3dcart software is backed by more than 15 years of vendor experience in ecommerce, having supported over $4 billion transactions worldwide. But that’s not the reason why we like this ecommerce platform. We like it for what it is now. Aside from the expected standard shopping cart features, this software excels in providing one aspect that many shopping cart solutions overlook: marketing capabilities.
In this review, we’ll discuss the five features we think make 3dcart unique, plus you’ll get a quick look at the awards won by 3dcart from our team of B2B experts. You can also read a summary of the most common comments about the software from actual users. Moreover, we talked with 3dcart’s CEO to talk us through a few real-life scenarios where 3dcart can really help and he’ll also discuss about the company’s plans for the future improvement of the software. You can see for yourself how impressive the software is by getting the great 3dcart free trial which will allow you to try out all the features for 15 days.
What are the highlights of 3dcart?
SmartCategories feature classifies products automatically and in real time based on your rules
Facebook Store lets you sell via your fan page and also helps your affiliates display products on their profile pages
Over 100 professionally designed and conversion optimized themes including mobile responsive designs
iPad POS app lets you take your store to trade shows and sales events
Quick Edit Bar lets you change themes and tweak elements with drag-and-drop ease
More than 100 payment solutions
SEO capabilities and social media services
You can find more information about features of 3dcart in our full review.
5 Things We Like About 3dcart
1. Feature-rich and scalable platform
3dcart is designed as a one-stop shop for small and medium businesses that require a stable and complete ecommerce platform. It’s marketed to anyone who wants to build, run, and manage an online store without having to learn the technical side. These include hobbyists, small business owners, and medium-sized companies that have no technical department. We also think 3dcart can handle the standard shopping cart needs of even larger enterprises because its premium plan supports an unlimited number of products.
Its web builder has over 100 professionally designed, conversion-optimized themes that let you create a store in minutes. You can stop right here and start selling. At its basic your storefront is already mobile-responsive and features:
An intuitive dashboard
Checkout process
Facebook Store
Over a hundred payment gateways
Built-in blog
API access
24×7 support
Domain registration
Bing ad credits.
Likewise, there is no transaction fee or setup fee.
As you grow the business, you can tap 3dcart’s SEO and social media integration and services (sold separately) to boost sales even further. If the store handles more traffic and orders, you can consider integrating third-party support for email marketing, affiliate tracking, and mobile commerce tools.
In order to take your store to even greater heights, you can tweak the software using its REST API and integrate your highly customized apps to serve the more specific needs of different niches. From the minimum of 25 products, you can now sell 10,000 products and up to an unlimited number, that’s pretty much matching Amazon’s inventory.
We’ve lined up a few more interesting features of 3dcart that you can enjoy as you grow the business from scratch to a large enterprise:
SmartCategories allow you to display products as “on sale” or with “free shipping” all with just a few clicks
POS app, which allows you to accept orders and credit cards on your iPad, a handy tool during trade shows and sales events
Unlimited product attributes and options based on your rules
Quick Edit Bar, which lets you change themes or tweak its elements with easy drag-and-drop interface
256-bit SSL encryption, the same security level used by banks
Built-in warehouse management module
2. Great marketing features
We like the robust storefront and the flexibility of themes, yes, but what makes 3dcart stand out among other ecommerce platforms are its built-in marketing functions. These include CRM, point-of-sale, promotions, and SEO capabilities. A heads-up, though, many of these features or services are billed separately from the basic storefront package.
Conducting email campaigns is simplified with Newsletter smartLists, which let you group buyers based on purchase history or behavior. You can set group rules based on what makes sense to you, for example: buyers of a specific product; buyers at specific time or date; buyers with specific volume amount; buyers with unpaid order… The categories help you send emails that resonate with their recipients. Moreover, smartLists can handle real-time data, so even as you send out emails, buyers who are currently in your shop and match the group description will receive the latest message from you. If you’re sending out a deal, it can tip over current buyers who are having doubts to make an impulse purchase. 3dcart also lets you auto send emails to shoppers who abandon their cart, either to motivate them with deals or inquire if they have concerns. You’ll be surprised that reducing your shopping cart abandonment rate even by 1% month over month can generate a lot of sales by year end.
We also like how 3dcart makes it easy to request product reviews from customers. Shoppers who place an order are automatically sent an email requesting a product review. You can tweak the message or embed a value deal to encourage feedback. Product reviews are sought after by many shoppers and are also rich organic content that can give you presence on page-one search results.
You can further expand 3dcart through its seamless integration with over 100 third-party apps or via its Rest API to add marketing tools for subscriptions, email marketing, help desk, reporting and analytics.
Another great marketing service of 3dcart are its SEO plans (sold separately). You need SEO to get traffic from search, but dealing with a freelance specialist can be a headache. It’s often better to get this service from your ecommerce vendor, who actually wants you to succeed so they get more business from you. Admittedly, 3dcart’s SEO plans are a tad more expensive–starting at $149.99 per month–than getting a freelancer, but what you need is results and reliability, not just to cut your costs. Over time, your SEO costs can easily be glossed over by additional revenues off search traffic.
