With the expansion of online businesses, e-commerce tools have become extremely important. They not just help you create an attractive e-commerce website but at the same time, manage your payment and selling options and keep track of your customers.
The two e-commerce platforms – 3DCart and Shopify are widely being used by people. As many of our readers are confused of which one is better, below are few points of comparison to help you decide between the two, giving you a little more bang for your buck.
Cost
There are very few shopping cart solutions in the market that have a lower signup cost. At present, 3DCart comes at a package of $19.99 per month, which is its lowest package for e-commerce solutions with zero transaction fees. Shopify, on the other hand, comes with an affordable package at $29 per month with a 2% fees on all the transactions.
Shopify gives a free trial for 14 days whereas 3DCart gives for 15 days. Both have different plan ranges. Shopify has the plan range from $29 to $179 whereas 3D Cart has it from $19.99 to $199.99.
Ease of Use
With the Simple Store Launch process, customizing online stores in Shopify is easy. Shopify utilizes a basic layout editor that does not require any prior HTML or CSS knowledge. In terms of 3DCart, it offers a much better and an in-depth store for good customization, allowing for modifying all the codes and themes on all sorts of plans. Furthermore, Shopify offers an easiest way of launching an online store in just few minutes.
Features
3DCart offers limited bandwidth, but has a range of store marketing tools such as gift certificates, affiliate programs, registry, product review, friend referral and integrated email marketing. However, 3DCart also has few limited features on smaller plans like the lack of QuickBooks Integration, 3DCart Guru and Chat plugin.
Shopify allows for unlimited bandwidth, but on smaller plans, Shopify has limited features. For example, any smaller plan does not incorporate the theme editing or the capability to use coupons and discounts.
Shipping and Payment Options
3DCart offers a large range of shipping options including multiple shipping locations, real time tracking, drop shipping and dimensional shipping weights.
In terms of Shopify, it has limited shipping options. Through Shopify, you can only set up shipping rates in a number of ways including tiered, fixed price, weight based and location based rates.
Search Engine Optimization
3DCart incorporates some very nice features for SEO, such as custom URL structures and dynamic title tags. Dynamic title tags are a wonderful way of improving SEO optimization as they permit to create template tags for your products by using keywords.
Shopify offers a basic SEO optimization. You can import or export meta data that need to be added manually on a product basis. In fact, you can overcome this problem with the help of some add-ons offered by this tool, but they cost extra bucks.
Service and Support
3DCart offers 24/7 service support with all plans, which is pretty much a rare sight that has gained some negative reviews by the reviewers.
Shopify, on the other hand, magnetize numerous newbie to e-commerce, having the best support system possible. Besides, its support service lives up to many customers’ expectations, providing unmatched service by giving a 24/7 phone support, which is again a lesser seen sight among e-commerce platforms.
Drawbacks
Although there are advantages of using both these e-commerce platforms, they still have many loop holes. The biggest one is the transaction fees associated with Shopify. Moreover, it does not provide Facebook integration. With millions of Facebook users, you definitely cannot ignore this part. Besides, it has limited features depending on your plan.
In terms of 3DCart, the installation requires additional cost that many other solutions do not charge. Also, it comes with many unwanted default features and limited add-ons. It has a limited bandwidth too.
Summary
If you are planning to start a small online store, then we would recommend you to go with some self-hosted solutions like Magento or PrestaShop due to their better flexibility. Magento comes in multiple languages, gives discount codes and is integrated with eBay, along with unlimited bandwidth. It is an open source heritage and hence more flexible.
PrestaShop is full with features. The software is free, providing a perfect solution for small businesses. Some free features include unlimited currencies, layered navigation, analytics and reporting, promotion rules and many more. It also has many good SEO features and gifting options. It is available in 40 languages.
If you choose either of them, the following eCommerce-friendly web hosts have the optimized packages that help start a store online budgetly.