Shift4Shop

Pros

Like the fact that its an entire platform like all the rest you pay for but its FREE!

Cons

Not found any as of yet any negative issues

Pros

Shift4Shop (previously 3dcart) is a FREE website ecommerce platform. Unlike some of their competitors that charge you for every transaction, Shift4shop does not take a commission and they do not charge a monthly fee. It really is free, which is amazing. You do need to use their credit card processor, and the fee is 3%. But you will pay a CC processor no matter what, so ultimately the ecommerce website is still free.
They have templates that are ready to go and are pretty decent. Updates are done automatically, so you don't need to be a techy to keep up (this was a concern when we previously self hosted and did Woocommerce). Ultimately we are happy and would recommend Shift4shop.

Cons

You have no control over some things. One time the entire website went down. Customer service told me I didn't even have a domain with them - even though it had been working and taking orders until the day before. And their customer service is not good. They are out of the country and have no control. Every issue needs to go to a different department. Which is not a big deal for small things, but when your entire website won't work and you have customers emailing and calling (and ultimately ordering elsewhere) losing an entire day because of poor service is huge. Once their error was fixed, there was no apology or explanation. Before we launch any advertising campaigns or send emails to our customer database I always check the site, to make sure it's working. So the free price does with a tradeoff. I calculated what places like Shopify would take per transaction, vs what I lost in one of being down and I am still way, way ahead.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Shift4Shop

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Shift4Shop

Pros

Because of the aftermath I couldn't possibly recommend this company for any reason.

Cons

I cannot use 2 of their payment providers and was told I could bring in my own option. After months of not hearing back, they suddenly changed their mind and told me I had to pay a bill for services I didn't receive from them before they would let me back into my site. I could have exported the contents to transfer if I had been warned.

This is unbelievable. It is well documented that I emailed and didnt hear back, I included many people and they never replied. How can you hold my property hostage to services that weren't rendered?

You guys will end up with a class action lawsuit for this. When you do, I hope a lawyer contacts me. My email is my first and last name together at gmail.com if anyone is interested.

Pros

For a small, growing business with an ever-expanding product base, 3dCart meets the need for scalability, ease of adding product details, behind the scenes product management and point of sale tracking, giving a really good all-in-one place to track and grow without the heavy investment of some other popular solutions.

Cons

The printed reports are good, comprehensive, and useful; the ability to integrate them easily with other software is somewhat lacking; it can be done, but with some of the accounting software we tried, it was a difficult porting process. Customer service was as helpful as they could be, but many of our shortcomings became wish list suggestions for their developers.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Shift4Shop

Reasons for Switching to Shift4Shop

Pros

Initially because it allowed us to utilize Klarna. As we converted from ARI, I found that the site was much easier to navigate and manage than ARI.

Cons

Sizing of the photos. Some of the pages require a specific size of photo which isn't readily available. I haven't identified the path to convert what I want to what will fit, so my photos aren't consistent and frankly look amateur. When asked, the 3D staff said that they don't have a solution for this.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Shift4Shop

Reasons for Switching to Shift4Shop

Pros

They had an excellent plan where you got the cart free, if you used their payment processor. Lots of apps are included. Can use "out of the box" without having to add a bunch of paid options.

Cons

Their apps and setup are confusing and hard to figure out for someone just starting out. Single plan. One price good for established ecomm not good for start ups.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Shift4Shop

Pros

Free, no fees except a processing percentage inline with other options.

Cons

Instructions to set up the site and transfer over your domain were missing. Hours wasted when I had to perform a specific ticket to get it to work that wasn't listed or documented. Setup is atrocious, not fluid, old outdated. I finished setup and took my site live and found out the credit card processing wasn't working. Several messages to support and the reply's back were so incoherent, no one could understand what they were saying. It wasn't even proper English or legible. I have missed over a month of sales because of how bad their processing setup is. Some of the support staff are ok, some shouldn't be allowed to work in the tech sector and should require adult supervision.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Shift4Shop

Reasons for Switching to Shift4Shop

Pros

Shift4Shop (formerly 3dcart) is decent for small businesses that need a lot of included functionality fresh out of the box. You have access to a lot of tools if you know how to find and use them.
Unfortunately, if any of these tools break or get held up, good luck getting help with fixing it.

Cons

By far the worst customer support I have experienced in a while. Many of the employees are quite kind and try hard to be helpful, but they send you around in circles and you can never talk to someone who is actually capable of resolving technical issues. Even when tickets are "elevated" and "marked as urgent" I run into the same issues of having to re-explain issues and getting nowhere.
We are personally going on for over a month now with an unresolved issue that is significantly affecting our business. We have literally NOT MADE ANY PROGRESS on the issue, and it feels like I'm running in endless circles with their Tech Support team. I will go into further detail below.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Shift4Shop

Pros

We are constantly discovering new functions as the software is being used on a daily basis. Shift4shop truly has everything we need to operate a successful e-commerce business, and at no upfront cost (terms apply to that assessment). As far as we can determine, there are no essential features missing from the services that Shift4shop offers.

