Dissatisfied with the options on offer at the time, Shopify was born. The platform has widely been praised for being code free and indeed requires no knowledge of website coding whatsoever to setup and use. Shopify accepts all major credit cards and provides a fast checkout procedure via its very own Shopify Pay or by Apple Pay.
Should you have your own payment gateway Shopify works seamlessly with over of the major players such as Sage Payments and PayPal. Shopify Payments costs 2. Basic subscribers can upload any number of products but Shopify only allows two staff accounts for store management.
Shopaccino offers some of the most versatile shopping cart software available today. The excellent interface can also automatically calculate tax on transactions. Shopaccino has an integrated module for managing shipping, which allows you to set the areas where your store can deliver and manage postage costs.
If your online shop offers free shipping, the module can implement this too. Customers can also create a virtual 'Wishlist' for products they may want in the future.
The store interface is simple and easy to use, allowing merchants to upload images and product information without any complications. There are even Android and iOS versions of the software to allow you to manage products on the fly. Shopaccino also offers online support.
The software is free to try for 14 days, after which you will need to subscribe to one of their paid plans. These vary according to the amount of resources and number of users you require, and which range of features you require.
Ecwid supports over 50 languages, and interfaces with in excess of 40 payment gateways. Notably, Ecwid offers a free tier that can host up to 10 products, which is ideal to get started and test the e-commerce waters. It also offers multiple paid tiers which can add access to the Facebook Shop, provide advanced SEO tools , sell digital goods, and offer a mobile point-of-sale.
Magento is a free and open source software solution for managing all aspects of virtual shopping carts. It's currently used in some shape or form by nearly a quarter million merchants including big name companies like Nike, Cisco Systems and Ford.
Magento was originally developed in and the platform is now owned by Adobe. It also makes it easy to get into international retail or running multiple stores. Even smaller businesses can enjoy all the benefits of CS-Cart, as long as you plan out the expenses in advance. The pricing model is straightforward to help you achieve just that.
PrestaShop is an open source shopping cart designed for larger businesses. It comes with awesome features and is highly flexible. That said, having a professional developer do maintenance from time to time is advisable. As long as you can justify the cost of a theme, apps, and maintenance, you get a superb shopping cart in return.
X-Cart is one of the most powerful and established shopping carts out there. The solution can be tough to set up and maintain, but you get some of the best functionality in the industry. If you want an enterprise-grade shopping cart for a robust store, X-Cart is an excellent choice.
CoreCommerce is a hosted software that can be integrated with your own website. It has robust features, is reasonably user-friendly, and is one of the best platforms for selling products internationally. If you want to target a broad audience, CoreCommerce is likely right for you. OpenCart is one of the most popular open-source ecommerce solutions out there.
The solution is very lightweight, highly extensible, and pretty much offers you infinite customizability. NET-based shopping carts, and it offers excellent features, scalability, and add-ons, and for free at that. That said, the solution is not the best for beginners, so you should only go for it if you have some coding knowledge.
Zen Cart is one of the more popular free carts out there. It offers everything you need to build an effective store and then some. That said, it does require a bit of coding skills to set up and maintain. If you can handle yourself in a server environment, though, Zen Cart might be the right for you.
UltraCart is a pretty decent option if you have a popular website and want to sell a few products through it. WooCommerce is quite possibly the best-known ecommerce software. It works on top of WordPress, which is the most popular CMS and offers nearly as much customizability as its parent platform.
You can build mostly anything you want, and all the available integrations let you add a massive number of powerful features. The best part? If you want to sell products through WordPress, WooCommerce is a no-brainer. Just ask multibillion-dollar brands like Coca-Cola and Nike.
The platform has practically unlimited potential and can help you set up just the kind of business you want. The tradeoff is that it tends to gobble up server resources and requires a professional Magento developer to make it work.
If you can spare no expense to get the best shopping cart software, use Magento. A particular shopping cart can work great for a small business, but fail spectacularly when you add more products. Likewise, an enterprise might earn millions with a cart that would be a complete waste of money for smaller retailers. This differs from website builders like Shopify. These create and host a website for you. Meanwhile, an ecommerce platform offers a fully-fledged online store experience.
Instead of adding it to another website, you add other solutions to it. These solutions let you create an entire website and their complex features typically demand powerful and expensive hosting to run properly.
Now, all three types of solutions get the job done. This is why many companies can offer all three solutions under the same product name. That being said, these reviews are about the first type—the storefront software you integrate into your website. We also have a few resources on popular ecommerce platforms like Magento.
Different types of retails want different things. Ease of use is also essential. Something annoying about companies selling digital products is they rarely put all the info on the product page.
We inspected user reviews and talked to retailers who had years of experience with the programs. The ecommerce software by Shift4Shop has gone through eight different versions with the ninth in the making. Features that catch the eye include user-friendly product listings management, unlimited product variations, one-page checkout, coupon management, digital downloads, automatic tax and shipping carrier cost calculation, abandoned cart saver, and much more.
Its claim to be the best storefront software for SEO is solid too. The SEO prompts and pop-ups make it a great learning experience for beginners. It offers over apps, and the partnership with Zapier adds over a thousand more integrations. Shift4Shop is among the best shopping carts for building and growing a business, though it might be overkill if you only have one or two products. The admin layout is straightforward as can be. However, the sheer amount of options makes navigation difficult. If no template fits your needs, you might need to get a developer to tinker with the design.
