With packages segmented by monthly traffic volumes, 3dcart isn’t necessarily the most suitable option for those with looks on a high trafficked store from the outset. However, it is particularly useful for those looking to get off the ground, and more than holds its own in terms of features and functionality.
3dcart review: in a nutshell
3dcart is a powerful and feature-rich platform that lets you build an e-commerce store all on your own, and then have it launched for the world to see.
They power more than 23,000 stores operating globally, and give you access to every e-commerce feature you might need. Simply speaking, with 3dcart, you can construct a working online store from start to finish all on your own.
3dcart is a hosted solution. This means that you don’t have to install any software, or take care of any server-related issues yourself. You can just focus on managing your store and adding new products.
Who’s 3dcart best suited for?
3dcart delivers a very interesting offering among the competition. Mainly due to two things:
- They give you an easy-to-use e-commerce platform that doesn’t require any development or site building skills.
- At the same time, they also offer you an optimized and advanced structure that’s capable of handling hundreds of products.
What this means is that 3dcart is a great solution for online stores that expect to grow fast (or are growing fast already), and want to work with a platform that scales well and can handle whatever number of customers and sales.
Features in 3dcart
Here’s some of the most interesting features in 3dcart:
- Easy to use and customize.
- No transaction fees.
- 24/7 free tech support
- More than 100 designs to choose from.
- Designs optimized for desktop and mobile.
- Integration with eBay, Amazon, Google Shopping, Facebook, and Shopzilla.
- Unlimited products and product categories (on the top plan).
- Upsells and crossells.
- Customer reviews.
- Digital products.
- Waiting lists.
- Secure hosting (with Level 1 PCI).
- Marketing and SEO friendly.
- Tax handling.
- Order management and fast processing.
- Handling returns.
3dcart review: pricing
3dcart offers 5 main models of pricing:
While the Power Plan is a bit expensive, you won’t have to use it until your store grows really significantly. For most cases, the middle $65.99 / month plan will be enough to get you started. As part of it, you can have up to 10,000 products in your online store and handle 20,000 visits / month (about 660 / day).
The cheapest plan – $19.99 / month – looks good feature-wise, but it only lets you have around 130 visitors to your store daily.
The online store designs in 3dcart
There are quite a lot of designs to choose from in 3dcart. The list really is massive and offers a nice variety of styles and colors. You will surely find something that suits your brand there.
Additionally, for every design, you can go into the editing mode, and fine tune everything to match your expectations 100%.
However, 3dcart’s is not the most user-friendly interface, and while it is feature-rich, it does have its learning curve.
On the front-end side, the store pages are really clear and easy to follow for the visitor – something that should have a positive impact on your conversions and sales.
Managing products in your 3dcart store
3dcart gives you a sample shop setup and data when you sign up for a free trial. That way, you have something to work with, and can get to know the platform and its traits. You can browse through those example products, or add your own right away.
That being said, the screen where you add new products looks a bit intimidating at first. You might spend a while there before you figure out all the ins and outs of it.
At the end of the day, the occasional complexity of 3dcart looks to me like a direct result of the platform’s impressive range of features. It simply requires a certain number of settings panels and steps in order to make all this manageable.
When it comes to online payments, 3dcart really stands out by letting you use literally every payment method in existence:
Review conclusion
Is 3dcart the right tool to launch your online store with?
Pros of 3dcart
- Unlimited Product Storage Options: Whether you’re running a tiny store with a handful of products, or a massive online catalog with hundreds of products, your product storage options are unlimited with 3dcart. This makes it the ideal platform for achieving scale, beneficial for businesses experiencing strong growth.
- Wide Range of Payment Gateways Supported: 3dcart integrates seamlessly with a wide range of different payment gateways, providing your buyers with a good deal of flexibility when it’s time to checkout. Avoid putting potential customers off, with as many payment options as possible so you can cover all the bases.
- Strong Chat and Phone Support: When setting up your e-commerce store on a platform of your choosing, there are few things more frustrating than a lack of support when you need it. With reliable instant chat support available, or someone on the other end of the phone where IM doesn’t cut it, you can rest assured knowing you are well supported if you choose 3dcart.
Cons of 3dcart
- Not the Most Intuitive: Getting stuff done on 3dcart is not as intuitive as with some other platforms, and there are some processes that feel more cumbersome than perhaps they need to be. If you’re patient, you can eventually get the hang of the software, but it is clearly less direct than alternative competing platforms.
- Supplementary Charges: With 3dcart, you often notice paid-for features as an optional extra, which other platforms allow as part of their standard price plans – not usually a massive deal, but annoying, when you consider this is coming directly from your margin, as a largely unnecessary extra cost.
- Limited Free Templates: The choice of free templates on offer through 3dcart is limited, and the visuals are often less attractive than those available on Squarespace, Shopify or a number of other e-commerce platforms.