10 Best Shopping Cart Softwares in 2021

Do you want your customers to make insecure payments? Do you want to lose potential customers who are browsing your store but cannot store items for consideration? Of course, no, right? That’s why a shopping cart is important for any eCommerce business.

What’s more, choosing a shopping cart for your business needs much care. It will depend on your demands, capabilities, objectives, etc. Luckily, in this post, we will cover all things you need to know about shopping cart software, the importance of it as well as 10 best shopping cart providers that you can rely on.

Now, let’s get started!

What is shopping cart software?

Shopping cart software is one of the most important tools for online businesses. A shopping cart provider is a company providing users with the shopping cart software. The providers are responsible for supporting merchants with their software. For those who do not know, here are some basic characteristics of shopping cart software:

• A functionality in which the items customers choose will be added to a basket when they browse the website. The information of the items will be kept in a specific set of time.
• Saves people time and effort since customers do not need to buy a product at one time but can change their minds and remove items as they wish.
• Enables customers to add promo codes and discount codes, or automatically apply them to their purchases.
• Allows checking out various payment methods and models.
• Helps collect and transfer customer data to business systems.

Why are shopping cart softwares important?

In fact, accepting transactions is indispensable when it comes to building an eCommerce business. Many types of software out there are capable of supporting secure online transactions. They can even add plugins that including eCommerce tools to an existing website. A shopping cart provider is important because:

• Helps users simplify marketing. These providers will give you built-in SEO and easy optimization which can help you rank higher in organic search. There will be more opportunities that customers find your store and your business can lower acquisition costs.
• Allows automatic shopping and taxes because many providers give you the service of printing shipping labels and calculating sales tax according to customer data like location. In this way, you can send notification emails to the right customers.
• Enables businesses to manage products better since this shopping cart software gives you a broader understanding of SKUs, variations, product names, or images.
• Helps businesses manage customers and their orders well. Thanks to shopping cart providers, you can filter by customer. In this way, you can easily check their status and create a more relevant strategy for each.
• Integrate back-end systems. Data you get from your point-of-sale systems and online stores will help engage customers and build up strong brand reliability.
• Helps businesses gain more extra features. Besides checkout, you possibly approach cart abandonment recovery, custom integrations, etc.

10 best shopping cart softwares in 2021

1. BigCommerce

BigCommerce’s shopping cart software is based on the cloud and very user-friendly. You do not need to get much experience to use the shopping cart software of BigCommerce and sell items online. However, BigCommerce does not offer many advanced features or customizability if you have a huge company and ask for more tools. Being quite challenging to navigate, BigCommerce is still one of the best shopping cart software that you should look at when researching.

Highlighted features

The reason why we regard BigCommerce’s shopping cart software as one of the best within the market is due to the following features:

• Every language is available, but BigCommerce uses translations for many of them, making the content inaccurate sometimes.
• In-depth analytics make you analyze how effective your performance is and measure other data well. That means you have full control over your entire online business.
• Multi-channel selling features
• Well-organized SEO features and coupons
• Up to 40 payment gateways
• Good customer support via phone, email, LiveChat or Forums
• The unique pricing structure of paying based on revenue, which is suitable for all, especially those who don’t know what the level of their businesses is.

Pricing

There are many pricing plans with different feature sets that you can choose based on your budget and demand. Their pricing plans start from $39 per month, in which you can get basic features. If your business wants more tools, you can consider upgrading to more expensive plans.

What’s more, BigCommerce offers a special pricing structure in which how much you pay depends on your online sales over the last 12 months. This structure makes it accessible for all types of business.

Type: Hosted shopping cart software

Rating:5/5

2. Magento

Being an open-source shopping cart software, Magento seems to be one of the hardest software to set up and use. However, thanks to its feature set and complete customizability, Magento is a popular provider of shopping cart software with more than 260,000 merchants on board. SSL certification is not included in Magento and support is also limited. On the other hand, you will get the freedom to create the store and add in features as you wish. If you are business owner with web development experience, using Magento is undeniably rewarding.

Highlighted features

• Customer relationship management features
• Multiple languages are available via translations
• Apps for both IOS and Android are all available
• Purchase options are instant
• Multiple payment options
• Freedom in customizing shops
• Customer support via email, phone, and LiveChat

Pricing

The pricing of Magento’s shopping cart software will depend on your store’s value and revenue. Only when you request a quote directly from Magento will you know how much you need to pay. In general, the price will be about $1988.00 per month

Type: Open-source shopping cart software

Rating:5/5

3. Shopify

Shopify is well known for most businesses. Plus point for Shopify is that it prioritizes the speed, conversion, and customer experience. In fact, Shopify can be 60% faster than its competitors. Besides speed, the solution also cares about the technical side, hosting, and security. That’s why many customers find it easy to set up and use Shopify’s shopping cart software. On the other hand, the blogging feature of Shopify is not good enough since you need to pay extra costs for transaction fees and third-party apps.