If you pay annually, this gives Shift4Shop a very affordable cost of ownership. You can discuss adding extra features to your plan. This comes at a higher cost, but it can pay off. Plans have a revenue cap. Unlike with most carts, though, exceeding the suggested revenue does not bump you to a more expensive bracket automatically. Instead, a company representative contacts you to discuss the plan upgrade in time.
Admittedly, some standard functions are only available as paid apps. All in all, the pricing is in the low-end of online shopping cart services, though a few carts have cheaper plans. Shift4Shop the support page still redirects to the old 3DCart domain has a comprehensive knowledge base and forum, though a few articles are slightly outdated.
Ultimately, the support team is good, but the wait times could be shorter. The lack of a live chat is definitely noticeable.
Shift4Shop gets positive reviews from its users. The users praise the features, payment options, and plans. PinnacleCart is a shopping cart software for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. Its mission is to help people with zero technical knowledge get better stores, more customers, and better conversion rates. It does it with an effective SEO, reporting, and marketing toolset. You get just over 50 integrations, many of which are free. Installing the software requires technical knowledge.
From there, everything is clear-cut. Handling essentials like adding products is effortless and navigation is intuitive.
One thing that takes time is customizing the design. Otherwise, PinnacleCart is as straightforward as they come. PinnacleCart comes with around 30 free responsive templates.
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. But if you choose wisely the most balanced solution for your online store, you will definitely benefit from the software you pick. CS-Cart is a commercial platform that has been around for more than 15 years. This is a professional eCommerce system, whose main advantage is versatility and feature-richness.
CS-Cart once had a free community edition but now it is a paid solution with a free trial period of 30 days. For this price, you get a fully-functional top shopping cart. While using the CS-Cart affordable PHP online shopping cart system , you can easily take advantage of all eCommerce features it offers:.
It will require a paid license after 30 days of free usage. With a lifetime license, you get 1 year of free updates and some support credits to spend on technical assistance. None of the online shopping carts from our list can do that. Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce systems in the world. It is known for its user-friendly interface—literally anyone can create a store on Shopify without any coding or technical skills.
Shopify is also an old SaaS eCommerce provider that has been operating for 15 years or so. It is a cloud platform, which means it is not open source and quite limited in terms of customization. But here are thousands of extensions and themes for Shopify, so customization is not really a problem here. The real problem of Shopify is that it is not available in most countries. Shopify is quite feature-rich out of the box and includes all the essential features for electronic commerce:.
X-Cart is another standalone online shopping cart script that is not totally free but gives you free access to its source code. This system is quite feature-rich and highly customizable, which makes it one of the best shopping carts from our list.
One of the key features of this webshop builder is that it is really fast to deploy and launch a live eCommerce shop. The solution greatly withstands high loads and can handle large product catalogs.
Alright, now we move from shareware eCommerce software to free shopping cart solutions. The first, and in our opinion, the best shopping cart that you can download for free is Nopcommerce. It is a well-structured eCommerce software and popular eCommerce platform. Over 50, companies trust this shopping cart website builder.
It was downloaded for 2,, times! Nopcommerce is free for solopreneurs and small businesses but for large companies and enterprises, it is considered a commercial solution.
With Nopcommerce you can sell physical and digital products, and can customize it to sell services and operate in different market segments. It really can be scaled and can help you grow your business. The standard set of features includes the following:. WooCommerce is an online shopping cart plugin for Wordpress. It was developed in and since then it has become the most popular eCommerce solution for WordPress-based websites in the world. Over 2,, online shops have been launched on WooCommerce since the beginning.
WooCommerce is perfect for solopreneurs, hobbyists, and small businesses as it is very easy to deploy and use. It has all the essential eCommerce features and more can be added by over 60, extensions. And it is easy to install and use. Among the downsides are poor performance with a large catalog, zero scalability, no professional support.
OpenCart is a free online shopping cart with open source code. Now, it is one of the most popular open source eCommerce solutions, counting over , websites from the beginning , of them are currently live.
OpenCart is known and praised by online merchants as the most user-friendly free html shopping cart solution. Unlike other free solutions, this one has a user friendly interface and great navigation. Another cool advantage of this system is that it supports all the major payment gateways integrations, such as PayPal.
OpenCart is the only free eCommerce script that supports multiple storefronts. This multi-store functionality allows you to manage several online stores through a single dashboard. Among downsides of this online shopping cart system are poor SEO and performance. Not all the SEO tools are present by default and developing them from scratch will require a professional coder that is familiar with OpenCart's architecture.
Anyways, OpenCart is a great choice if you want a small to medium online store with built-in features, user-friendly interface, and flexibility:.
Magento is the real king of the online shopping cart solutions. It has been around for more than 15 years and it is now one of the most flexible and feature-rich opensource shopping systems ever. And it is free. Over , websites have been created on Magento since the very beginning and now, , of them are live.
Magento is loved for its powerful SEO. Magento websites are usually ranked very well on Google because this eCommerce platform features all the basic and advanced SEO tools, such as meta tags, redirects, rich snippets, XML sitemap, and robots.
More SEO features are available with numerous extensions. Another key advantage of Magento is its performance and scalability. It handles large catalogs and heavy traffic very well without significant slowdowns. And it can be scaled to even handle more of it. Of course, because of its flexibility, scalability, and complexity, Magento has some downsides. Although it is an open-source solution, it will cost you a fortune to be adapted to your business.
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