Shopify vs. 3DCart
Although Shopify and 3DCart are two of the better known ecommerce shopping cart providers out there, there are some significant differences in what they offer to potential users. These differences can have a major impact with respect to how well each service meshes with your plans and needs. If you’re in the market for a shopping cart service, choosing the right one can make a big difference as to the ultimate success or failure of your venture. Here are some things you might want to think about if you’re considering Shopify and 3DCart.
The Basics
3DCart, which has been around in one form or another since the late 1990s, is a well-rounded service with pricing plans that should suit a variety of users. Their most popular package is the $65.99 US/month Professional option, which accommodates up to 5000 products per store, provides unlimited storage space for product image files, and allows 4GB of monthly bandwidth, which 3DCart estimates is sufficient for about 8000 visitors monthly. All of their plans also require a one-time setup fee, which differs depending on which plan you’re starting with. For the Professional plan, the fee is $99 (discounted at the time of review to $49.99).
Shopify also offers several different pricing options. Their standard offering is the Business plan, which, at $99/month, allows up to 10,000 products, 1GB of storage, and unlimited bandwidth. Shopify doesn’t charge any startup fee; instead, they charge a commission on each transaction, which is higher for their more inexpensive plans, and waived for their Premium service. For the Business option, the transaction fee is currently at 1 percent.
Features
Shopify does a good job of providing users with the tools they need to run a successful store. It keeps up with the current industry standards in terms of payment gateway choices, marketing and statistics tracking and integration (including Google Analytics integration) and SEO, although it is a bit light on shipping options compared to some of its competitors, offering only a few US-based services.
Compared to Shopify, 3DCart is somewhat more well-rounded in terms of its feature list. It offers one of the most extensive lists of payment gateways in the industry, as well as statistics and marketing features that are competitive with any other service right now. For vendors who plan on accepting a lot of direct credit card payments, 3DCart is especially worth considering because of its use of the McAfee Secure service for PCI compliance.
Ease of Use
Shopify is perhaps best known for its extensive customizability and sleek interface, and rightly so, as these are some of the very best available. Shopify makes it possible for even web development newbies to create a storefront to their exact specifications thanks to its powerful editor, and its interface makes the day-to-day aspects of running a store relatively painless.
Although 3DCart doesn’t quite meet the standard set by Shopify in terms of ease of use, it is at least respectable in these areas. Its preset storefront design templates are good, and users have the option of saving and rotating multiple templates, which is a nice added bit of convenience that many other providers seem to have overlooked.
3DCart vs. Shopify Conclusion
If you place a premium on the ability to customize the appearance and functionality of your storefront, you really can’t do better than Shopify. However, if you like the look of 3DCart’s design templates, or you don’t mind editing HTML and/or CSS directly, then you will most likely find 3DCart to be a better service overall, thanks to its more developed feature set and more affordable, transaction fee-free service.