system.
It takes a bit of clicking around to figure it all out. If you prefer a different processor, PinnacleCart supports a bunch more. Feel free to ask the support if your favorite is in the mix. The initial investment gets you updates and full technical support for one year. The initial investment is considerable, true. In the long-term, however, PinnacleCart saves you a ton of money.
They are polite, easy to work with, and, most importantly, competent. They will effortlessly resolve any issues that may come up. PinnacleCart imposes no support restrictions. The support team handles any and all online ordering software-related issues you might have. Phone and chat support are available during specific hours, and email support can take a while to get back to you.
One condition for requesting immediate support is if your entire store goes down. Aside from technical support, PinnacleCart offers other shopping cart services like outsourcing them your support, custom theme and website design, and a complete SEO overhaul.
The services are pricey, though. The majority of users like the feature-rich platform, and most praise the smooth and useful integrations. Most have also had positive experiences with the support team. It qualifies as one of the best shopping carts in Established in , Square has dedicated 10 years to letting anyone accept payments easily and securely. It boasts easy payment processing for any business and offers a straightforward shopping cart to boot.
I tested it out. You can easily import inventory, manage taxes, shipping, get reports, customer data, and set up discounts. All in all, you get all the essentials for running an online store. One of the key features is the point of sale. You can handle your physical and digital business with one solution. If you run, for instance, a restaurant, and want to offer takeout online, Square is the best shopping cart for you.
Everything is easy to set up and manage from the dashboard. Even complete beginners can find their way by intuition.
Square is only less than ideal for adjusting shipping rates by product size or weight. Changing the price of ten products takes a few minutes. If you have a thousand items, though… You get the idea. You only get a few templates, and you can only customize text and images. Square offers its own end-to-end payment processing system. As Square profits from the processing fee as well, it can offer the cheapest plans in the game.
Yet, this is also limiting. You can only process payments through Square and, with more expensive plans, PayPal. Also, as a payment provider, Square charges 2. You get a special rate with the most expensive plan. The more expensive plans come with more advanced features and shipping carrier discounts, plus some other options.
If you want the best shopping cart software for a small budget, look no further. They complain that Square has an overly aggressive security policy. Namely, it withholds funds if it detects suspicious activity. Many users have had to prove their identity to get the money.
This is great for fraud prevention. Nevertheless, it can be frustrating. AbanteCart might not be the oldest cart here, but the 31, sites that put their trust in it are nothing to scoff at.
The company boasts a small, but strong client base. Plus, it makes some bold claims about being suitable for any business. The app store offers around extensions. A couple are a bit outdated, so be careful to check when an app got its last update. AbanteCart advertises its features as enterprise-grade. In truth, the features are perfect for a small or medium business.
Large businesses can also run on AbanteCart, with a few interventions from a developer. Once you get to a seven-figure income, be ready to switch to a different digital shopping cart.
Even the best open-source shopping carts require frequent maintenance. However, AbanteCart is unique in this regard. Setting the software up is simple. Many hosting providers even offer a 1-click installation through Softaculous.
AbanteCart suggests A2 Hosting as a partner that supports this. Managing everything else is intuitive as well. Granted, the dashboard looks a little dated, but this hardly matters.
The important bit is that navigation is as straightforward as they come. That being said, you may benefit from getting a freelance developer for certain tasks.
One way AbanteCart remains profitable is through templates. As with apps, a few have become outdated — though still functional. The page editor makes customization fairly simple. However, the editor can only take you so far, as the themes are a bit hard on the eye. This is one of the instances where you ought to hire a developer to edit the store CSS. AbanteCart already uses Bootstrap so a few lines of code can overhaul the entire appearance of the store. You get a few default payment gateway providers and around 40 payment integrations, 17 of which are free.
Some integrations are outdated here too so you should be careful. AbanteCart is free to download and install. You just need to plan for expenses like integrations or hosting costs — essentially the lowest cost of ownership you can expect.
Still, AbanteCart is exceptionally user-friendly as far as shopping carts go. This means spending less on developers and customer support. In the long run, it is one of the more affordable options, making it a good fit for smaller businesses.
It usually directs users to the forums. The forum sports one of the best shopping cart software communities, though. Even though AbanteCart might not be the most popular cart, the community is very active. The AbanteCart team participates in the discussions, and provides answers for most issues.
You can purchase support if you need it. This is fairly costly, though. Plenty of users like that AbanteCart developers are active on the forums. The developers are indeed friendly, and it all adds to the feeling of a tightly knit community.