Cons

The software is most definitely not user-friendly for the common e-commerce entrepreneur. When we first starting using Shift4shop in early 2020, composing our storefront was a nightmare, and required that every member of our team need learn information, processes, and language just to navigate and operate the software. (Shift4shop does provide basic video tutorials for most functions, for new users).

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Shift4Shop

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Shift4Shop

Pros

Allows me to offer a large number a variations for my products
Free shipping for specific items only
Integration with Canada Post
Huge database with How To info
Helpful customer service, quick to phone and the chat feature is handy

Cons

Occasional glitches where buttons won't work or tricky to find some menu options
templates are not very customizable unless you have strong coding skills

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Shift4Shop

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Shift4Shop

Pros

Payout is faster then other soon as a batch out it’s settled faster then others

Cons

They don’t do payout same day at all they should

Pros

There is nothing to like with the service and support they offer!

Cons

Their software which certainly is not theirs based on how a lot of support seems to go through outside parties, horrible service going all the up to the president!

Pros

We stayed with Shift 4 Shop/3dcartstores due to the functionality of the platform. The cost used to be good and the customer service much better in the past.

Cons

Increasing "glitches" either globally or domain specific. Long or no response from upper management on serious issues such as missing orders, description issues. etc.

Pros

ease of use, updates are automatically applied and are not done very often so there is no disruption, excellent service support, flexible program can be easily customized, competitive pricing, excellent tutorials, no coding skill is necessary for use, good communication from the company
from

Cons

too many options for add ons for similar types of add on modules, a lot of space wasted on the screen (better now with the latest upgrade), finding photos in file manager is difficult

Pros

Generally under 3dcart they resolved any issues we had quickly.

Cons

Under 3dcart very little issues except technical coding that with our 20 odd years of building sites from scratch we overcame.

Pros

Versatility, variety of plugins. Nice templates.

Cons

Customer service has really declined in the years I have used this software. When I first started you could get hold of someone early in the morning. Now it takes an executive order from Trump.

Pros

Easy to get ahold of custmer service when issues arrose.

Cons

Difficulties integrating with platforms such as facebook and instagram.

Pros

It was fairly easy to set up my store, although there was a learning curve associated with getting it set up. I like that it integrates with our credit card processing company, Payjunction.

Cons

Customer service could be better. It takes support a few days to respond

Pros

The choices and ease of use. The little clips that walk me threw something that I am trying to do for the first time.

Cons

Not having a little clip in certain sections to walk me threw the first time.
Wish you had more options like constant contact for news letters Then I would not need them and would be able to do it all in one spot.

Pros

I moved my store from another website host that use a very hard program to use. I found this software very easy to use and navigate. I was able to get my store up and running in a few days.

Cons

There is no way to make price adjustments without changing each one individually. It is repetitive and time consuming.

Pros

Our store website is built using the 3dCart platform. I really like how it tracks and give your detail information regarding the customers and their purchases. As a store manager you can really use this information.

Cons

The customer service chat takes a very long time to get responses at times. I should however mention that their staff is really knowledgeable!

Pros

Full solution

Cons

hosting resources and bandwidth fees

Pros

Once set up its easy to add product if it works correctly

Cons

My customers ALWAYS have problems with the payment screen at checkout. I've lost so much money with this account. Customers resort to calling me with their order because 9x out of 10 their is an issue with the site.

Pros

3dCart has so many features it's awesome. You can tweak every product to have individual options and custom messages etc. It also can handle buy buttons that you can place on other websites. The individual product options were very impressive.

The user interface was easy to use.

Lots of third part applications are integrated as well.

Cons

The stock templates always felt very dated. The layout blocks for new top sellers and new items etc are features that are never used on todays professional websites. The in store search did not work well and the filtering options were extremely limited without an add-on...which was still limited.

The Mobile functionality was somewhat broken and people were not able to checkout for a while.

The Customer Service wasn't too bad. The Chat was easy to get in touch, but the people on the other side didn't seem to understand their own platform sometimes. The email support was super slow.

Pros

All the features and the reliability of the company.

Cons

Pricey on the hosting plan I am on due to traffic but not reflected in my sales.

Pros

What made 3dcart (bought by shift4shop) unique, was that there was a control for even the most minute function, allowing the user to have a tremendous amount of grasp of the overall customer experience. It was confusing at times, but that was offset by the relative ease of obtaining help from technical support when it got difficult.

Cons

The CRM is absolutely stupid. I would get an email from a customer, sent to my email address, but in order to reply, I had to log back into the CRM screen. It was highly inconvenient, and I far prefer Shopify's version which pushes my response via email directly to the customer. I can respond in almost real time.

