As an online marketer, getting the best shopping cart software for your e-commerce business is an absolute necessity. This tool makes it easier for customers to buy products from your website, input their payment options, and then proceed to checkout and complete the sale. The best e-commerce shopping cart can help you reduce cart abandonment and make customers overall shopping experience a seamless one.
But with so many options, how do you select the best shopping cart software to enable online payments, prioritize customer experiences and ensure the security of transmitted information?. Choosing the best shopping cart software for your business will depend on your company size and goals, usability, payment support, customizability, and pricing.
In this article, we will share some of the best shopping cart software that can help your e-commerce business.
What is Shopping Cart Software?
Shopping cart software is used by e-commerce businesses and online stores to easily manage inventory, add or remove products, handle payment processes, calculate taxes, and everything else required to manage a website and fulfill orders. The shopping cart allows customers to shop on a website by creating a list of products they want to buy and adding them to the virtual cart. A customer can then view the cart to see which product has been added to it. They can choose to add more products or remove the ones that have been added.
After selecting the product, the shopping cart software provides a secure means of paying for the products in a virtual checkout. The owner of the online store or website is then informed of the purchase so they can start fulfilling the order through the packing and shipping of the items.
The shopping cart software can benefit e-commerce business owners in the following ways;
- Allows website visitors to buy products from your online store
- Help handle the payment process or solutions
- Add or remove a product
- Manage inventory
- Allow customers to add promo codes and special discounts
- Calculate taxes
- Check out using different payment methods and payment models
Therefore shopping cart software is a tool that allows e-commerce business owners with no tech experience to manage an entire e-commerce process.
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Types of Shopping Cart Software
1. Hosted shopping cart platforms
This shopping cart software is owned, maintained and upgraded by an e-commerce vendor. They are also known as a SaaS (software-as-a-service) solution which combines both shopping cart software and web hosting. This kind of shopping cart software saves you the trouble of finding a web server that meets the standard of the software. Instead, the vendor provides some core e-commerce features like hosting, bandwidth, security and continued software upgrades for a monthly or annual fee.
Hosted shopping carts are user-friendly and flexible which saves you a lot of time and money in developing all the features you need. Furthermore, some hosted shopping e-commerce shopping carts offer a web-based interface for you to manage your store. This means you can run your business directly from a web browser or you can download their software. This makes your business very accessible. Examples of hosted e-commerce shopping carts include Bigcommerce, Shopify, Shif4shop etc.
2. Self-hosted shopping carts.
This is a shopping cart software that is self-hosted by users or through their platform provider. It is also called an open-source shopping cart and requires a more hands-on development experience. It is an e-commerce site that you have to build yourself or hire a developer to build on a dedicated or shared hosting environment. An open-source shopping cart has both benefits and drawbacks. One of its benefits is that it gives you greater flexibility and control over the result. However, they are usually harder to set up than their hosted counterparts. Most platforms require you to find a hosting provider, choose your e-commerce platform, and go through an installation and setup process.
Overall, a self-hosted shopping cart gives you near limitless freedom when it comes to the entire shopping experience. However, it requires a bit of technicality to enjoy those full experiences.
Examples include Opencart, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Magento, etc.
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1. Shopify
Shopify is a fully-hosted e-commerce platform streamlined for small B2C businesses. It is one of the most well-known online shopping cart systems in the world. This software takes care of the technical side of your store, including the hosting, speed and security. Shopify allows users to create and customize their online store with its drag-and-drop builder. Users can also list and sell their products while giving customers the ability to browse and place orders. Furthermore, Shopify offers its in-house payment processing including integration with 100 payment providers as well as a robust app store of over 1,200 integration possibilities.
Features
- Unlimited Products
- Easy to add discounts or promotions
- More than 170 themes to choose from
- Easy-to-use interface
- Sales channels for various platforms
- 24/7 Support
- Manual Order creation
- Gift Cards
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
Pricing
- Basic Shopify: $29.00/Month
- Shopify: $79.00/Month
- Advanced Shopify: $299.00/Month
2. Shift4Shop
Shift4Shop is another software program that helps business owners with building and managing an online store. The software offers a good standard of software at an affordable price for each level of business.
Shift4Shop comes with payment processing options, allowing you to integrate with over 100 different processors without charging transaction fees. It also includes a personalized domain with all of its plans, as well as multiple built-in shopping cart checkout options. Furthermore, it offers user-friendly product listings management, unlimited product variations, one-page checkout, coupon management, digital downloads, automatic tax, shipping carrier cost calculation, abandoned cart saver, and much more.
