All businesses become more successful once they are present online. We live in the era of the internet and most of our activities are conducted online. These also include shopping. So it is only logical for business owners to adapt their business accordingly.
Ecommerce shopping carts are essential for anyone who wants to create an online store. Regardless of the products or services you offer, if they are not intelligently and properly presented to the potential customer, your business is set to fail.
What makes a good shopping cart?
Your online shopping cart is the link between you as a seller and your buyer. It is the foundation of your store and if you don’t use a good, reliable shopping cart, you can experience various problems that can lead to you losing customers and money. A good shopping cart has to run smoothly, have an easy checkout process, as many available payment methods as possible, an organized, user-friendly and intuitive interface. It has to come with solid security features and a reliable customer support.
When you choose an ecommerce shopping cart, you can choose between a self-hosted shopping cart and a cloud-based one. If you are not that skilled when it comes to computers, you might want to go with a web-based solution, as it is more user-friendly and the provider will administrate everything, so you don’t have to worry about SSL certificates, technical issues, hosting and so on. If you want something highly customizable and you want to have complete control, you can choose the other option.
A good shopping cart also comes with reliable, top-notch customer support, preferably a 24/7 one.
Security is another crucial aspect, especially given that you will work with customers’ personal and financial data, payments have to be processed through your site and so on. An SSL certificate is of paramount importance so make sure you buy one, if the shopping cart doesn’t include it.
Top 5 ecommerce shopping carts to consider for your business
3d cart. 3d cart is a great shopping cart developed by a company based in Florida. It is a hosted solution and it has been on the market since 2001.
3d cart offers 4 plans, with the most basic one priced at just $19/month, while the first month will only be billed at $9.50, thanks to their promotion. The most expensive plan is billed at $229/month (and $114.50 for the first month).
Among the most attractive features included with 3d cart we can mention:
- More than 100 secure payments to choose from
- Over 60 free themes and other paid ones, all of which are mobile-ready
- Unlimited online storage and email accounts
- No transaction fees
- Strong marketing features (including promotions manager, SEO tools, gift cards, a newsletter system and more)
Volusion. One of the biggest strengths of Volusion and a good reason to include it in our top 5, is its user-friendliness. This is one of the most intuitive and straightforward shopping carts you can find. The company is really experienced and was founded in 1999 and Volusion has more than 40,000 customers.
Volusion offers 4 plans with the most affordable being priced at $29/month and the most expensive one being custom. That means you have to contact them to get an exact price, depending on the nature of your business, features included and your needs. Their Business plan is priced at $299/month.
Important features included with Volusion:
- 0% transaction fees
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Built-in SEO tools and social media integrations
- Abandoned cart reports
- Newsletters
- Over 50 payment gateways
- Hundreds of templates to choose from, with lots of free options; all themes are mobile-responsive
Shopify. It is one of the most popular and appreciated shopping carts on the market, with more than 325,000 customers. It was developed by a Canadian company that was founded in 2004.
In addition to the 14-day free trial, Shopify offers 4 plans. The pricing is somewhat similar to Volusion. The most affordable plan offered by Shopify is Basic Shopify, billed at $29/month. The most expensive plan is Shopify Plus, which starts from $2,000/month.
Here are some of the most attractive features included:
- Unlimited products
- More than 100 responsive themes
- Access to their app store with over 1,500 apps, free and paid
- Over 70 payment gateways
- Discount codes
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Free SSL certificate
Fortune3. This shopping cart has been around for more than 15 years and it is used by over 200,000 online stores.
Fortune3 has a large number of plans to choose from. There are 6 available options, with the most affordable one being Starter, billed at $9.95/month. The most expensive plan offered by Fortune3 is Unlimited, billed at approximately $160/month, which makes this one of the most budget-friendly shopping carts available. There is also a free 30-day trial.
Included features:
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited e-mail accounts and admin accounts
- No transaction fees
- More than 50 payment gateways
- Top-notch customer support
- Mobile app compatible with iOS and Android
Ashop Intelligent Commerce. This shopping cart likes to keep it simple. It only has 3 available plans: Starter, Professional and Enterprise. Starter is their most affordable plan and it costs $25/month or $249/year. The Enterprise plan is the most expensive one and it is billed at $249/month or $2,490/year.
Main features included with Ashop:
- Unlimited bandwidth
- More than 80 payment gateways
- 500 products for the cheapest plan and 10,000 products for the most expensive plan
- Real-time WYSIWYG editor
- More than 80 free themes to choose from (all themes are mobile responsive)
- Gift certificates, coupons, discounts
- Basket recovery
- 24/7 customer support