Pros

The best thing about Shift4Shop is its price point - way less expensive than any other shopping cart out there. How much less expensive? All the way less expensive - it is free. Of course there is a catch with free, but that catch isn't oppressively - you need to use Shift4Payments as your credit card processor. The Shift4Payment fees are virtually the same as the fees rom PayPal or other online processors, so it comes out to be a complete non-issue.

Another great thing about Shift4 is the support. It's impossible to learn new software without asking questions and their chat feature is great. Every time I've had a question, they have answered quickly and given me a link to the exact document or post about how to do what I was wanting to do. On the proverbial 1-10 scale, Shift4Shop gets a solid 11.

Cons

Like any software, there is a learning curve. And there are a few nit-picky things, but none of the nits are even close to a game-changer. There are a few head-scratching rough edge items - here's one example: When you enter your product's name, the default text is "Product Name" and when you click in the box, your curser is at the end of Product Name and you need to backspace those two words away. But all the other data boxes have the default text disappears when you click in the box. (Yes, I published a few items for sale with a name like "Product NameWidget") It could also be clearer if you saved a product after entering it. Another weirdness - when you start entering a new product, the image upload is right there on the new product page. But if you edit a product, the image upload is now hidden in a new tab. The only other dislike is that sometimes it takes 5 to 20 minutes for a new product or a product change to show up. I see it fine in my browser, but when I look on my phone or from another computer, it isn't there yet. Republishing the product often helps.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Shift4Shop

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Shift4Shop

Pros

Can't have pros if it deletes your site with no warning.

Cons

Deletes your site without warning you and charges you.

Pros

We used them for 2 years and had minor problems up until the end. For the last 2 months, customers were unable to checkout, or connect to our payment processor. We put in like 3 to 5 hot tickets to get fixed and day after day nothing was fixed and support got ruder and ruder with us! We lost thousands of dollars online with this company and now they are chasing us for a renewal payment! Simply put, this is bad software with a poor customer care staff!

Cons

Oh, the loss of money and our customers getting turned away online. Measures right up to the lack of response to do anything by the customer care and tech support departments!

Pros

The Shift4Shop store layout is capable of many things we require, such as different price tiers for different customer groups as well as options for each product.

Cons

Some of the formattings are not automatically symmetrical and require adjusting, and still may not be quite right. Customer service is garbage.

Pros

What I like most about the software is the fact that there are SO MANY OPTIONS! You can do almost anything with this software. I love the reward points system.....we were using something similar in a facebook group for a group of customers, but of course we had to write it all down and keep track. This program does it for you. AND......I was able to go into the settings and change the "reward points" wording to say "Queen Buck"......OMG.....that just made my day. This software is so customizable. Great job Shift4Shop! You guys ROCK!!!!

Cons

I would say the only con.....which is really not the fault of shift4shop, but the user......is there are so many features, you can get a little overwhelmed...but only at first. Once I got the hang of it....wow, it's amazing.

Pros

The program has just about everything we need and other stuff to grow into. The support people are great, they help us when needed and normally solve my issues and questions in a few hours or less.

Cons

They have changed over to a new platform last year but most of the knowledge base questions and answers are for the old platform. So the directions are misleading because stuff has moved around to different places on the site. They still allow use of the old platform and really should force customer's to use the new version and update the knowledgebase.

Pros

It works well with any level of developer. For beginners you can make and publish a product with just a name, pic and price. But the more savvy can get as detailed on the products and functionality as they want. The site even allows for custom programming and html mock ups. So as a simple to diverse system, this has been the best I've seen. And I have tried many platforms. This has been my favorite. And when they say "unlimited" they mean Unlimited.

Cons

Having such a large website sometimes things break and take time to fix. But they do have 24 hour support to help.

Pros

Integration with Google Sponsored product listing and upload.
The customer support doesn't rest until they have answered your question.

Cons

3dCart is open to new ideas and provides a web site to enter ideas too. But they are a bit slow in bringing in at least critical features.

Pros

It's an all in one solution for eCommerce, has more features you'll need to start your business or run your online store at it's simplest form. Good customer service.

Cons

Lack of plugins and customization like Wordpress Woocommerce offers. Customization involves costly up sells from the 3dcart team. Exporting to another platform if and when you're ready is NOT clean and easy of a process. Was very messy to bring data to woocommerce.

Pros

The one thing I do like about this software is that they are constantly updating and adding features. Products are easy to add. Orders are easy to manage.

Cons

The constant updates do cause glitches within the system. Unfortunately, customer service isnt always instant. I also wish there was more fields on the product page to add additional information. Fraudwatch is usually hit or miss. Sometimes it helps, most of the time it doesn't.

