Ecommerce shopping cart software?
With so much shopping cart software on the market, it can be a headache trying to choose one, or knowing which one would best suit your business so we have taken some of the most common features and actual facts based on experience to help you decide.
The following comparisons are based on working knowledge and our own personal dealings with each company or product.
Prices and times have all been quoted direct from each products web site and also based on experience with each company.
EROL Shopping cart software
- Minimum Cost: £116.33 (Startup edition only)
- Maximum users: 1
- PC or Web Based: PC only
- Number of products: 25 (Upgrade required for more)
- Support: Telephone, Ticketing system and forums.
- Support times: 10am - 5pm mon-fri only (Excl bank holidays)
EROL Shopping cart is a PC based software solution that can be installed on 1 PC only. The entire design & build is carried out on your PC before you upload your entire store to your web hosting facilities which means you can ensure your web site is perfect before uploading anything. EROL is limited to only 1 user per software licence which means if you have a busy web site, you will struggle with just 1 person using it, and the cost's of upgrades can be off putting. The full developer version is £1500+ for 2 user licence.
One of the good points about EROL is that anybody could install this and build an ecommerce store as it is extremely easy to use, but sadly even the basic version does not come supplied with its customer manager, inventory, store search or live currency which is a huge shame for its cost. Out of hours technical support also sadly lets EROL down because the times you would need support the most (Evenings and weekends) is exactly when you cannot get it as they are closed outside of UK business hours.
X-Cart Shopping cart software
- Minimum Cost: £100 (Licence + Installation via WESH UK)
- Maximum users: Unlimited
- PC or Web Based: Web based
- Number of products: unlimited
- Support: Ticketing system and forums
- Support times: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year.
X-Cart is a totally different approach to EROL because it is 100% web based software. Everything you do is done online using a special administration section of your web site and offers extremely powerful features because it use's a database live on your web site. X-Cart requires no software on your PC and you can have as many staff members using it as you wish.
X-Cart comes with a 500+ page manual and there are plenty of extra special modifications available for things like listing products direct on ebay through your store and special search engine friendly URL's for database driven web sites. the X-Cart web site also has excellent support ticketing, knowledge base and forums too.
The downside is that you do need some knowledge of how to install web based software (We install X-Cart for free for you if purchased from us) and if you want to adjust the design then HTML knowledge is required, but there are lots of ready made templates available all over the internet.
Cube cart Shopping cart software
- Minimum Cost: FREE (£45 to remove copyright notice)
- Maximum users: Unlimited
- PC or Web Based: Web based
- Number of products: unlimited
- Support: Ticketing system and forums
- Support times: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year
Cube cart is a really great, lightweight shopping cart software application that is totally web based, like X-Cart but without the hundreds of features, yet still offers great functionality. Cube cart is perfect for web site's that offer a small product range and want ease of use.
Cube cart can be installed reasonably easily in about 15 minutes and design modifications will require knowledge of HTML/CSS although there are many templates available all over the internet costing as little as £10 if you want a quick easy solution.
Cube cart is however only ideally suited to small stores and does lack the potential for major growth, but it is extremely simple to use and can integrate with many major payment gateways easily via its admin section.