Most users would at the same time like more themes and integrations. Still, I have to admit the offer is somewhat slim. Though the offer might not be the most extensive of the bunch, AbanteCart does make up for it by being among the least demanding open-source shopping carts. Open-source carts are usually too much for small businesses.
Yet, AbanteCart is the top shopping cart in that category. Powering stores in countries, CS-Cart takes the title of the most international shopping cart provider. CS-Cart is in the golden middle between power and ease of use.
Plus, you get 30 free tools you can activate from the dashboard. These include non-essential functions like age verification and banner management. For anything else, there are the shopping cart apps.
You can get all the most popular addons, though the more obscure ones might be missing. You can run a CS-Cart store without knowing the first thing about code. Most users can handle everything with just common sense and a few knowledge base searches. CS-Cart is for you if you want a powerful software without having to deal with the technical details. CS-Cart comes with a few free themes and a few hundred premium ones.
The templates are decent if a little bland. The visual editor makes up for it. You can easily customize any theme to your liking without touching code. If you are an avid developer, you do get a code editor. You can change the template design or even implement custom solutions.
Operating in over countries, CS-Cart has proven to be fit for international retail. Consequently, it features 70 different payment processors. There are no monthly plans. Both plans come with the full set of features. This makes CS-Cart lucrative for mid-sized businesses. The annual price is lower than that of your average shopping cart monthly plan. To top it off, the feature set is among the best out there.
CS-Cart can also be a powerful solution for small businesses. Otherwise, the charges might go beyond your budget. You get 50 support credits when you purchase the software. You can use these to purchase support services. There is a whole payment structure you can check out. Additional credits are expensive, though, and they go pretty quickly. A trip to the knowledge base can save you a lot of money.
Only use support as a last resort. CS-Cart seems well-loved. Most shopping cart software reviews commend the quality features, and countless users praise the support team.
As with any provider that charges extra for support, CS-Cart gets a few complaints. PrestaShop might not be as old as a few other solutions, but it is just as influential. It supports over , websites in 60 different languages. Plus, the platform is free to download. PrestaShop comes with over features out of the box. Including that many functions shows dedication, even though more than just numbers goes into shopping cart comparisons.
The noteworthy features include an SEO tool, tax calculation, abandoned cart notifications, automated emails, support for multiple languages and currencies, and much more.
The PrestaShop marketplace has over a thousand additional apps. Thus, you can get all the functionality you might need. PrestaShop dashboard is surprisingly simple, considering the number of features. It has a bit of a learning curve, but most users get the hang of it fairly quickly. It often takes changing the code to put everything together.
PrestaShop is not the best shopping cart solution for DIY users. From there, the editor offers better customization than most.
You can also edit the website code. All in all, PrestaShop does splendidly in the design department. PrestaShop has no out of the box payment processors. Customers can only pay by wire transfer or check. Seven payment integrations are free—this includes popular ones like Stripe, Skrill, and PayPal.
The transaction fee is what matters here, though. It might be worth it to spend a few bucks to get better rates. Getting a couple of integrations can cost a few hundred dollars.
If you run a smaller business, you could find a cheaper online ordering software. PrestaShop offers no support by default. This gives you 6h of support time for the whole year—how lovely, right? What PrestaShop lacks in support, it makes up for with an active community forum and the knowledge base. It is rich with guides and training courses.
Asking someone experienced for advice can help with the addons. Otherwise, you might have to pay to fix everything. All things considered, PrestaShop offers great features. It can be the best free shopping cart, but, ironically, you need good budgeting.
Famed as the first PHP e-commerce software and the fastest shopping cart, X-Cart has quite a reputation to live up to. Plus, the base version is completely open-source. You can check out the full list on their website. Features are abundant, and they showcase real quality. X-Cart gives you everything you need to design a high-level store. X-Cart might be one of the best open-source shopping carts, but open-source still means less invested developers and a somewhat quirky product.
Installing it or connecting it to your site does require technical expertise. The latter is probably safer. From there, the visual interface is actually remarkably user-friendly. Despite the sea of features, even first-timers can navigate the dashboard easily.
Just keep in mind open-source storefront software can get messy. You can customize the themes with the drag and drop editor.
This offers some customizability, but for a unique appearance, you need to edit the CSS. X-Cart offers 67 payment gateways, 36 of which come out of the box.
