Our first month with CS Cart Here is a short but not a complete list of issues our team had with CS Cart within the first months of work: • The server installation manuals are not just not suitable for non-IT – those are outdated. If you want the CS Cart team to fix your issues and help you to install the program onto your server – you either pay or scream at your sales manager • A huge amount of crucial information is not available neither in the manuals nor in the videos • It took us 3 weeks (!) to get CS Cart to install us the program on our server – mainly because the employees simply do not check if everything works when they are finished • Our team spends 90% of the time in communication by explaining “what else” is not working • 504 Gateway is our companion whenever we work with back-end, at any time and for no reason • The packs CS Cart offers are not coherent – if they sell you a “lifetime” upgrade of the platform with a unique theme – you get the upgrades for the scheme only for 6 months. Later you either pay or enjoy bugs when your platform gets updates and your themes does not. Moreover, the platform is developed in such a way that any external themes will need a lot of adjustment after any upgrade if you want them to work correctly • The App which is offered in premium packs is only for the basic infrastructure, any add-ons (which you will need) – you will need to pay additionally • They delete and move your login data at any point of time without a warning, you understand this when you are kicked out of the platform in the middle of your work. The general problem with access rights is that you need to ask for them each time you discover you lack rights in your own program. Generally, we wanted to work with a Russian company (CS Cart is a Russian company) to save some of our programmers the language barrier – but we expected something at least close to the American service from a company selling its product globally. From our perspective, CS Cart is not interested in supporting customers and creating a great customer experience even during the trial period – simply said, you get what you pay for.

CS-Cart Multi-Vendor a robust platform for online marketplaces CS-Cart Multi-Vendor, when is worth to be mentioned as one the robust platform which have been able to provide a marketplace for every entrepreneur. It is without doubt a great and satisfying platform for online marketplaces for virtually all kind of products. However, it is not for everyone in every economy. It requires a well-developed financial system especially for payment systems whether local or international which need to be mentioned at the very beginning of the sales process. One should know programming or have a developer on board to be able to develop your own add-on for adding any particular functionality. Otherwise, be prepared to spend on readily developed add-ons and which still not customized. Nevertheless, CS Cart is an excellent platform, opening tons of possibilities for creating a great marketplace. On one hand, the main highlight to mention it is that there is an excellent CS-Cart support team which responds quickly and clearly when you face any problem. On other hand, there is also a nice community on a forum, which is really helpful. However, if you don’t have enough financial resources, CS-Cart and all its add-ons may be disappointing in many areas, and unfortunately it has been our case. It is very challenging to see the platform bringing in new functionalities with a new version incompatible with existing add-ons or themes. If you accept to upgrade, you lose some of the add-ons which need to be deleted or stopped or even cause a total malfunction of the whole platform. If there is any customization and you upgrade the platform, it can be lost forever or requires you to spend more money for a new one. Furthermore, many CS-Cart third party developers their add-ons are not compatibles even when they seem to be complementary. It has been a challenge and a really time and money consuming process. Most important pros: - Great experience in the market; - Great support team; - Helpful community on forum; - Many add-ons and Themes to choose from. - The marketplace will always look professional. Most important cons: - Too much frequent upgrades causing existing customizations, add-ons and Themes not working properly as main consequence of waste of money in case you ought to hire the support teams for both CS-Cart and its third party developers; - It is very costly to integrate CS-Cart platform with any other systems (like payment provider etc.) because of its constant upgrades which go with incompatibilities. My overall rate is average, because it has been disappointing for us to accommodate all the changes within CS-Cart platform and its third party add-ons and themes.

CS-Cart offers Shopping Cart solutions CS-Cart offers solutions for those that want to run a single storefront to those wanting a multi-vendor solution to run a marketplace, like Amazon or Ebay. CS-Cart isn't an online service like Shopify or BigCommerce. Instead it is a self-hosted downloadable software that you run on your own hosting. Right out of the box, CS-Cart is packed full of 100's of features to suit even the most demanding store requirements. Most features can be individually enabled/disabled as well as configured to your liking. One of the best features we like, is the manual automatic updates system that keeps your site up-to-date with the latest CS-Cart updates and bug fixes without the need to upload files via FTP. A handful of preinstalled themes are available by default, however you’ll find over 200 third-party themes in the CS-Cart Marketplace to fit your desired look and feel. Hundreds of third-party-add-ons are also available. Making customizing easier, CS-Cart has a built-in layout editor allowing you to arrange your store using drag and drop elements. CS-Cart supports an expansive list of payment and shipping options to make it easy to integrate with what works for your business. CS-Cart has alot to offer, so much in fact since I have been using it for the past 2+ years, that it's hard to mention all it can do. My Verdict After using CS-Cart for 2 years, I have reached the conclusion that CS-Cart is overall a good storefront solution, although it can be a bit daunting for a beginner to configure initially. The software does have many great features and selling points. If I could point to a downside, some may not be so keen with continued payments for support and version upgrades, but they are not too expensive. I recommend that you go ahead and try a demo and play with the platform yourself.

It works for what I need. The software has changed a lot since I got it. It has definitely gotten better and easier to use and more flexible. I have never used any other platform, so I can't compare it to others. It works for what I need. I like the fact that I can install the software on my own server. There are a lot of add-ons and those developers are very helpful and easy to work with. I keep finding new things that I can add to help improve my business. Customer support has always been very fast and friendly. They are doing a better job at explaining how to fix the issue instead of just solving it, which makes it easier to understand if I were to have the same or similar issue again. Since this is my first and only shopping cart, it was not very user-friendly and easy to set up and use. At times it became quite complicated to use. The documentation is sometimes outdated and hard to understand. They need to do a better job of showing instead of just telling. The how-to videos are really outdated and need to be refreshed.

Cs-Cart Multi Vendor new experience We’ve been using Cs-Cart for our company website since 2014. In 2016 we started to share our large design database with our clients through the multi-store feature and it has been very successful. In a few weeks from now we will launch our multi-vendor site. Setting pages, adding products, managing vendors & payments are easy tasks. Backend management access from a mobile phone is as easy as being on a PC, thanks to a great responsive theme. Cs-Cart team has always been on the spot anytime we had questions or needed technical help. All Cs-Cart versions are being updated on a regular basis. Every update always bring more features and greater user experience. All this to say we’re very satisfied using Cs-Cart and we’ll keep on growing our business using it.