3DCart: eCommerce Shopping Cart Review
With so many hosted ecommerce shopping cart services out there offering what appear to be similar features at similar prices, it can be difficult for potential users to narrow it down to just one. One of the providers that has quietly developed into a major player in this area is 3DCart, which offers a feature set comparable to those of popular services like Volusion and BigCommerce. In fact, 3DCart advertises itself as being “better than BigCommerce.” So, what is it about 3DCart that might take users away from the competition? More importantly, does 3DCart have what it takes to keep them?
Like most other shopping cart providers, 3DCart offers a range of different pricing options. These include:
- the US $19.99/month Mini package
- the $35.99/month Starter package
- the $65.99/month Professional package
- the $99.99/month package (also called Professional, confusingly enough)
- and the $199.99/month Premium package.
The $65.99/month option is the most popular, and accommodates up to 5000 unique products while providing unlimited storage space for product images and a maximum of 4GB of bandwidth per month, which 3DCart estimates is enough to accommodate about 8000 users. The less expensive packages have stricter limits on product counts, bandwidth and image storage, while the higher-priced options allow for an unlimited number of products as well as more bandwidth, and also offer some extended functionality (including a QuickBooks plugin). The 3DCart service also requires a one-time startup fee of $99 ($199 for the Premium plan).
They do offer occasional discounts, though, and at the time of review the startup fee was marked down to $49.99.
3DCart Features
3DCart offers most of the features that are, by now, considered standard for a hosted shopping cart service. That is to say that from a vendor’s perspective, they have all the basic services you’d expect in order to start and maintain your store. 3DCart offers support for a good variety of payment methods, including popular ones like PayPal, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments and Authorize.net, as well as some more niche services like Bank of America Shopping Cart, Merchant-Accounts.ca, and more. Integrated shipping options include USPS, Canada Post, FedEx and UPS. Security is another strong point of 3DCart. In addition to Visa PCI compliance, 3DCart is also compatible with the McAfee Secure PCI certification service. This service automates a lot of the legwork associated with PCI compliance, and that can allow merchants to spend more time focusing on their business.
Ease of Use
Like most other shopping cart providers, 3DCart offers a number of pre-made store design templates, which allow users to get their store up and running, with a professional look, in as little time as possible. For those who want to give their store a more unique feel, 3DCart also offers some nice features that some of the other providers have overlooked. With 3DCart, it’s possible to save multiple designs, which you can then rotate as you see fit. You have the option of customizing your store’s design through the 3DCart editor, which is reasonably good if not the best one available, or by using another HTML editor.
The main reason why hosted shopping cart providers exist is to make the process of setting up and running an online store as easy as possible, and 3DCart does a pretty good job of this. The addition of McAfee Secure is especially welcome, as this adds another aspect of ecommerce to the list of those that 3DCart and other providers help with.
Conclusion
Overall, 3DCart is a worthy competitor to the likes of BigCommerce and Volusion. While 3DCart doesn’t offer the greatest number of payment or shipping options, or the most design templates, they do a lot of things very well. 3DCart is especially worth considering if you plan on receiving a lot of direct credit card payments, thanks to its support for McAfee Secure.