The rest are available as paid apps. X-Cart also offers an X-Payments package, which adds 55 more gateway providers. It is PCI-Compliant and ensures the security of transactions and customer data. Still, you can easily ensure PCI-compliance with it. Plus, it makes you nearly invulnerable to fraud. The free version is, well, free. Its features are nevertheless everything a medium-sized business can ask for.
Of course, you still have to pay for a theme, apps, and other services. All things considered, X-Cart will always cost more than the average cart software. Luckily, you can pay for some. The price is at the high end, but the service is top-shelf. It is one of the most praised features among X-Cart users. Just read the terms before purchasing support. X-Cart gets positive reviews from experienced coders and non-technical users alike. They mostly praise the great features and consistent updates.
Users almost unanimously agree the software has scaled amazingly over the years. There are astonishingly few negative reviews. The more common complaints are that X-Cart is expensive and highly demanding on the servers. Both are true. For a free shopping cart software, X-Cart can be expensive. Seeing that X-Cart caters to larger businesses, though, higher costs are understandable. All in all, X-Cart is a fantastic solution for those who can afford it. This usually means large retailers exclusively.
Today, you can use it as a regular website builder, or you can integrate the storefront into your existing website. No wonder it considered one the best shopping cart software for international stores. A few important ones are the SEO Tools, analytics, one-page checkout, guest checkout, excellent multilingual and multi-currency features, tax and vat calculators.
It also offers a plethora of in-depth features. You can ask CoreCommerce support for the full list of features. The offer is fairly comprehensive and can accommodate even large businesses just fine. Mind that, unlike other shopping carts in these reviews, CoreCommerce is primarily intended as a SaaS solution.
This option is definitely more convenient for beginners. Still, you do have to sacrifice more control than with typical shopping cart solutions. This makes setting everything up reasonably straightforward. The visual interface itself got a recent upgrade. The admin dashboard is among the simpler ones. You can also hover over question mark symbols that explain what each feature does. With that said, there are a lot of features. That, in and of itself, entails a bit of a learning curve.
All in all, CoreCommerce is simple, but not as simple as, for instance, Square. You get 18 free responsive themes. There are two more unresponsive themes, but responsive design is a must-have.
The number of themes is fine, but not amazing. As for customization, you can use the drag-and-drop editor to move around page elements. This can be annoying. CoreCommerce does lower the CorePayments transaction fee to 2. It can be a very lucrative payment processor. The plans mostly differ only in the sales cap. The personal plan is relatively limited—you can only sell three products, and you get 1Gb of storage and 2Gb of bandwidth. Most other plans remove these limitations. However, I do recommend at least checking out the features of each plan carefully before going with one.
All in all, the pricing is in the low-end of shopping cart software. Fortunately, the support makes up for it. The technical team is available through phone, email, and chat. It is fast and resolves all problems quickly. Seeing as your store on their servers, though, you have little choice if you need custom features. A few users complain that CoreCommerce has increased the prices without prior notification. CoreCommerce did upgrade its system massively, so the price increase seems justified.
It is somewhat neglectful if the existing customers went unnotified, though. Still, reviews like these are best taken with a grain of salt. They can point out crucial factors about the service but tend to be very subjective nevertheless. CoreCommrece has plenty of attractive features and is reasonably priced as well. As the name suggests, OpenCart is an open-source shopping cart.
You can do easy product management, sell physical and digital products, calculate tax and shipping rates automatically, view reports and analytics, and enable one-page and guest checkout.
Visitors can also filter products, leave reviews, take advantage of discounts and coupons, sign up for your newsletter, and much more. The digital shopping cart also has solid multilingual and multi-currency support. Different currencies update automatically, and OpenCart already supports various languages, including LTR ones. You can easily set up a store that caters to an international audience.
There is even an affiliate system built-in. You can get others to promote your products without going through the trouble of plugging in a separate solution. If you need something more, the plugin library contains several comprehensive SEO add-ons. Like WooCommerce and Magento, the ecommerce shopping cart software strives to be lightweight. Over 13, extensions are available, covering all sorts of possibilities, from simple widgets to PCI compliance tools.
You can find pretty much anything in the marketplace, though some extensions may be paid. This is a bit of a blessing and a curse.
Relying on plugins this way makes the software leaner, so you can expect fast load times. Making everything work might require some coding skills, though. For starters, you can usually install the cart in one click via Softaculous. The dashboard is also uncluttered and very intuitive. You should have zero issues handling day-to-day operations like adding products, managing shipping rates, or configuring emailing. That said, a few online shopping cart reviews out there praise OpenCart for being beginner-friendly.
