Very good solution to quickly and easily build an online marketplace CS Cart Multivendor provides the complete marketplace environment and structure by default, so you can start to build and run your own online marketplace. It provides for example a vendor onboarding system where vendors can apply for a vendor account, easy way to upload products, options for different product categories, filter options, a lot of different payment methods and the possibility to distribute payments from customers between vendors and the marketplace owner. Pros: - fair price for a marketplace system - it offers all the features you need to build and run an online marketplace - large network of (third party) companies that provide add ons for multivendor and offer them for a fair price - great support from CS Cart support team - high flexibility Cons: - the entry into the complex system is a bit complicated at the beginning, so it will take time to understand the logic behind the backend and the interplay with the frontend. CS Cart offers a lot of good tutorials to get into it, but what would had helped us at the beginning would be a starting tutorial which provides a general overview before getting into details. - more payment methods for stripe connect by default would be good (e.g. Klarna etc.). What is still to be mentioned from our point of view and we would have liked to know in advance: - The less add ons, especially from third parties, the better. Otherwise bugs can occur during the upgrade if the add ons are not (yet) compatible with the newer versions of Multivendor. - We regretted a little bit to have chosen a third party theme. Not in terms of design, but there were always bugs in the design of the frontend after we upgraded because the third party themes are not always adapted to newer versions of Multivendor. Conclusion: All in all, if we had to choose an online marketplace software again with today's knowledge, we would choose Multivendor again.

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.

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.

Has a prices page without prices Has a prices page without prices, just a webmail form you know is going to result in a hard sales call! Can't stand this type of website/company. If you can't be transparent about your pricing to your potential customers, you just know they are charging more than they can justify hence the requirement for hard sales tactics!

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.