CS-Cart Multi-Vendor

Avantages

CS-Cart Multi-Vendor was very easy to setup and get running quickly. The fact that the software is installed on our own server and there are no limits or extra fees based on users, etc like other online markets makes it easy to justify the upfront costs. There is a lot of flexibility with add-ons and a community of developers behind CS-Cart that allow us to make the marketplace our own. The documentation is also very good allowing for quick answers to our problems. For the couple add-ons that we did need to get developed the process was imple and the rates were reasonable.

Inconvénients

Currently the importing of products is very robust and I feel we have not yet fully understood how this all works, but this is just a matter of us getting through that learning curve. If you have not worked with other platforms that are built in a similar way (this reminds me a lot of presta shop) then it may take you a while to understand the logic of how the site is put together.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir CS-Cart Multi-Vendor 

Pourquoi passer à CS-Cart Multi-Vendor

Avantages

The support team is very professional, friendly and they usually go straight to the point. Also, one time fee was something that made me go for this software and not others. I like they listen to our needs and try to do they best to implement solutions on the upgrades. The platform works pretty well and it is responsive.

Inconvénients

It is not very user-friendly and sometimes it becomes quite complicated to use. For example, if I want to add a video on a product file, I have to embed it with code as there is not chance to just upload it. My vendors do not really get to used to it as they find it tricky to use so I wish it was much more intuitive. For example, one of the hardest parts to configure is the shipping method for every vendor as this also varies depending on the delivery location. I think it could be overall much more intuitive.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à CS-Cart Multi-Vendor

Avantages

nothing, it use to be ok but the quality have gone way down

Inconvénients

It is now very challenging to maneuver. I updated the cs cart and was expected to get support as the update was big and expensive, but I did not get any support even though the transition to the new website did not go smoothly. No one can make an order without phoning me for support. The new shopping cart was not only a waste of money but I lost a lot of customers! The new website is a nightmare and I can not get ANY support. My emails are being read but not responded to.

Avantages

We were looking for a solution that would enable us to incorporate an affiliate marketing component. CS-Cart was way ahead of the competition.

Inconvénients

The access control module is not as comprehensive as one might want. It therefore is difficult to restrict users from carrying out functions that you may want restricted.

Avantages

1. High-quality written code
2. Design and working with templates
3. Convenient work with products
4. SEO-optimization and promotion
5. Integration with online payment and delivery services
6. Regular updates
7. User-friendly admin panel

Inconvénients

1. The checkout process
2. In order to somehow compensate for the lack of functionality, you have to buy addons
3. Quality control of addons on the marketplace
4. Standard caching algorithm
5. Expensive addons
6. There is no integration with fulfillment services
7. No guides for sellers

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à CS-Cart Multi-Vendor

Avantages

On the surface, the software appears to do everything that we wanted. We were 90% sure we were going to pay for this software after evaluating it. We loved how the software was intended to function but the reality of how it functioned was another story.

Inconvénients

Every single time we had an issue and contacted support it took hours to days for them to respond. Many times the responses did not even address the issues. The "support" rep that kept replying to us kept saying they were more on the sales side and that is why they did not understand everything about the software?

We were 90% on board and ready to pay to use this software but every time we dove further into using the software a new problem would occur and support would disappear. It seems that they had very little care in converting us to a long-term paying client. We did PAY for their hosting and installation of the software but even after they took that money support was nonexistent.

We had a client make a vendor account from the front end. After the client made the account it erased all our other vendor accounts and gave the client admin access. Support as usually disappeared as soon as I brought this up to them.

Evaluating this software during the demo has been nearly impossible and 100% the reason why is because their support team is THE ABSOLUTE worst I have ever dealt with in my 20 years of working online. YOu would expect a support team to want to makes sure that they convert a demo client into a paying client but with this company, they truly seem to not care. Maybe after they see this review they will finally decide to respond?

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à CS-Cart Multi-Vendor

Avantages

I liked the design of the application. The look and feel was good that is why I was attracted to it. Also, the admin demo seemed nice and simple. Also speed is good. I had a good google page speed score while running on AWS.

