Great product for a Market place We have been using Multi Vendor Plus for about 7 months now and we are quite happy with the out of box functionalities it has. It has quite an extensive out of the box functionalities which is required to run any market place site. This can definitely improve on the UI /UX of the screens also consider putting hyper local concept of listing products based on the location of the customers.

Comprehensive ecommerce software to start a Marketplace I have 2 clients using CS-Cart B2C for many years. I decided to open a marketplace so CS-Cart Multi-Vendor Plus was an obvious choice. Out of the box, it is the right price for features to setup vendor plans/accounting/privileges/shipping/payment methods/promotions to be up and running in no time. Pros: Updates release regularly Comprehensive user/developer guides PHP/TPL hooks to customize source code/templates REST API Mobile app Cons: Store theme is bland. Plan to buy a third-party theme. Overall, the software gets better and better with each update.

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within the first months of work: • The server installation manuals are not just not suitable for non-IT – those are outdated.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.

Good base but requires simplification CS Cart MVE can probably be a great and satisfying product. It is just not for everyone, which should be mentioned at the very beginning of the sales process. If you know programming/have a developer on board, or you are ready to invest in hiring one, CS Cart becomes an excellent platform, opening tons of possibilities for creating a great marketplace. If you face any problem, there’s an excellent CS Cart support team, responding quickly and clearly. There's also a nice community on a forum, which is really helpful. However, if you don’t have such resources, CS Cart may disappoint you in many areas, and unfortunately it has been our case. Although we are quite tech-savyy business people, with a front-end developer on board, customizing CS Cart, so it looks at least quite modern and user friendly, has been a challenge and a really time-consuming process. Even though you get a free trial before buying, you just can’t test everything and many issues come out later. Most important pros: - great support team; - quite extensive and very helpful community on forum; - if you are ready to invest a lot in custom development, it’s probably one of the most robust platforms on the market. I also heard from professionals that it’s very stable regarding the security, but it’s hard for me to assess this; - many add-ons to choose from. Most important cons: - rather impossible to be configured by non-tech people, since it’s really complicated and non-intuitive. It doesn’t need to be a con, however it’s worth to mention it in the sales process, so there's no disappointment; - requires a LOT of custom development to become aesthetic and user friendly - even the design themes that you can buy additionally are still not very modern; - vendor panel - old-fashioned in design, and very hard to navigate for vendors. It needs add-ons or back-end works to make it at least decent; - updates don’t consider most important needs of the users - I have an impression that they are not based on users’ feedback; - be prepared that for some markets the customization (like payment provider etc.) will cost you much more that the platform itself; My overall rate is average, because it was rather disappointing for us, but I believe it can be just excellent for others.

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.