CS-Cart Store Builder
Review of CS-Cart Store Builder Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs.
Overview
About CS-Cart Store Builder
CS-Cart Store Builder Screenshots
CS-Cart Store Builder Features
CS-Cart Store Builder Integrations
Customer Reviews
See why people love CS-Cart Store Builder
Frank T.
Verified UserConsumer Goods · 2-10 employees
CS-Cart
Great visibility on Google because the rich content provided in this software.
- Once you learn all that this software can do you will be very pleased
- CS-Cart has provided so many how-to vids to help you along
- Very little to say negative because they've been so much better in the communication with me
- This software was created in Russia and the time difference can be a little difficult at times
- I will say in the past year I never wait for more than 24 hrs for a response
Olivier L.
Verified UserApparel & Fashion · Self-Employed
CS-Cart user since 2008
I've been using CS-Cart since 2008 on 5 sites: [sensitive content hidden].I live in a country that is not CS-Cart's core target, where there is a competing "free" solution. I've tried this local competing solution on several occasions, but I've never been won over by it, either in terms of efficiency or cost. CS-Cart met my quality/price/performance criteria.After 17 years of experience in eCommerce, using and testing 4 different solutions, and after 14 years of daily use of CS-Cart, I can honestly say that CS-Cart is the ideal solution for my needs.
- I've been using lifetime Ultimate licences since 2008, which makes CS-Cart VERY cost-effective in the long term, and much cheaper than its competitors, whether in SaaS mode or on its own
- In fact, CS-Cart comes as standard with a large number of functions that competing solutions have to pay for, even "free" competing solutions that require you to buy a lot of add-ons and plug-ins to compete with CS-Cart's basic functions
- Some add-ons and plug-ins in alternative solutions often have subscriptions, which you have to pay for again on a time or update basis, whereas these same add-ons and plug-ins are included free of charge as standard in CS-Cart, and you NEVER have to pay for them again
- CS-Cart is very intuitive to use, very robust and very fast, both on the administrator side and on the client side
- CS-Cart is designed to run on a simple shared server, with a basic technical configuration
- However, CS-Cart will be more at home on a dedicated server
- On my dedicated server, my category pages with 48 products are displayed in less than 1 second
- Smarty, the CS-Cart template engine, is also simple and fast
- The source code for Smarty templates is very clean, and they contain no PHP code, which makes modifying, creating and updating them simple and efficient
- Customer support is very efficient, and the number of experts outside the publisher is substantial, leaving plenty of room for price competition
- I'm missing a few add-ons that would be useful, such as a bank connection module for payments from my local bank
- I use a free add-on from an intermediary service provider that invoices me monthly and takes a small percentage from each transaction
- Other very specific add-ons are also missing from CS-Cart, such as (to mention only those from the WordPress world) Yoast, Elementor, Broken Link Checker, PDF Embedder, Sucuri, etc
Switched From
My first eCommerce site project (launched in 2006) was based on VirtueMart. VirtueMart, like WooCommerce, is a simple plug-in for a general-purpose engine, unlike CS-Cart, which is a real eCommerce solution.I quickly realised that customising and, above all, maintaining too many plug-ins was hell. I spent hours, days and even months trying to get this task right.CS-Cart solves these problems at the click of a mouse, because it's a truly stable eCommerce solution.
Why they chose it
"If I had to leave CS-Cart, I'd choose WooCommerce, but my past experiences in terms of deployment speed, costs and, above all, maintenance time, advise me to stay with CS-Cart."
Verified Professional
Retail · 11-50 employees
I wish we would've gone magento!
Most of our problems with CS-Cart revolve around their failed update system, or system breaking updates, bad internal policies, and poor customer support. When it comes to using the software, it serves its purpose mostly, for transactional use, but at least on the version we got stuck at, forget about REPORTS! The reports system is so unwieldy you can't get any useful data from it at all. We've had to develop custom addons to generate good reports as our customers truly despise cs-carts built-in reports system. In fact, we've had to develop a lot of different plugins just to compensate for the lack in natural functionality of cs-cart (again, at least for the version we got stuck at due to their failing update routines). We are already redeveloping our 8 years of add-ons (as needed) in magento as our customers have had it with cs-cart (and frankly, our developers as well). So we've lost our butts here, I wish Magento was in a better position 9 years ago when we had to make a decision on modern ecommerce software package as our base. Save yourself the headache, choose another software, gotta be plenty of better options!