Inconvénients

There are massive problems with this application. I only discovered it when I started to discover those Upon purchase of this application I was given 90 days support period. I thought that if I find any issues, I would be able to use the support time to get the issues fixed. I understand that every software in the world has at least some issues. But I didn't realize that these guys consider 90 days support right from the purchase date till 90 days. That was a shocker. My support period expired and by the time I discovered massive problems, this support was already over. Now they charge even more money just to provide support.

Now coming to issues:

This application has serious problems. Because if you are talking about running an entire marketplace, you are talking about a big operation.

Missing Features or Wrong Functionality:

if a brand joins the marketplace, you cannot add their staff. This is such a basic thing and it doesn't even exit in this app.
Refund functionality does not substract the amount from accounting. Though I created a work around for it but its a major problem.
You cannot add staff for a vendor. And a vendor cannot add their staff in the app. Imagine you are running a marketplace and a large brand joins you. They have many physical stores. You cant add staff.

Security Breach:
This app allows a vendor to create web pages, blog posts and menu links on the main website. This is a serious issue. And they have not fixed it till today.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à CS-Cart Multi-Vendor

Avantages

when your business depends on your software, you can't offer poor support. Two months ago, I changed my template in order to be ready for Christmas. It was the beginning of November. I asked them to rebuild the mobile app, because when you change your template, the mobile app stops working.
Two months later, IOS version is still not done. And as everybody knows, the real buyers use the iPhone, not Android. They destroyed my Christmas season; god know when I will finally get my mobile app. As for the money I spent? Around $7000. Yeap, that's the kind of support you get for $7000.

Inconvénients

The support is awful and highly expensive: you have to buy points: you don't use all points, you lose your money. You don't have enough points ? you have to buy more than what you really need.

Avantages

One time fee. You buy it, it’s yours for life.
Super easy to customize.
A plethora of options.
Vendors can customize their storefront.
Great forum. People are always willing to help.

Inconvénients

This is only a con for me living in Canada, but because they are overseas, the time difference means a delay in response time for any support issues or general questions. Thankfully, I’ve never had any issues!

Avantages

It has been almost 2 year since I have started using CS-Cart Multivendor software for my ecommerce marketplace. I have tried almost 20+ php shopping cart scripts available in market. Prior to using cs-cart multivendor, I had spent thousands of dollars in trying out different solution and opensource software.

However, After I purchased cs-cart multi-vendor for my website, I am amazed with cs-cart multivendor features and how it can create boundless possibilities to operate my website.

The most thing that I liked about the CS-Cart Multivendor software is the backend/admin section of the software where I have limitless possibilities to configure my website. Whatever the features I can imagine, either it is already built-in or i can find it in the extensive addon marketplace offered by CS-Cart. With cs-cart, I believe my website offers same or better experience than amazon or any other global marketplaces. I am truly thankful to the amazing cs-cart development team. :)

Inconvénients

I cannot say cs-cart is perfect in every possible way, the most thing that seem to be lagging in the software is the mobile application. With such an amazing shopping cart software, cs-cart team seem to be overlooking the fact that most of the online shopping happens in mobile applications. I would expect same quality of mobile application bundled with the ca-cart multivendor software so that the entrepreneurs get their arsenal is ready to conquer their dreams.

Avantages

I was pleasantly surprised with the depth of functionality that this system has straight out the box. I have launched a fully functional marketplace for personalised products with only a tiny spend on software development. All the functionality I would have wanted is already there straight out the box. The options configurations are quite sophisticated so I was able to set up very complex products giving customers the ability to completely personalize their products before ordering. You are able to easily sell digital products as well.
The processes have all been well though through. It takes vendors minutes to set up their shipping once you as the marketplace administrator have loaded all the postal codes / locations.
You are easily able to set the system up so that you can approve vendors, vendor products and any changes they make to their products before they go live on the storefront.
Easy to manage what you charge the vendors and the transaction / financial management is easy to understand and use for both the marketplace admin and the vendors.
Its also great that there is so many add-ons that can be purchased in the CS cart marketplace which can literally be clicked on and off. This allowed me to add a messenger tool -customers can message the vendor directly from the storefront to ask questions about the product). It also allowed me to set up a vacation status for when vendors are away (customer cannot order vendors products while vendor is on vacation).