Features
- Abandoned cart saver
- product listing management
- Various payment gateways
- Unlimited product variations
- One-page checkout
- Coupon management
- Digital downloads
- Free trial
- Live support
- Flexible limits on the plans
- Integrates with LiveAgent, OptiMonk, Mailchimp, Post Affiliate Pro, Facebook, PayPal, QuickBooks Online, and others.
Pricing
- Startup Store – $19/month
- Basic Store – $29/month
- Plus Store – $79/month
- Pro Store – $229/month
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3. PrestaShop
This is another open-source licensed e-commerce shopping cart solution used by more than 270000 shops. The software supports over 250,000 websites in 60 different languages which are free to download. Additionally, PrestaShop gives you the option to find your web hosting or work with its hosting partner. Furthermore, the software integrates with programs like Zendesk. Users can also customize their store by adding colors and logos. With PrestaShop, you can browse through a large collection of pre-made professional templates and themes. The program can be downloaded on Windows or Mac computers or you can run it straight from the web.
Features
- Comes with a free trial
- Free to download
- SEO tool
- Tax calculation
- E-commerce analytics
- Abandoned cart notifications
- 250+ payment gateways
- Automated emails
- Support for multiple languages and currencies
- Highly customizable
Pricing
Starting Price: $29.44 Per Month
4. Abante Cart
AbanteCart is another e-commerce shopping cart software that you can use to manage your e-commerce business. It is used to manage all the numerous components of an e-commerce sale most efficiently and effectively. AbanteCart is trusted by over 31,000 sites. The software offers around 300 free and paid extensions with SEO tools and multi-language and currency support,
Features
- Email Marketing / SMS Marketing
- Inventory Management
- Multi-language
- Multi-Currency
- Payment Gateway Integration
- Order management
- Discount and coupons
- Content management system
- Store customization
- DIY store
Pricing
AbanteCart is free to download and install. However, you must plan to spend on hosting, themes, integrations, and plugins.
5. OpenCart
OpenCart is one of the best online open-source shopping cart management software that’s free to download. The software integrates with other sites and programs, such as WordPress, Microsoft Excel, and QuickBooks. Its point-and-click setup makes it ideal for those with little or no programming experience. In addition, it comes with more than 13000 extensions and an inventory management system that makes it easy to track sales, see what’s most popular, and know exactly what you have in stock.
With OpenCart, you can easily customize your product and incorporate category meta tags. In addition, you can also get sales reports and analytics with multi-language and multi-currency support
Features
- Customer Support
- Promotions Management
- Multistore management
- Inventory management
- Email Marketing
- Payment Gateway Integration
- Order management
- Store customization
- SEO and channel management
- security
- Product Database
Pricing
Starting price is $25
6. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is another popular e-commerce shopping cart software that is used to manage the shopping experience of your customers. It is an Open SaaS platform which offers hosted shopping cart software as part of its all-in-one e-commerce platform. The software allows you to create an online store with the ability to sell products and services. It comes with a drag-and-drop website builder, store management tools, pre-built integrations with popular business systems and an array of ready-to-use apps.
Features
- Customer Support
- Mobile app
- POS invoicing
- Discount and coupons
- catalog management
- Email Marketing
- Inventory Management
- Payment Gateway Integration
- Security
- Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
- Design Template Gallery
- SEO and Online Marketing
Pricing
- Standard $ 29.95 Per Month
- Plus $ 79.95 Per Month
- Pro $ 249.95 per month
7. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is another popular self-hosted shopping cart for WordPress websites. It was developed and maintained by Automattic. The software comes with some e-commerce functions like inventory management, shipping, and tax options. It has multiple themes that you can customize to create a professional-looking online commerce store. WooCommerce comes with numerous extensions and integrations with a wide variety of e-commerce solutions including LiveAgent, CartonCloud, and Cognito.
Features
- Accept multiple payment gateways
- Inventory management
- Offer and accept coupons
- Over 400 official plugins
- Integrates with multiple sites
- Unlimited product categories
- Web-based
- Analytics and reports upon completion of transactions
- Integrate and sell products from different platforms including eBay and Amazon
- Customize your site using over 30 free themes and templates
- Comes with a mobile version of your website so customers can purchase products from any location
Pricing
Free
Conclusion
There’s no all in all shopping cart software out there, however, some software has some advantages over others due to their features and cost. Choosing the best platforms will depend entirely on your e-commerce goals, features, and your budget. This guide will help you streamline your e-commerce shopping cart according to your business goals, features and price.
You can go through the list and look for core features that meet your business needs and goals and start contacting them.