- The software has pretty good hooks, and is written in a standard enough way that any developer can modify it with addons to your needs
- But thats about the only praise I can muster
- * Their update routine is downright awful
- We have 4 different shops using this software, all of which got stuck on old versions due to their update routine failing without error message
- Their support refuses to assist without ACCESS to the server, which by contract we cannot give
- We're professionals, they can easily give us troubleshooting tips to help guide us toward fixing their mess, but nope, nothing
- Bare in mind, 4 different servers, with different configurations
- * Their support is slow to response, and often responds with very unuseful comments, so each time back and forth takes way too long when your shop is in peril
- * Their refund policies (which is to say, there are no refunds) are nothing short of thievery
- While we paid to upgrade licenses, we never got the upgrades due to the failure of the software to complete the update
- They refuse to refund when they also refused to offer support beyond "give us your server logins"
- Very unethical companyn
- * The software is prone to hackers with not very proactive effort on cs-cart's part
- They react to the problem, and to their credit, at least they offer a way to PATCH with instructions as opposed to ONLY their update routine
- We would've been forced out of their software long ago if they didn't do this, so we are grateful for the patch and disclosure on the security problems they do discover (but again, its after their customers were hacked, they should be doing proactive S&D)
Verified Professional
Retail · 11-50 employees
The Best Option
I have worked with your products for ten years. I have two websites, one with CS-CART standard and another with MULTI-VENDOR PLUS. I own the two sites and I think that without their software and facilities that allow them to position themselves well within SEO, I would have had to pay a lot of money in ads. I'm not a developer, but I can do the simple modifications myself. Furthermore, the ease of making modifications according to my requirements has allowed me to have a completely personalized site without losing my wallet in the attempt, because I get good developers willing to work, with very affordable prices. I am in South America so I do not speak English or Russian well, but that has not been an impediment to achieve excellent results.
- The cost-benefit ratio
- Maybe you can find other better alternatives, but you will have to leave all your profits in maintaining the site
- And if you have a small business, with less than 20 employees, you can not afford those luxuries
That in the updates normally the developers change the software core forcing to pay more money when they have to be done
Verified Professional
Retail · 11-50 employees
CS-Cart Excellent website software
Overall I would completely recommend CS cart to anyone trying to start a web business. I highly recommend simtech to handle all your server requirements.
- CS-Cart is extremely easy to use
- It is a fully-featured web shopping cart with tons of add-ons and potential
- I've been using cs-cart for more than 12 years and would not switch to anything
- The product is very reasonably priced for the future set
- I really haven't had any problems with the software
- the few problems that I have had over the years were actually configuration errors on my part
Craig T.
Verified UserRetail · 2-10 employees
Great product backed by fast and accurate support
Brilliant. Stable powerful platform with great addons!
- The support guys are fast and efficient
- I am not a coder and needed a huge learning curve to get my head around this
- These guys helped out in more ways than they can know
- Well done
- Need to know extensively about coding
- Not able to upgrade due to too many modified codes, so new features etc
- do not apply to me
- That is really sad
David C.
Verified UserRetail · Self-Employed
E-commerce solution
Good
Once you understand how to create a database and php it is a breeze to use I have designed two e-commerce sites with this software and after trying out others I found this the most complete solution
- Not enough templates to use but that lets you be creative and design your own
Verified Professional
Consumer Goods · 2-10 employees
Solid concept, okayish product. Will get the job done.
Once you have set it up, it is a trusty software which gets the job done. The hassle is just in getting there. You might want to see externals to get the platform up & running.
- CS-Cart offers you a tremendous amount of functionalities (and high degree of personalization) and will do a good job in handling multiple vendor accounts and loads of visitors
- Yes, it does what it is supposed to do
- Thousands and thousands of functionalities are great but
- you need a lot of manual work to enable them
- Apart from that, the overall user experience is a bit rusty at times, in worst cases, confusing (mainly on the Admin-side, not the Vendor-side)
Verified Professional
Design · Self-Employed
CS-Cart personal review.
In each new upgrade version I see the progress made by CS-Cart team, CS-Cart is a strong and flexible shopping cart, it is really simple to setup and control the look of the storefront. Experienced users and programmers can do anything with it but for average it is user friendly.
The ability to sell digital goods without having to pay royalties to other service providers and to have total control over the site storefront and admin areas
- Some features like user statics have been taken out, really miss it
Gabriel M.
Verified UserEnvironmental Services · 2-10 employees
perfect cms and shopping cart
Without cs-cart, I have to manually modify every page, one by one....tested lot of cms system....no one is like cs-cart....the same with shopping carts i have tested....no one have options you will find in cs-cart.
- I really like this software to manage web pages in an easy way, very easy to updates pages, enable and disable blocks
- in a few clicks can change pages
- all pages in creating with cs-cart are responsive
- we are starting to insert products to be selling in our site
- very flexible with lot of options for our products
- At the moment
- not have any complaints
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