Inconvénients

When I first started with the system 3 years ago, the user documentation was really bad and consequently took me forever to figure out how things worked. Its almost as though someone just typed up what they saw on a screenshot but did not explain how it actually worked. However, they have obviously put a lot of effort into the documentation since as now when i look something up, its very clearly explained and easy to follow.
When logging an issue, although they respond immediately, they typically take 2-3 days to address the issue. However, when they do, its always 100% and I never have had to go back again on the same issue. Additionally, my issues have never been urgent, so 2-3 days has not bothered me.

Avantages

This software was recommended to me by a website designer. Now that I have worked with the software for a while, I find the software to be very intuitive and easy to use. The best part is that I can do everything myself. I don't have to pay for programming, and I am not paying monthly payments. Between the software functionality and the available add-ons from developers all over the world, there is everything needed for a competitive ecommerce multi-vendor site. I never dreamed I would have the ability to create this type of ecommerce site myself. This software represents an amazing amount of technical ingenuity. There seems to be no end of what a person, with no internet or ecommerce skills can do with it. This program gives me access to an entire world and all the tools to reach it.
Since I've been building my site and learning about the CS-Cart community, I am impressed by the constant work of CS-Cart and the world of developers who are constantly updating the software to be at the top of the technological advances in ecommerce online sales and marketing.

Inconvénients

Since I was new to ecommerce, it took some time to understand how to manipulate the blocks to organize the information on the page. The learning curve is a bit steep at first if you don't have any experience with using blocks. While the user guide is very helpful in explaining the basics, I found that I spent a bunch of time just moving stuff around and more or less learning by trial and error. The 1-3 minute tutorials don't cover enough info to put the puzzle together quickly and effectively. I would recommend a series of tutorials for beginners, such as myself, that takes more time with learning from scratch, with lots of examples how the blocks work and how all the functionality goes together.

Avantages

Easy to implement and use
Lightning fast, gets A score from any web site speed test out of the box
Tons of built in features. You barely need to install any additional add-on.
Great support and steady upgrades

Inconvénients

The biggest concern is the lack of well built themes and add-ons for very specific needs.
Some tiny detailed features need to improve but developers improve the overall package with each upgrade

Avantages

CS-Cart Multivendor Plus provides out of the box a lot of the functionality we looked for like common product base, reseller microstores, reseller accounting and payments, reseller plans, easy marketing and promotional campaigns. We run also a single store Magento ecommerce site and found that a lot of the functionality we had to purchase as extensions had already been included in CS Cart. CS Cart is also very "light": eventhough our CS cart site contains 10 times the products we have in our Magento store, the size of the database is many times smaller.

Inconvénients

The software comes with many features out of the box and others are available from the market place. However, compared to Magento the number of readily available functionality extensions is more limited and the community of freelancers / developers is smaller too. So far this has not been a problem, but it could mean custom development if you want to integrate with your favorite accounting, warehousing, payment, and for example emailing solution. Also, extension updates are typically free only for a certain period of time after which you have to subscribe to the upgrades which can become quite costly.

Avantages

It is very easy to work with, the features are in abundance, and it caters to pretty much every scenario covered in running a multi-vendor marketplace operation. It is also developer friendly, so developing custom modules is easy. The support from cs-cart is also one of their best features.

Inconvénients

Front-end interface needs an upgrade. There are a lot of JS libraries catering to super fast front-ends. This is one area that CS-Cart should focus their energy on. I understand that it can be done with custom theme development as well, but I'd like CS-Cart's official support on it. We have seen that with recent upgrades, the admin panel has received a good facelift. But the "responsive" theme that cs-cart delivers by default, needs a lot of rewrite, or perhaps a decoupling from the core smarty engine and make it more API-driven.

