3DCart Site Builder Review - Make A Website Hub

It is well known that your business will be able to create a bigger impact and reach out to far more people if it is online! And, for this purpose, your business needs to set up an online store for its physical goods, digital goods or services.

But, with the availability of many different online store builders, you are spoilt for choice as far as all-in-one ecommerce solutions are concerned. In fact, it is important to know about the detailed features of some of the top ecommerce platforms so you can make an informed decision about your ecommerce software or online store builder.

One such online store builder is 3dcart, which has been in this industry for almost two decades. And, having served more than 17,000 customers or businesses, 3dcart definitely has something that has made it last this long.

But, is 3dcart the best ecommerce platform available? Can any type of business use 3dcart to start an online store? Read on to find answers to all these queries.

Our objective is to review this fully hosted shopping cart software and list its various ecommerce features. We will also take an in-depth look at the various plans and pricing, pros and cons of the 3dcart ecommerce site builder.

3dcart Company Background

3dcart was founded by Gonzalo Gil in 1997 and is situated in Tamarac, Florida, USA. It has evolved into a robust ecommerce platform that offers a variety of features for businesses to build, grow and market their online stores.

As of today, 3dcart is an Inc. 5000 company, a Google Certified Partner and even a Visa PCI Certified Provider.

The best thing about 3dcart, apart from its technical support and customised ecommerce features, is its developer community’s ability to provide frequent software updates to all its customers by continuously imparting changes (or popularly requested features) based on feedback from real customers.

This enables 3dcart to use the latest ecommerce technology for offering more than 100 mobile-ready themes or online store functionalities. It is no wonder that 3dcart has managed to serve an impressive client list comprising big names like Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Sharp Shirter and Lukie Games.

Key Features of 3dcart

Customer Support

While dealing with any software or tool in real time, any business would want to have reliable support at all times to handle their various queries, doubts or issues. This is where the around the clock support of 3dcart comes in handy!

You can send an email (via a ticketing system) to their support team or contact them over the phone for instant responses and quick-fix solutions. In fact, you can even get in touch with their highly qualified support experts via a “live chat” option.

On many occasions, you may not even need to get in touch with the support team. Instead, you could have your queries answered by simply referring to the extensive documentation available on the 3dcart site.

You can check out various step-by-step tutorials, how-to guides and FAQs from the 3dcart support link. Alternatively, you can access the 3dcart online user manual, YouTube training videos, HTML guides and so on.

In fact, you can even learn about the latest eCommerce trends that are beneficial for your online store by accessing the 3dcart Ecommerce University. You can also become part of the 3dcart community forums and learn about effective tips to leverage the maximum benefit out of this online store builder.

It also provides access to experienced third-party designers who can empower your business with the ability to customise 3dcart eCommerce solutions as per your needs.

And, with customer satisfaction being one of their top priorities, such excellent customer support is no surprise! The commendable part is that 3dcart has not chosen the easier and cheaper option of outsourcing their support. Its talented support team is thus completely in-house and works out of their offices in Florida, USA.

Security

3dcart has obtained Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) compliance in order to safeguard the payment account data security for your business customers. It has even paired with SecurityMetrics in order to run through a series of rigorous tests for appropriate authentication of its PCI DSS compliance.

This is the same level of security that is generally seen in banks or financial institutions, which means that you no longer need to worry about your customers’ data, especially when they make online payments on the ecommerce portal of your business.

They also make provision for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates to ensure secure browsing and payment transactions.

Ease of Use

Once you sign up for 3dcart, you get a plethora of links to information that you would require to quickly start using your dashboard. You can easily fill the required business details as required, while running the setup wizard. Once you are done, you are taken to your 3dcart user dashboard, which is easy to understand and navigate.

Moreover, you can easily access the navigational bar on the left-hand side and build or customise your online store at your convenience. It also helps that you can quickly go through some introductory videos or tutorial videos from the dashboard itself. This enables you to quickly set up your online store.

From the dashboard, all the necessary steps are pretty clear with regard to adding new products, setting up payment methods, setting up shipping methods and so on.

In fact, the 3dcart dashboard offers a variety of built-in features for product pages, unlike Shopify, another eCommerce software which has limited details on the product pages.

The user-friendly dashboard furthermore offers quick access to tabs related to Orders, Reports, Products, Customers and more.

Ecommerce Site Design

You get access to a variety of conversion optimised themes (more than 100) from your 3dcart dashboard. You can look at a preview of these free and paid themes at the 3dcart theme store. It offers responsive design templates that increase the chances of converting your site visitors into actual buyers.

The best part about the various 3dcart templates is that they do not resemble each other too much. So, you can choose from a wide range of unique online store themes and you are likely to get one that fulfils your needs.

Whether you require a template for a particular industry sector or for a particular theme type (customised or professional or jazzy), the 3dcart theme store has site themes that will suit your site.

Also, the design of your online store can be edited seamlessly with the use of the simple drag-and-drop editor that allows you to add pages, products, categories and blog posts. Clearly, this editor simplifies the design elements to a great extent.

And, the CSS (style) can be edited without you having to make any modifications to the code. This goes a long way in making the task of site design editing easy, even if you are using a site builder tool for the first time. With 3dcart, it is also possible to edit HTML, using the WYSIWYG editor.

You can even use the different responsive design service packages offered by 3dcart for your online store.

These professional design services are aimed at tailoring your online portal as per your requirements and implementing the design features of your choice, including the design of the homepage, dropdown menu, frames, thank you page, product page, banners for the homepage carousel, category banners and category page.

