10-second breakdown:
3D Cart is a great budget-friendly option that has more features than you’d expect for the price. While it’s not as robust as some of the top players, it is definitely worth further inspection for those bootstrapped new store owners.
The good:
Every plan has more features than most other ecommerce solutions on the market and for a lower price than most of the competition. In an industry that is by and large pay to play for features, it’s a refreshing thing to see. If you want some advanced features to help your store improve, this could be the right service.
There are free shared SSL’s available if you are willing to have your shopping cart go to a sub-domain from 3D Cart. Doing so does break the experience and could create some confusion, but if you are starting out and don’t want to fork over the sometimes hefty SSL fee; it doesn’t hurt.
The live chat support is very responsive (usually in less than an hour).
The bad:
The templates for stores aren’t nearly as pretty as some of the competitors. This is unfortunate, since most owners want their shops to look appealing.
If your store gets a bump in traffic, you could end up paying a bandwidth overage charge if you break your plan’s preset limits.
How it works:
3D Cart is a straight-forward all-inclusive style platform. You choose a plan, build your store, and load up your products. Your site is hosted through your account and their pricing makes it a bargain to be looked at thoroughly. It’s one of the smaller solutions on the market and that can benefit users in a variety of ways, but the first step is choosing a plan to suit your needs. Here’s a brief breakdown:
Nano: The smallest plan is built for shops with fewer products (you’re only allowed up to 25). It also allows for up to 2000 visits per month and 1GB of bandwidth. It’s great for craft vendors and other small operations wanting to break out of the third-party platforms.
Mini: This level of the platform allows for up to 200 different products and a higher traffic level of 4000 visits every month and 2GB of bandwidth.
Starter: At this level, it’s going to be enough for many smaller ventures with 1000 products and up to 8000 visitors/mo and 4GB of bandwidth. The starter plan allows for 10 different email accounts (up from 5 for the two lower levels).
Professional: This level is called professional for a reason. Up to 10,000 products (probably more than most would need, unless you’re drop-shipping) 20,000 visitors/mo and 10GB of bandwidth. This plan also comes with an unlimited number of email accounts.
Professional Plus: This level allows for an unlimited number of products and up to 50,000 visitors a month along with 25GB worth of bandwidth resources.
High-Traffic Premium: For the top-tier shops that have a ton of regular traffic, this could be your option. Unlimited products and 60GB worth of bandwidth to hold all of that traffic (well over 100k/mo).
High-Traffic Plus: The highest plan available through 3D Cart with all of the features of the lower plans and a staggering 250GB of bandwidth; enough for a ridiculous amount of visitors each month.
Other initial features that you’ll get when you sign up for any account will be a free domain (if you don’t have one already), Facebook and mobile versions of your store (a must in today’s mobile/social environment), and phone support options. With all these extras being offered for every plan, it really makes the case that 3D Cart is one of the best options for micro and small online store owners.
This software is also entirely cloud-based which means your store will be faster and can be ran from just about any device with a solid internet connection. All of the management happens through the web and it’s fairly hands-off compared to other ecommerce tools. You simply log in and instantly have access to start building your store.
Designing your shop is easy, but could be pricey. There are several dozen free themes that are all mobile responsive and everything you need to get your products in front of the eyeballs of your customers. However, they aren’t that pretty. In fact, most of them are just above the basic level. Where this is really going to be a problem are the boutique shops that have stylish products and will need a stylish design. There are other templates for sale, but can cost upwards of a couple hundred bucks. That is a one time fee and would be worth it, especially if you need a good looking site. There is also a design service for a custom design, but that goes to a much higher cost.
There is on-boarding assistance, but right now it costs $249. If you are clueless and would like the help it could be worth it, but the platform isn’t difficult and fairly intuitive even for those who aren’t technical. The hardest part is choosing a payment gateway. 3D Cart doesn’t charge a transaction fee, but the processor you choose will.
Side Note: There are several processors to choose from and you can take a look at our top choices here.
Once you upload your products, it’s time to set up for the traffic that will be coming. There are so many awesome features to attract and retain visitors and all of them come with every account type (from nano up). For starters, you can sell either physical or digital goods and there is a one-page checkout system (proven to increase conversions). Tax and shipping calculators for your customers, order tracking, wish lists, registries, and coupon codes/discounts are just a few ways you can better serve your audience.
For you, there are multiple SEO tools, inventory tracking that helps maintain stock levels and simple product management help with uploading new sku’s and categorizing them for easy display.
All of these features are standard. You get an account and you get all of the goodies. This alone makes 3D Cart a very appealing choice for budget seekers who want power without the hefty price tag of some better known options.
For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.
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