This is misleading. OpenCart helpfully suggests a few PHP developers on its site. Hiring a dev to do maintenance is a cost you will have to take into account, though. OpenCart runs a variety of themes, some free and some paid.
You can even get themes from third-party vendors like ThemeForest. For instance, more premium themes can include a design-free page builder and a ton of unique widgets. In contrast, more affordable themes usually leave it at the core functionality. You can also install an editor plugin for the default theme.
This expands the tools to edit aspects of the shopping cart app, like styling. In such cases, you would have to edit the code yourself and build what you need. By default, OpenCart supports 36 payment gateway providers. In addition to this, over 1. Some of these are paid, though, so you should check the pricing for your preferred gateway beforehand. Still, you get plenty of ways to capture payment information than with OpenCart.
OpenCart is free to download, use, and modify. You can create as many websites as you want with no restrictions. That said, there are still costs to consider with the shopping software. You might want specific themes or extensions, which are sometimes paid.
You also get a guarantee the team will fix the issue if it recurs within 30 days. This is excellent insurance in case of emergencies.
This covers bug fixes, installation service, and consultations about modules. A lot of users adore OpenCart. They love how straightforward the admin dashboard is and how fast and effective the solution is. A few store owners did complain about the solution lacking support.
The software has been around for 11 years, and it has amassed quite a user base, including companies like Volvo, Lacoste, and Casio. After all, most websites are hosted on Linux. Yet, it would be unfair not to mention any alternatives. As for the features, nopCommerce gives you all you need to set up a midrange or large store. You can even run multiple stores from one admin or set up a robust online marketplace and let internet merchants sell on your platform.
You have a ton of options for adding products, and you can easily create dozens of product variants by mixing different attributes. You can also calculate shipping rates, access multiple shipping carriers, configure taxes by country, state, or zip code, and a bunch of other options. The checkout features are rather robust as well. Aside from the usual, you can enable advanced shopping cart options like one-page checkout or displaying a mini shopping cart while your clients are browsing.
You can take advantage of many marketing tools, including emailing features, an affiliate system, a reward point system, upsell features, discounts and coupons, and a lot more. The shopping cart icon found in online stores is one of the most important features your customers can use.
With it, they can simply select the items they want and add them to their cart. At a later time, they can preview the preselected items, add quantities, select variations, or remove the ones they will not purchase. Most shopping cart platforms provide a display that shows the number of items customers have on their cart and the running total of all the items.
A tax calculation tool that automatically collects taxes is important to your online store. As an online merchant, your customers will come from different parts of the world. This makes it harder to keep up with the tax rates in various states, cities, or countries. Generally, there are two types of shipping calculations used in shopping cart platforms.
One type is set by the merchants, and the other is a real-time calculation based on the shipping rates of major couriers and shippers. Some shopping cart platforms also allow you to offer free shipping, which helps you retain customers and decrease cart abandonment. When choosing a shopping cart software, make sure that it provides the following: an SSL connection between the shopper and your website, a payment gateway, encryption of credit card numbers, and a secure order retrieval.
These elements ensure safe online transactions for your ecommerce operation. Shopping cart abandonment refers to how a potential customer proceeds to the checkout process and then leaves the site before completing the payment transactions.
This is the most common issue faced by online retailers. One reason customers abandon their carts is because of complicated payment processing. To prevent this from happening, make sure that your checkout procedure is quick and simple. Having low traffic on your online store is a bad sign for business. Consider implementing marketing strategies to give your brand more exposure on the web.
For instance, you can offer discounts to your products when customers share the link to your site on their social media accounts. You can also use SEO tools to improve your ranking on search engines and make it easier for people to find you on the web. The cost of implementing a shopping cart software usually plays a crucial role in deciding to get one. Plus, the more ecommerce functions you need, the more fees you will need to pay.
Vendors usually offer various pricing plans, so make sure to check each of their inclusions. Usually, shopping cart software vendors offer two payment options. Either you pay for a one-time fee upfront, or you pay the monthly costs depending on your storage needs and the number of products you have.
As your online store grows, you will also need to expand your inventory, payment options, and shipping capabilities. Remember that most hosted solutions have limited functionalities based on their pricing plans. A licensed shopping cart is a great option if you need a more flexible platform. However, it can be more demanding of technical skills, and its hosting fees are more expensive compared to hosted shopping carts.