These are professional design services that start from as low as $2,499.00.

Payment Options and POS (Point of Sale)

This software enables your online store to accept payments in the form of cheques, credit cards, cash, split payments, digital wallet payment and numerous other payment options.

It has partnered with more than 100 payment solutions, including PayPal, Stripe and BitPay, to give you the freedom to choose the most ideal one for your business.

And, it does so without any additional transaction fees or integration fees. You are only liable for the fees charged by the payment providers.

You can easily set up any of the payment option from your dashboard and start accepting payments from your customers in a few minutes. 3dcart even extends support for quick cash deposits to bank accounts within two days.

And, being PCI Level 1 compliant, you can completely rely on 3dcart for the security of payment transactions done via this shopping cart.

Moreover, 3dcart enables your customers to experience smooth checkouts on the go or from anywhere and at any time – be it at trade events, kiosks, retail outlets and more. In fact, such support for a seamless checkout makes it possible to use 3dcart even for brick and mortar store payment transactions.

This is possible because of the ease with which you can integrate with a barcode scanner, register drawer and printer. With support for online and offline payment methods, 3dcart’s POS solution is ideal for most types of businesses.

Other Features

Good inventory control, with provisions for batch editing and even low stock alerts
Product options, including bundles
Improved scope for CRM with the use of Mailing List Manager
Innovative online shopping features, comprising discounts and coupons, gift certificates, gift registries, wish lists and more
Customisable invoices and packing slips
Accurate tracking of shipments
Robust calculators for tax and shipping calculations
Integration and add-ons for accounting (QuickBooks), fulfilment (Shipwire), email marketing (Constant Contact), affiliate marketing (ShareASale), live chat (Olark) and so on.

3dcart Plans and Pricing

You can try out any of the 3dcart plans for free for around 15 days, without the need to share your credit card details. And, none of these plans involve any setup fees or transaction fees. Some of the common features of all five plans offered by 3dcart are as listed below:

Over 60 mobile-ready themes
Built-in blog
Facebook store for selling to customers via this highly popular social media site
Domain registration
Round the clock technical support
More than 100 payment providers
API access and FTP access
Bing ads credits
Unlimited hard disk file storage
Shared 128-bit SSL certificate
Checkout by Amazon, Single Page Checkout and so on

Below is a comparison of the unique features offered by each of the 3dcart plans:

Nano Plan – For $9.99 per month you receive support for up to 25 products, a maximum of 2,000 monthly visitors and 1,000 newsletter sends.
Mini Plan – For $19.99 per month you receive support for up to 200 products, a maximum of 4,000 monthly visitors and 1,000 newsletter sends.
Starter Plan – For $35.99 per month you receive support for up to 1000 products, a maximum of 8,000 monthly visitors and 2,000 newsletter sends.
Professional Plan – For $65.99 per month you receive support for up to 10,000 products, a maximum of 20,000 monthly visitors and 5,000 newsletter sends.
Professional Plus Plan – Advertised as the most popular option from 3dcart, the professional plus plan goes for $99.99 per month, and you receive support for an unlimited amount of products, a maximum of 50,000 monthly visitors and 20,000 newsletter sends.

Keep in mind that you get no transaction or setup fees for all of the plans. In addition, each plan includes the following:

In addition to the above plans, if your enterprise’s site must be able to handle huge volumes of traffic, with unlimited products, bandwidth, emails and storage, then you can go for the 3dcart enterprise package, which starts at around $999.99 per month, with a one-time setup fee of $299.00.

Advantages of 3dcart Ecommerce Software

You get access to a page specifically reserved for your inventory wait list which lists the customers waiting for some of your products. This is a rare feature and is not available with most other popular eCommerce platforms.
It offers a 30-days money back guarantee period in addition to the 15-days free trial period, which enables 3dcart users to thoroughly test all its features before continuing with it for a long period of time.
You can easily start off with 3dcart by simply having a good internet connection and an updated browser, as it is a hosted eCommerce platform. (The hosting is outsourced to RackSpace, ThePlanet, SoftLayer or LiquidWeb.)
With 3dcart, it is possible to send emails to all potential customers who did not complete their transactions and left after adding your products to their shopping cart. It also showcases reports of the sales that got recovered by this method.

It offers full integration with a POS system and support for over 100 payment gateways, making 3dcart a suitable choice for large online stores.

Disadvantages of 3dcart Ecommerce Software

It does not offer as many add-ons in its app store as some of the other famous online store builders, such as BigCommerce or Shopify.
Even though the 3dcart claims to offer around the clock customer support, it is not that quick and effective in terms of getting solutions to problems. In fact, many 3dcart customers have complained about this on online forums.
The limitations on monthly bandwidth usage, even with higher packages like the Professional and Professional Plus, may not always be best for your online store with heavy traffic volumes. Bandwidth overages are charged at $5.00 per additional 1GB usage.

The Final Verdict

We have looked at most of the key features offered by 3dcart and even considered their impact on building online stores for any type or size of business.

It offers a host of features for your online portal and it is relatively easy to use the admin panel dashboard to get the right design in place. However, professional design services are offered at very expensive rates, which may not be preferable by most businesses.

One thing is sure; it is extremely easy and cheap to start with the most basic 3dcart plan (Mini), which offers quite a lot of features, a free trial and a money back guarantee. So, you can definitely give it a try for your small- to medium-sized business.

We hope that the above information about 3dcart proves useful for your business. If you are already using this eCommerce software, please feel free to share your experience below.