eCommerce is the preferred solution for thousands of businesses. Nowadays, a good shopping cart is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for those who want to sell products or services. There are many people who want to know how to choose the best eCommerce shopping cart for their website, for this reason. Since there are so many options and varieties of cart products, it’s impossible for anyone to pick one that’s truly the best or end-all. However, there are some options that are definitely better than others. Making the right choice might be made easier if you know these things.
Exactly what is Shopping Cart Software?
This software is the engine that is responsible for managing a website’s inventory, adding and removing products, calculating taxes, and everything else that goes into running a business.
Online shopping carts can do much more than that, including:
- Customer loyalty status can be used to automatically apply promo codes and special discounts
- Use different types of payment (e.g., subscription, ‘buy now, pay later, and so on) when checking out.
- Data collection and transmission for other business systems (such as accounting, CRM, email, and more) while providing regulatory compliance, such as GDPR
Even people without a technical background can manage entire eCommerce operations by using shopping cart software that simplifies complex processes. eCommerce Development Toronto is the best Agency in providing and helping with any issue regarding eCommerce.
There are two main types of shopping cart software
Vendors today offer a wide range of options, and each shopping cart software option will offer different features and functionalities. The host for your store makes a big difference in how/where you can use a number of different types of shopping cart software. Managing and maintaining your online store will be much more difficult if you follow these guidelines.
1. Hosting shopping carts:
As its name implies, a hosted shopping cart is one that is maintained and upgraded by a merchant (think of SaaS or software-as-a-service). The vendor provides you with access to all of the vendor’s core commerce features as well as hosting, bandwidth, managed security, and ongoing software upgrades for an annual or monthly fee.
A SaaS solution can offer a good balance between flexibility and usability. Developing all the components you need does not require months to complete. Hosting shopping cart software has evolved to the point where it offers the same customization and flexibility as on-premise software – making it a strong fit for most online retailers.
Hosted eCommerce shopping cart providers include:
- BigCommerce
- Shift4Shop
- Shopify
2. Shopping Carts Hosted on Your Own:
With self-hosted, or open-source, shopping carts, the merchant is responsible for hosting their site themselves or utilizing the platform provider for hosting. It also requires more experience developing interactive applications.
In addition to providing basic checkout functionality, such carts are often provided for free as open-source software. It will be necessary to develop extra features and integrations with other systems or purchase a subscription from a third-party provider.
When it comes to managing your eCommerce site, self-hosting with open-source software lets you have nearly unlimited flexibility. As a result of this, more time will be spent on the technical aspects of your eCommerce business as opposed to the operational ones.
Upon starting Kigurumi Shop, owner Shoko Mimura made this decision to not pick a self-hosted solution in favor of BigCommerce:
“In the beginning, self-hosted platforms appealed to us because of their customization features and low up-front costs. I realized, however, that self-hosting took a lot of work to run smoothly, especially after adding plugins and customized code, and I did not have the resources to make that happen.
We moved to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to outsource the eCommerce part of our business so we could focus on branding, the customer experience, and marketing instead.”
Several shopping carts that should be taken into consideration if you haven’t been scared away yet by the thought of self-hosted:
- WooCommerce
- PrestaShop
- OpenCart
Comparison of the best shopping carts for eCommerce
Magento:
A Magento store can be configured and managed for optimal performance, enabling small and medium businesses to run their online shops. The company was founded in 2007 and currently serves more than 240,000 merchants. Magento is one of the most popular platforms that can be hosted and customized.
There is no point in using this platform if you are a beginner without time to learn and a limited budget to hire expert help. When someone doesn’t actually know how to work with this option, it can be a very challenging process. Zoey Commerce, which we discussed above, is a fully-hosted Magento-based solution that might be better suited to beginners or businesses with fewer resources. Although many top online retailers use this platform for their online stores, it’s important to point out that it’s also used by most of these retailers.
There is a huge advantage of Magento shopping carts being free to download and that they are extremely customizable and expandable. In addition to all the features, you can find an active community of users who can help you with anything related to the system.
However, without developer skills, using the platform is not so straightforward and there is no customer service. It may seem to some people like a big disadvantage that you can find almost everything you need in the community.
Shopware:
Shopware powers some of the largest eCommerce sites in Germany and is considered to be a leading enterprise-level platform. Due to this CSM’s multitude of advantages and ultra-features, it’s no wonder that it’s becoming increasingly popular among users at present.
