3dcart Reviews

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Editor's Rating
Overall
Features
Price
Support

Positives

• Comprehensive set of tools
• 100+ payment gateways supported
• 24/7 support
• The most free themes to choose from in the industry
• Support for product reviews
• Multichannel selling options

Negatives

• Dated backend design
• Hard to get started

Ecommerce is an industry that covers every range of service, from the high-end yet pricey feature-packed subscriptions to open-source software available to use completely for free. 3dcart is one of the most robust and versatile ecommerce platforms available for business owners looking to open an online store, and doesn’t expect a high price for its benefits. There are a handful of features included with 3dcart’s service that sets it apart from its competition, with particular mention for its great SEO tools, hundreds of features, vast number of free templates, and more than 100 supported gateways. In terms of pricing, 3dcart is rather cheap compared to high-class competitors, with the starting price of $19 per month coming replete with a 15-day trial period.

Features

It goes without saying that properly using a service for a while before making an initial judgment because it’ll give you an idea of what the package is all about, in the case of 3dcart this means its ease of use and scalability. This is especially valid for novice users who ‘don't speak geek’ and can’t code a website themselves. 3dcart welcomes the user with a quick video tutorial right within the dashboard, which gives a nice boost to early understanding of the system. The controls are easily accessible through the navigation menu, while the basic steps to follow are listed in the center of the screen so you won't miss anything before the store goes live.

Still, compared to its competitors, the presentation of the service is less user-friendly and some controls, such as customizing the selected template by adding your logo, require more of the user's time than is expected. The convenience of drag and drop would be very welcome here.

Design

With 91 free themes available (alongside 41 paid themes ranging between $99-199), 3dcart is the ecommerce platform with the most free storefront design options, covering a wide variety of industries. It's easy to change themes and retain and reformat all the content of your store, though the limitations of design customization can only be rectified with knowledge of web coding. This automatic reformatting is handy because as customization of the theme begins, another may be found that better suits your preferences.

But despite the highly versatile platform, 3dcart isn't too easy to use. The drag-and-drop features of its competitors enable a much better backend experience. For example, when you start customizing the design of the store, it’s not possible to simply drag and drop your logo, instead it’s necessary to dig into the navigation panel to find the tab that includes this feature.

3dcart does support both physical and digital products, but the latter is capped at a file size of 48MB, meaning any software you might want to sell must be less than this size.

SEO and marketing are deeply integrated into the 3dcart platform, too, leveraging a detailed guide and checklist features to require only slight effort in using these tools.

Business Options

Once you've finished setting up products, adding images, and personalizing the theme, it's time to get that store functional for the public. But first you’ll need to decide which payment methods and service providers to work with. Fortunately, 3dcart is very helpful here with a variety of payment options, covering Square, Stripe, PayPal, or any of the 133 supported payment gateways you might want to work with, alongside offline payment methods. It’s even possible to accept gift cards, echecks, mobile wallets, and even Bitcoin.

And by establishing a rule based on zip codes users can add various sales taxes into the tax manager feature. This is particularly good for store owners on a budget, while the rest can select any of the specialized third-party tax solutions that are recommended by and integrated into 3dcart yet require a separate subscription.

The majority of ecommerce’s familiar shipping carriers are available too, so there’s nothing else to do but select the preferred ones and publish the information on the storefront. The comprehensive set of features and tools makes creating promotions and communicating them with the customer an easy task. And while the backend interface isn't as vibrant or pleasant as the competition, it's at least as functional as the other areas of the platform.

Utilities

It's easier to increase sales when you have access to all the major platforms where users spend money online, such as eBay, Amazon, and Facebook Shop. If you are looking to sell products through every possible channel, then 3dcart is a good option, although it doesn't support all channels by default. Instead, users will need to install modules into their store to enable this or any of the other 95 features available.

This long list includes neat services such as customer feedback, an abandoned cart saver, or affiliate program, all of which will help increase return traffic and repeat sales. The setup process is a very quick (usually one-click) process, as is disabling them.

No matter which plan your business fits into, 3dcart stores payment cards for returning customers. This applies to all payment integrations with tokenization support.

Pricing

Whether you are just starting an online store or migrating from another platform looking for the features needed for a growing business, 3dcart has a pricing plan to suit you. Each plan’s features are proportional to the price, but even the low-cost startup plan aimed at new store owners includes staff users, an unlimited number of products and bandwidth, and API access.

This is available for $19 per month alongside many other features, though the plan is only valid for online sales of up to $50k per year. A second cap of $100k is set for the $29 per month Basic Store plan, $200k for the $79 per month Plus Store plan, while another over that requires the $229 per month Pro package. 3dcart doesn't charge any transaction fees; it's the payment gateway that does that.

It is possible to save serious money by opting for annual billing instead of paying monthly. For example, all the essential features for a basic online store can be yours at half the price at $14.50, or get the plus plan for $39.50 per month. 3dcart supports all major credit cards and PayPal, but no credit card is required during the 15-day trial period.

Customer Service

Without getting started documentation and live chat with “onboarding coaches”, novice users would have issues getting the best out of this platform. Fortunately, 3dcart users have access to information resources ranging from web design how-tos through to ecommerce marketing tutorials and a support center where they have the option to submit a ticket, search the knowledge base, or check the forums to get answers to their questions.

All plans include 24/7 support, but phone support is not available in the startup plan and priority support is limited to the plus and pro plans. This means customers on a budget will be limited to email responses and answers from the forums. They can reach out to 3dcart on Twitter, but will likely be redirected to email support.

Bottom Line

If you are looking for a decently priced ecommerce platform supporting more than 100 payment gateways with a wide variety of free and mobile-friendly themes to choose from and multiple shipping options, then 3dcart is the service to match your needs. For a starting price of $19 per month, however, you'll need to get accustomed to its dated design and navigate through the wide variety of tools and features available. Higher-priced competitors offer more dynamic design and drag-and-drop features, but if you are okay with reading through all the documentation or the forums to get your store up and running, then it's a compromise that is well worth the time investment.