3dcart also offers social media service plans (starting at $299.99 per month), but you can do social media marketing better if you have a personal story to tell. We’re actually more interested in how the software allows you to create a Facebook Store on your Facebook fan page. It has a one-click checkout button to immediately send Facebook users to your store. Moreover, your affiliates can create their store directly within their Facebook profiles and only display the products they want to sell. A tracking code is embedded using the SocialCommerce tool. The Facebook Store module is available in all 3dcart plans.
3. It’s a free, responsive and mobile platform
3dcart offers more than 100 responsive, mobile-friendly themes. We find most of the templates to be professionally designed, but more importantly, they ensure buyers will have a smooth browsing experience when they’re using a tablet or smartphone. 3dcart is offering mobile browser compatibility–it works with Safari, Chrome and other mobile browsers–which should not be confused with a native mobile app. This setup is cost-efficient because it helps you to launch a mobile platform fast and for free. It’s included in all 3dcart plans. Still, if you want a native app for Android or iOS or both, you can purchase 3dcart Apps for third-party mobile platforms, but these require separate fees.
4. Payment gateway flexibility
It’s often the overlooked feature when shopping for an ecommerce software: payment gateway support. We’ve seen quite a few shopping cart systems that hark about their robust features only to fall short of supporting no more than 3-5 major payment gateways. Although this doesn’t look like a major limitation for businesses that sell to the US or UK, think about the long term: what if your business grows big and starts getting customers globally? Can you accept payments from Russia, India or other countries that are giving you substantial orders?
That’s why seeing 3dcart support over a hundred payment gateways got our attention. For serious online sellers with products to sell to the world, whether now or tomorrow, the software ensures your business smoothly accepts orders from almost anywhere in the world. We’ve checked around and realized that 3dcart has the highest number of supported payment gateways in the market today. That’s something to consider when buying an ecommerce platform.
5. No coding skills required
We’ve mentioned that 3dcart is designed for small businesses even though it has robust features as order management, inventory management, and marketing tools that can handle the needs of large enterprises. That’s because you don’t need coding know-how to use the software. It’s clearly a feature any small business owner will like.
Instead of tweaking HTML, CSS, or PHP, users need only to drag and drop elements or tick a setting to enable or disable a feature. Likewise, over 100 themes offered by the vendor are conversion optimized, which means 3dcart developers have already thought of how shoppers usually behave on an ecommerce site and made sure the themes are properly adjusted to these behaviors. In fact, we can see at once that the checkout process is intuitive and optimized for desktop, tablet, and smartphone displays, helping customers to breeze through the buying process.
3dcart Pricing Plans
You can select one of five different pricing plans offered by 3dcart. Each on can be paid for on a monthly or annual basis, with a discount for the annual plans. You want to try out 3dcart before you decide if you want to pay for a plan? Just sign up for 3dcart free trial and see if their software meets your requirements. The free trial plan is available for 15 days with no credit card required and with free tech support. You can find more information about 3dcart pricing here. No transaction and setup fees are present in any of the plans.
Nano Plan: $99.9/month
With this plan you will get support for up to 2,000 visits per month and up to 25 products. Other features available in this plan include: somain registration, personal guru session, Facebook and mobile stores and a build-in blog. You will also get access to API and a reliable 24×7 tech support. Finally, there’s $175 in free ad credits included in every new plan.
Mini Plan: $19.99/month
This plan includes all features from the Nano plan and offers extra support for up to 4,000 visits every month and for up to 200 products.
Starter Plan: $35.99/month
This plan includes all features from the Mini plan and offers extra support for up to 8,000 visits every month and for up to 1,000 products.
Professional Plan: $65.99/month
This plan includes all features from the Starter plan and offers extra support for up to 20,000 visits every month and for up to 10,000 products. Its suitable especially for larger companies with many clients and a wide offer of products. You will also get access to a useful live chat feature with this plan.
Professional Plus: $99.99/month
This Plan is an expanded version of the Professional plan. You will get support for an unlimited number of products and integration with Quickbooks, eBay and DOBA. The plan also includes $225 of free ad credits.
What Customers Say About 3dcart
Neil S. from Hartford, CT sells folksy art items sourced from different countries. He said he started selling locally, but a year after, he’s also getting orders from international markets due to his supply chain network. “I was quite surprised to get orders from distant countries, then I realized some of my suppliers will link to my store to push their raw materials.” Neil admitted he didn’t foresee the need to sell abroad and he’s glad 3dcart provides payment flexibility. “The last thing I want is to tell a customer that I can’t accept her payment.”