Avantages

Hii, If you buy to Cs-cart, you should be know that;
No have technical support, if you need to technical support you have to pay 200 USD monthly and, they don't even have support for critical errors from the system. they never take care of the problem.
there is no enough documentation about the problems, if havent enough documentation, they should know that have to be give free technical support.

Inconvénients

No have technical support, CRM, SEO management and stock management

Avantages

The fact that the software is multi-vendor helps a lot to add value to the customers and to the seller. It is still quick to set up, in terms of the base. There are a multitude of features which are very handy for customer and seller management.

Inconvénients

Managing and adding products is still quite simple, on the other hand when it comes to the design and display management of the pages it is quite complicated. We are far from the ease of Shopify. If only the icons of the blocks which are often all the same, and we don't really know what they do at the start. I would say the biggest loophole in CS-Cart is really this part. Not to mention that the software comes with a basic template which is rather outdated. Luckily there are several templates that you can buy online.

Avantages

The features are perfect for someone who want to launch a marketplace, you have all you need to launch your marketplace quickly. They often update, which has always been at the forefront of updates from other market players such as paypal or DHL for example.
It's very easy to understand the back office : how to add product, how to add category, vendors plans...
And even you have huge needs, there is Multi-Vendor Plus.

It's THE software for anyone who want to launch a marketplace without spending a fortune

Inconvénients

I think there are only one thing, the default design. I think they can do a effort to do a better modern design.

Avantages

EVERYTHING! For one year, I was looking for a good multivendor software and I tested several ones. But CS-Cart Multivendor has completely excelled my expectations also because the cost-effectiveness is excellent. You don't find this anywhere else... Everything is extremely user-friendly and highly customizable. You can set as much tax rules you want, shipping methods and much more. Also, when I need help, CS-Cart answers within 1-2 days which is just awesome. Oh and I'm an absolute beginner in coding but I managed everything by my own (www.urbankissed.com) because it is so easy to use!

Inconvénients

The credits I need to pay when I need help could be a bit cheaper. But that's it!

Avantages

Most of the plugin are included on the package and you don´t have to buy them separately with the risk of incompatibility.
User friendly, very intuitive and intuitive

Inconvénients

The price, but considering the quality and timing of the support, including the features, it´s worthed.

Avantages

Very, VERY responsive support team. If we would have known how much support they provide we'd purchase this product faster and without absolutely no doubts!

A huge number of features and settings that we ourselves did not think about, and they are available even in MultiVendor basic version.

A very simple, block-based system for creating page layouts - even a person without an IT background will understand it.

A lot of detailed documentation.

Inconvénients

We had difficulties with design theme integration in the promotions block.

It’s not evident how to delete from delivery or payment processors lists ones we don’t need to be available to vendors.

Avantages

Visual format, makes setting up and managing easy, abundance of options and functionality. Great support.

Inconvénients

It used to be that updates were not as often as they could be, buts thats greatly improved lately & completely up to date. Keep doing what you're doing cs-cart!

Avantages

I like all-inclusive solution. I have all what I need to start business. It's attractive. Developers have organised all useful options on the one software package.

Inconvénients

More sophisticated software needs more skills. Of sure, when you want to personalise your website you should go inside software. It's not so obvious as I would like. I work on website with 2 programmists because my competence is not enough. And, there are a lot of features for russian market and less for international.

Avantages

Everything is very user friendly. The technical support alone is great. I have talk to other technical support and CS Cart has the best. They are very helpful and to the point.

Inconvénients

I would like to see the updates done automatic.

Avantages

Easy administration, very functionality in basic package, good page loading speed, the ability addons. It is better to try once than 100 times to read. I would recommend to install the trial version and check all the reviews in practice. I am sure that you will be pleasantly surprised how many good things forgot to write in reviews!

Inconvénients

No cons. Although... few qualified specialists who can properly modify it. But this situation is not only with Multivendor