Due to Shopware’s ability to scale at the enterprise level, it has been proven to be a superb choice for websites with high traffic and a lot of content. The plan has quite a few other features that make it worthy of your attention, such as multi-warehouse support, multi-store functionality, and easy marketing (comprehensive reporting, affiliate, and loyalty programs).
Design is another advantage that makes this platform worth your attention. It is Stylish and Fully Responsive. Easily customizable, Shopware provides the user with the full freedom to customize the software. Featuring features such as pinch zooming, sliders with momentum scrolling, and touch buttons, this platform makes mobile shopping a user-centric experience.
High investment in Shopware development is often accompanied by relatively high costs (except for open-source editions).
Shopify:
It seems this option is one of the most popular ones based on many eCommerce shopping cart reviews. There are many features and tools offered by the platform that can assist companies in managing their online shops.
The Shopify platform makes it easy to get started, which is a great advantage for new entrepreneurs. For users who want to create unique experiences for their customers, it has many integrations and attractive templates for customization and some advanced design tools.
Conversely, the feature set of the eCommerce platform is still limited when compared with custom eCommerce platforms. In some cases, you might want to look into specific add-ons for which you’ll have to ask a developer for help. Although Shopify is often touted as one of the best online shopping carts for small businesses, these downsides might scare some new business people away.
WooCommerce:
WooCommerce is attractive for entrepreneurs because it makes a WordPress website more functional as compared to the base WordPress operating system. It offers a variety of customization options, integration possibilities, and a smooth user interface. WooCommerce shopping carts can be run efficiently and benefited from when one understands some of the options and features of WordPress. It sounds like a lot to cover, You can opt to employ a WordPress development Toronto company or if you have the patience to put in some time upfront, you’ll reap the benefits over time.
Modules, preinstalled payment gateways, advanced reports, and easy product import are among WooCommerce’s main features.
What’s new
- There is no charge to use the plugin. A fully featured shopping cart does not require you to pay a dime
- The implementation of third-party integrations is required for advanced features
- Using premium themes will increase your security level
Zoey Commerce:
It has beautiful themes and a great user interface. Zoey Commerce is another popular system. Despite the fact that the platform is code-free, it offers a large selection of options for developers as well. The software can be customized and made suitable for virtually any company on the market. There are many advantages to using this eCommerce platform, including:
- Advanced features that are useful
- Templates are good
- Adding more design tools
- Wholesalers and B2B users can take advantage of special features
In addition, there are disadvantages to this service, including expensive monthly pricing and infrequent customer support. Having enough budget and wanting something excellent might not make them crucial. While it may not be the best option for startups, it is definitely the best option for any other business.
Miva Merchant:
Despite the platform’s enterprise-level features, it offers a wide range of customization options. The service offers high-level support and user-friendly usability at the same time, which makes it a top Software-as-a-Service provider. The service has been used by more than 500,000 people since 1997. There are a lot of transactions in the aforementioned company, which is home to a wide variety of businesses – both small and large.
There are several advantages to Miva Merchant, including the fact that it is suitable for businesses of any size. Operational and transactional complexity is facilitated by its advanced features. As your company grows, you won’t have to worry about having to rearrange your space. Furthermore, this platform provides great customer support, which so that no questions will remain unanswered.
There are a few disadvantages including limited users, high monthly payments, and the necessity to learn how the system works. There is always the option of hiring somebody to do it for you, which is always more convenient for professionals.
PrestaShop:
A cloud-hosted eCommerce solution or one that can be downloaded directly from a website is available. Unlike many open-source platforms, it is free to download as well as highly customizable. We offer a wide range of integrations so you can meet all of your business’ potential needs. Once you begin the process, a large user community and great support materials can be helpful.
It’s still necessary to have some developer skills, however, despite the community and materials. It won’t be possible for a person from the street to sit down and carry out these duties. The customer support service is also available but at a high cost. If this is the case, you might want to hire someone experienced to handle all of the configurations for your business.
With more than 270,000 customers all over the world, PrestaShop is one of the most popular international shopping carts. Don’t be misled by the free download. You’ll have to pay for hosting and, perhaps, for additional modules for integration with other programs. Apart from that, PrestaShop can be used to enhance the efficiency of any online business.
Overview:
Considering all of the above, picking an eCommerce shopping cart software that’s not only difficult, but also crucial, could hugely influence your business’s success, either ensuring its success or impairing it. For further assistance on this topic, we suggest you contact Dinarys. If you’re having trouble figuring out your eCommerce system, fill out this form so we can assist you.