To open one, you install CS-Cart on your server just like an ordinary program and start selling immediately. With CS-Cart, you get both an eye-catching mobile friendly storefront and an admin panel with tons of e-commerce features.
Difference Between Shopping Cart Software and eCommerce Software Free shopping cart solutions are self-sufficient solutions for building traditional eCommerce websites with one seller—the store owner. Before you dive deep into online research to find out about how to add an eCommerce functionality to a website, check out the criteria for choosing the right website eCommerce platform: Quick start.
So, bear feature richness in mind. This is super important. Once you launch your online store, the standard features and design will probably be enough to generate first sales and stabilize the revenue. But in the future, you will definitely need more specific functions or features unique to your business.
Yes, you can always add extra functionality via extensions, but you will also need a unique design and some special functions for your business. So, give preference to free PHP shopping cart scripts with open source code. Integrations with popular payment and shipping services. In different countries, customers prefer different payment options.
For example, in the US, customers prefer to pay via credit cards and PayPal. In some countries PayPal is not even available. So, it is critical that the eCommerce solution supports as many payment and shipping options as possible, out of the box. Unfortunately, it is a frequent case that free shopping software is not well-supported and updated.
But anyway, keep this in mind and give preference to the online shopping carts that offer support. Search engine optimization. More than half of the traffic comes to an online store from organic search. Of course, in case your shop is well-optimized for SEO. It would be a great advantage if your online shopping basket software supports basic SEO tools to help you enhance your SEO.
Business models. Before starting an online store, you should decide in what segment you will work: B2C, B2B, or both. Usually, best free shopping carts for small businesses are for B2C-stores only. To sell in the B2B segment, you will need a special website builder with an eCommerce functionality that supports specialized B2B functionality.
Multiple languages and currencies. To sell internationally, make sure the best free shopping cart that you can find supports multiple languages and works with several currencies that can be selected on the storefront. Multi-channel commerce. Some free shopping carts offer you the ability to synchronize your product catalog with large product aggregators and recommendation websites such as Google Shopping.
Some open source shopping carts like CS-Cart also allow you to export your products to eBay. This way you will get more customers from these extra sales channels and a larger coverage for your online business. While using the CS-Cart affordable PHP online shopping cart system , you can easily take advantage of all eCommerce features it offers: Convenient Admin Panel: the solution features a straightforward admin panel.
All the menus are conveniently placed and any setting is maximum 3 clicks away. Promotions: In the Promotions section of the admin panel, you can construct promotions with lots of different conditions. Set the conditions a customer must meet to get a bonus, and the promotion is ready. CS-Cart has a built-in loyalty system—Reward points. Give your customers points for purchases and they will return to your store again to spend them.
Visual Layout Editor: What if you want to rearrange information blocks on your store pages: move product filters to the right, add banners to the top, or show product reviews at the bottom?
Not in this case. Experiment with layouts and save money. Add extra storefronts and manage them all as separate shops from a single admin panel.
It means you can adapt this platform to any needs: develop more features, your own storefront theme, integrate with new payment and shipping services, and more. Supported and Frequently Updated: 6 upgrades are released per year in average. Patch releases fix issues and minor or major releases both fix issues and add new features. We keep CS-Cart up to date, protected from hackers, and compatible with the latest server technologies. You own it like you own a house and a car.
No monthly payments. You have access to all the functionality: turn it off and on when you need it, add more features, and decide when to upgrade. Customizable checkout page: Create a checkout page that will work best for your business. Shopify Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce systems in the world. Shopify is quite feature-rich out of the box and includes all the essential features for electronic commerce: Multiple sales channel: you can sell via an eCommerce store, social media, and online marketplaces Built-in reports and analyzing tools to analyze campaigns on Facebook and Google A single backend panel to manage orders, shipping, payments, and customers.
And of course, all the necessary functions to manage the catalog and marketing campaigns. X-Cart X-Cart is another standalone online shopping cart script that is not totally free but gives you free access to its source code.
Nopcommerce Alright, now we move from shareware eCommerce software to free shopping cart solutions. The standard set of features includes the following: Responsive admin panel and storefront, which allows you to manage the online shop from a mobile device. You customers can also checkout on the go.
A large number of product properties, which allows you to flexibly configure your product listings. Has a partly customizable checkout and offers a one-page checkout and anonymous checkout.
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