3dcart Review
3dcart eCommerce Reviewed
As one of the oldest and the best eCommerce sites, 3dcart was founded in 1997 and released to the public in 2001. It’s great for mobile selling and social sharing. Moreover, this is best for advanced developers who like to tweak the functionality of their sites through the platform’s powerful API. Although the templates in 3dcart are a bit outdated, it’s still a powerhouse eCommerce site builder. In this 3dcart review, we will look into its functionality, benefits, pricing, and more aspects that make it a top choice among online stores.
Millions of web stores are running in 3dcart. As a feature-rich platform, this wouldn’t come as a surprise for users. Also, 3dcart is fully hosted just like its top competitors Shopify and BigCommerce.
Almost everything is built-in on 3dcart. But is this a perfect choice for your online store? Read on.
Key features
Be it for mobile selling of digital and physical goods, 3dcart has a lot to offer its users. Its dashboard is packed with features including a content management system, social sharing, blogging, and more.
What is 3dcart for serious developers? This platform would be an enjoyable platform to use, thanks to its well-developed API. You can integrate third-party software and tools needed to run your online store. Here are some of its key features:
Connectivity to other eCommerce platforms. For those selling downloadable digital products, 3dcart is the best option. It offers a lot of tools for physical products as well. You can also connect your 3dcart store to Shopzilla, Amazon, and eBay.
Tax and sales calculators. Be it for small and large purchases, there’s an integrated tax and price calculator so customers will get real-time quotes.
Built-in blog. Although 3dcart leans on eCommerce, it also has a built-in blog for SEO purposes. You can run a blog to boost the visibility of your store and to share information with your customers. You can also create newsletters and emails using the built-in tools.
Check-out options. Depending on your marketing strategy, you can create a one-page or up to three-page checkout. This will increase the conversion rates and reduce cart abandonment. In case the customer abandoned the cart, there’s an abandoned cart recovery tool in 3dcart.
Waiting list. If ever a product runs out, 3dcart has the feature that will let you create waiting lists as you replenish your inventory.
These are just a few of 3dcart’s features that you can explore and exploit to build your online store. If you wish to acquire more add-ons, you can source it from 3dcart’s app store.
Inventory management
With 3dcart, managing your products will be a breeze due to its intuitive UI and tools. A huge list outlines your products so you can see which one is running out of stock or needs more attention.
One of the best features of 3dcart is it has a separate waiting list for customers who are queued for the purchase of the product. Not even 3dcart’s top competitors have this functionality. Overall, the ease of managing and adding products is as convenient as what you’ll experience using Shopify.
Adding your products include two processes. First, a pop-up window will ask you to enter basic product info like the title, description, and type. Once you saved this, you’ll be forwarded to more detail fields. Here, you can adjust the shipping fee based on the dimensions of the package. On the same page, you can set the pricing and save everything.
Managing the products would be smooth sailing as you’ll receive notifications if a certain item is low in stock already.
You can also access the discount feature on the same page but in a different tab. Everything about pricing, taxes, shipping, and inventory are neatly filed in one area. This makes 3dcart very user-friendly.
Design and website templates
To choose a theme, you can access the theme store right on 3dcart’s dashboard. There are over 90 themes, a combination of free and premium templates. But by looking at some of the designs, there’s not much difference with the free and paid ones.
However, the templates aren’t really that ugly, but it’s not very impressive either. As some say, it’s more of an OK set of themes. If you have the budget, it’s best to purchase a third-party theme that will work with 3dcart.
Don’t get this wrong. Just because 3dcart themes are not always diamonds doesn’t mean it’s not worth fixing. If you know something about web designing, you can try your hand on their theme editor. Here, you can add HTML and CSS codes. On the other hand, 3dcart’s what-you-see-is-what-get (WYSIWYG) editor makes designing easy for non-coder users.
Payment gateways & shipping
Overall, 3dcart has over 100 payment gateways which are better than many of its competitors. Some of the platforms you can integrate are Square, PayPal, Beanstream, Stripe, and Sage. There are no transaction fees in 3dcart, but the gateway of your choice may impose its own rates.
By looking on the long list of payment portals, almost all you need in terms of payment is already in 3dcart’s built-in system. You can also set up credit card processors, slip payments, cash, check, and even money order.
And to make sure that you’re on top of the sales, there’s a handy integration of QuickBooks for your accounting. When it comes to shipping, you can use the likes of Shipwire to power your online store right away. You can also choose the courier that you want for your eCommerce site.
Security features
As one of the most popular and oldest eCommerce site builder, it’s second nature for 3dcart to have optimal security features. First, every site hosted here would enjoy the use of a shared 256-bit SSL. The SSL certificate is free, but you have to check-out using 3dcart’s special domain: (your store domain.3dcartstores.com). If you don’t checkout via this page, you’ll be paying an additional $99 annual fee for the SSL.
It’s also added peace of mind that 3dcart has a Level 1 PCI DSS compliance. This is a must-have for all websites handling payments and selling. To give you an idea of how secure this is, large banks and financial institutions have the same compliance.
Aside from these, 3dcart also utilizes a tool called FraudWatch. This monitors all the transactions on your store and alerts you if there are potential red flags.
Marketing and SEO
If you avail at least the Plus Store package as your 3dcart starter plan (see 3dcart pricing table below), you’ll enjoy a suite of tools dedicated to marketing. Some of these are email marketing newsletters, 3dfeedback for engaging your visitors, Daily Deals, Group Deals, and more.
For larger stores, the Pro Store package is advisable as it includes Auto Campaign Responders, Gift Registry, Reward Points, and Automation Rules that all attract customers. You can find all these useful tools under the Marketing Tab. Even if tons of functionality is located here, each one is neatly tucked for ease of use.
When it comes to SEO, 3dcart will make it convenient for you just the same. You no longer have to do the technical job as 3dcart already optimized its platform for you. The canonical tags, Robot.txt, rich snippets, sitemaps, and Google Analytics among others are all pre-integrated.
3dcart customer service
Many online store owners put a lot of value to reliable customer service. When it comes to 3dcart support, each user will enjoy its 24/7 customer service team. You can send an email or call the support team whenever you need and you’ll get an answer. If you want swift solutions, they have a live chat platform as well.
Take note, though, that the level of support will depend on the package you avail. For example, the Pro package offers Priority Support while the Enterprise Package has Dedicated Support. If you want intensive attention through the assignment of an account manager, you need to invest more. Nevertheless, the cheaper packages are all supported so you have nothing to worry about if you have a micro or medium store.
Pricing
The 3dcart’s pricing isn’t a far stretch from its major competitors. But the best part here is that for as low as $19, you can already start a store with unlimited product slots. Compared to BigCommerce, 3dcart’s packages have more inclusions geared to make eCommerce management easy.
| PACKAGE | STARTUP STORE $19/mo. | BASIC $29/mo. | PLUS STORE $16.50/mo | PRO STORE $24.50/mo. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Staff accounts | 1 | 2 | 5 | 15 |
| Products | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Transaction fees | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
You can also avail an enterprise package with customized pricing. For large stores, the enterprise package will have unlimited disk space and email hosting. The annual sales limit is also higher.
Overall, each plan has the following perks as base inclusions:
-Facebook store
-Domain registration
-Access to API
-100+ payment gateways
-24/7 customer support
-Bing Ads credits
Take note that this pricing in our 3dcart review may change without prior notice depending on the promos run by the platform.