Meanwhile, Paul Reymore from Columbus, OH likes the secure hosting employed by 3dcart. “I read they’re using the same security infrastructure as banks,” he recollected the time when he was browsing for an ecommerce platform. “That caught my attention. I only have a few high-end products to sell, so I only need a few features, but security should be my topmost priority.”
For Leilane, who sells fashion accessories from anklets to bracelets, SEO support is critical. “I’m in a commodity market so search is important.” She said she has no time for learning all the SEO technical gobbledygook, “I like the idea that I can focus more on creating jewelry ideas in my workshop than spend a lot of time in front of my site.”
Awards Won by 3dcart
Best Shopping Cart Software of 2015
After a thorough review of all major services on the market 3dcart was chosen as the Best Shopping Cart Software od 2015. Our review team was really impressed by the well-balanced overall combination of usability, functionality, flexibility, customization, marketing capabilities, and integration offered by 3dcart. The software merited an impressive 9.8/10 SmartScore in our tests and its quality is supported by a very high user satisfaction rating of 98% which further shows how positive clients are about the service.
Supreme Software Award for 2015
We were very happy to distinguish 3dcart with this award, which is only given to the very best B2B solutions and shows that the vendor offers the highest possible level of service. Our review team was really impressed withIt highlights the vendor 3dcart’s extensive knowledge of the industry they’re selling to and the needs of their customers. That knowledge is effectively put into action in order to constantly improve their product to meet the changing expectations of their customers.
Exceptional Customer Support Award for 2015
This certificate is granted to products that offer high quality level of customer support. We evaluated both the versatility of ways to contact 3dcart support team, their response time and ability to solve a series of problems we had. 3dcart is very proud of their 24/7/365 premium technical support that comes with all their plans, so we put that to the test and we were impressed by the quality and speed of support we received. Moreover, we really appreciated 3dcart’s active communication about any updates of feautres released.
Great User Experience Award
This certificate was granted to 3dcart in recognition of the especially high level of user experience offered by their service. We were very satisfied with how simple it was to start using their services and the user interface of 3dcart is well-designed and makes all working processes a pleasant experience. What is more, we found out that 3dcart, despite being designed for small businesses, provides great user experience for business of all sizes. It combines both ease of use and robust features in a single, well thought out solution.
An Interview with 3dcart CEO
Gonazlo Gil
Founder & CEO
of 3dcart
We asked Gonzalo Gil, founder and CEO of 3dcart, what makes 3dcart unique and what notable specific problems it has solved for its 17,500 active online stores in 19 countries. Here’s what he told us:
Why is 3dcart unique? How is it different from its competitors?: Gil pointed out that although 3dcart is scalable, all accounts at whatever stage your business is will enjoy rich features. “Every 3dcart account has access to built-in social media integration, order management software, email marketing tools, a blog, email, an iPad compatible Point-of-Sale app, and dozens upon dozens of additional, robust features designed to provide large and small retailers alike with everything they need to grow and expand their business.” For Gil, these features help both small businesses and large enterprises to kickstart their online store at once even at different scales.
The CEO also said their customers are very happy with the company’s 24/7/365 premium technical support that comes with any 3dcart plan. Equally important, he said they provide not only support, but useful updates to customers. “Our developers work vigorously to provide new, innovative services and features on a regular basis, ensuring 3dcart remains an eCommerce trendsetter.” Recently, the company has launched and announced to its clients the new 3dcart 7.0, which Gil said is the “most powerful, scalable, fastest hosted ecommerce platform today.”
What common problems can be solved by 3dcart?: Gil considered 3dcart’s mobile platform as very helpful to online sellers. The changes in mobile-friendly standards imposed by search engines, he said, have put a lot of pressure on online sellers to change their site to be responsive. “To assist online store owners with this massive change, 3dcart offers 100+ responsive, mobile-friendly themes, all of which can be installed and applied within a few minutes,” he said. “At no additional cost, a 3dcart customer can update their store to meet mobile-friendly standards, thus removing any threat of search-engine penalization.”
Another major benefit, Gil said, is that 3dcart has tremendously helped non-techie sellers to run an ecommerce business. “Our platform is designed for user-friendliness, ease-of-navigation, with the ability to customize design and content without ever needing to modify coding.”
Finally, the CEO corroborated our views about the need for online sellers to support numerous payment gateways. “If a merchant does not have access to a wide variety of gateways, they may find themselves unable to expand their market beyond domestic borders. [Our] customers have access to over 100 ready-to-use payment solutions, more than any other eCommerce platform, ensuring their ability to grow and expand domestically and internationally.”
3dcart SmartScore and Customer Satisfaction
Our experts have conducted a full review of 3dcart detailing its features, user feedback, customer service, and other key aspects. Using our SmartScore system we gave 3dcart a very satisfying score of 9.8/10, while our Customer Satisfaction Algorithm estimates the overall user satisfaction rating for the software at 99%. If you’d like to have your product considered for any of FinancesOnline awards or quality certificates please contact us.
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