Pros

using 3dCart you have great opportunity and access to everything you need for creating a complete eCommerce website, online store and blog on a free of charge basis

As an aspiring seller, you don't have to own a factory before you can begin selling products online. the dropshipping platform by 3dcart is awesome

There is a top notch SEO on 3dcart that helps you optimize your website to be seen by more visitors and consequently convert more of them into paying customers

within few minutes you can sign up and set up your account. then begin to customize it with the numerous tools already available on the platform to suite what you have in mind for your business

Cons

The liability to be bear by small/upcoming seller using the drop shipping avenue could be more strictly dealt with such that the seller don't have to go through a lot of rigor to settle dispute that has to do wit orders.

Pros

-Easy to add products with details
-Easy to apply products where they are needed on the website
-Easy to customize for your website needs

Cons

- Customer service takes forever
- Some themes have scripts that are not easy to manipulate

Pros

unparalleled customization options. Solid customer support. Lots of payment gateway options. Integration with Google Sponsored, ebay, etc. Cheaper than the competition. Most importantly, the ability to tag items with metadata and key words for SEO purposes.

Cons

There's a few small glitches. Returns of individual line items is not easy. Sometimes the username/password input seems to freeze up. Knowledge base still references old platform. But overall well worth it.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Shift4Shop

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Shift4Shop

Pros

This software has a variety of templates that one can use. If you are technically savvy you can also make use of various other plugins. We liked it because ir can easily be integrated to google products as well.

Cons

Customer service seems to be a bit slow but when you do get someone, you are rest assured your problem will be solved.

Pros

3dCart has a ton of options and themes and flexibility. It offers tools both for the non-coder and the coder and an extensive CMS to cover almost every potential need of the do-it-yourself ecommerce vendor.

Cons

There are SO many options that I find it difficult to find the setting I need to adjust or edit. Online or email help is sporadic...but good when you can get it.

Pros

3dcart allows you to build your beautiful online store. You can select your choice of payments with real-time shipping. If you want to increase your sales conversions then 3dcart is the best option for you. You can easily manage products, orders, and customers.

Cons

I never found any problem with adding the products or managing my dashboard. Everything is easy to learn and use without any kind of issues.

Cons

Stupidest decision in Cost Cutting these morons ever made by discontinung Smartermail for customers. Now we have to find a 3rd party to get Orders/Communications via email at additional cost. Worse yet the damn HOOPS we have to go thru to set that up with the 3rd Party provider is ridiculous. Sometimes in business "Cutting Costs" is "Cutting Your Own Throat". If we could get off this platform I would do it in a minute and we'll NEVER recommend them to anyone.

Pros

Most everything is customizable if you can figure out how.

Cons

You will constantly run into something it doesn't do such as percentage pricing on options, but none of them do it all.

Pros

3D helped us get our online up and running fast. Their system is easy to use and had a great set of features. We literally had our store up and running in just days! When we needed a hand, they were there.

Cons

A few more design options would be a great addition.

Pros

The way the format is set up. They have made several improvements over the last couple of years. Some good and some are not.

Cons

There is an Icon at the lower left of the program for messages. It cannot me moved to another part of the screen and no way to opt out of having that feature according to customer service. Also, when you accidentally enter an invalid password IT TAKES FOREVER for it to go blank so the password can be re-entered. It reminds me of the old dial-up response before high speed. And last it does not always import into our QuckBooks correctly and is time consuming to figure out why.

Pros

It is feature rich. It does everything it should, and It even has modules that can be turned on that do even more. This is an excellent shopping cart and I now have three of them. Easy to use once you get the hang of it.

Cons

There are some things I would like to add, things I consider to be basic customizations, like the ability to add flat rate shipping at different rates per product. 3D Cart has for hire programmers to do it but for a steep price. I would like more affordable customizations.

Pros

The software is good, but it is very difficult to integrate with other tools, I had to use zapier to be able to automate all my processes, but in general it has worked correctly

Cons

the addons are very expensive, it is difficult to develop something extra, the support by chat is not live, in reality they generate tickets and take a few hours to answer, you can not use your own SSL, it is necessary to buy one with them

Pros

It seems simple to set up a storefront but if you need any customization, you will be paying through the nose!

Cons

Where do i start? Horrible to customize design, features, functions of their CMS. Very little developers in the US can even help. The customer service was one of the worst i have dealt with. Even adding additional sliders wind up costing $$$ which is free in Wordpress. Do not use.

Pros

opportunity to customize is not limited. We've been using 3D cart for about 5 years. I've been mostly happy with how it works. If you have some development background, that helps but is not required. The import/export features and the ability to have control over your site is where they shine. Customer returns are off -- you can return an order easy enough, but if you're returning single line items, it doesn't work -- you have to band-aid that part. Customer service is stellar. For the price, it offers a lot of functionality and opportunity for 3rd party integrations.

Cons

the actual back end phone order/customer service/returns etc needs tweaked.