Highlighted features

• Multiple languages via its translator
• Insight system, which helps view the statistics of the discounts, cart abandoned rates.
• Integration with 100 payment providers
• Easy-to-use customization of its templates
• SEO features to get more traffic, ads, coupons, blogging, and landing pages

Pricing

The standard pricing plan of Shopify is just $29 per month, which is suitable for all types of business. You will be given a set of basic features. If you want more, consider upgrading to more expensive plans in which the most costly one is $299 a month.

If you just want to check out the features before officially using them, you can look at the 14-day free trial of Shopify without paying any costs.

Type: Hosted shopping cart software

Rating:4.5/5

4. PrestaShop

Being an international shopping cart solution launched in 2007 in Paris. This solution is open-source shopping cart software that is released with an open license. Thanks to its intuition and ease of use, PrestaShop has more than 300,000 users. This software is suitable for any EU merchant and brand which is looking for an open-source solution. However, if you suffer from some problems, it’s hard to look for help since the customer service of PrestaShop is quite expensive.

Highlighted features

• Available for developers to access and edit the source code, which means it’s customizable and scale-able.
• A global SSL secure selling experience
• Summary pages
• Confirmation pages
• Possibility to navigate during the checking out
• Tax features
• A large marketplace for extensions

Pricing

PrestaShop is completely a free product. You just need to pay for the extensions, themes, and SSL certificate.

Type: Open-source shopping cart software

Rating:4.5/5

5. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is free open-source software that can only be used with WordPress. When using this, you can add a shopping cart as well as come eCommerce features to your store. Setting up and using WooCommerce needs to be done with experienced developers. However, the solution offers support that you can rely on to do it yourself. It’s a free product and many of its plug-ins and widgets are free too, which is suitable for even small businesses. We highly recommend WooCommerce for WordPress users.

Highlighted features

• Automatic sales tax calculation regardless of the currency, which saves customers time and effort
• Customer support via email and forums
• Multiple languages available via WordPress translations add-ons
• A large number of possible extensions
• An app available for both IOS and Android

Pricing

WooCommerce is totally free with many free features. To approach other advanced features, you need to pay.

Type: Open-source shopping cart software

Rating:4.5/5

6. VersaCommerce

VersaCommerce is a free shopping cart software based in German. This solution is free and users just need to pay for extra features and themes. Plus point of VersaCommerce is that the software brings about the opportunity for customizing not only fonts but also colors. Using VersaCommerce, you can make sure your store looks more professional than others. Being an open-source shopping cart solution, VersaCommerce is pretty hard to set up and use. However, it is not the hardest, which can be approached by well-designed customer support and a smooth interface.

Highlighted features

• The smooth interface
• Professional looks
• Free courses after signing up for better improving the use of the software
• Good level of customer support via LiveChat, email, and phone
• An app for both IOS and Android
• Customizable themes

Pricing

When being at the basic level, you don’t have to pay. It’s a free solution. If you want to get more advanced features and themes, simply choose the paid package in which the most expensive one is $199 per month. Besides, the free trial lasts 14 days and ends automatically.

Type: Open-source shopping cart software

Rating:4/5

7. Shopware

Shopware is a German shopping cart solution that offers both web-based and self-hosted options. There are many pricing plans for you to choose from, ranging from free options to costly ones with a huge set of features. Multi-language features and an intuitive interface make Shopware one of the easiest software to use. This solution is highly recommended for small-volume businesses that have less experience in technology. Besides these advantages, taxes will be pretty challenging when it comes to Shopware.

Highlighted features

• Training course to help users set up the shopping cart
• Good customer support with LiveChat and email support. The 24/7 support on the paid plan is quick and effective
• Highly scalable service
• Rule building tool to create logical scenarios
• A smooth interface

#### Pricing

The basic plan of Shopware is totally free. The feature package of this plan is also extensive. In case you have the demand to approach a more advanced feature set, you can go with the paid solution, which is up to $199. However, if you are not sure and your budget is limited, we recommend starting with the free trial and testing them out first.

Type: Both web-based and self-hosted shopping cart software

Rating:4.5/5

8. 3dCart

Being a US-based shopping cart software, 3dCart is a solution with multiple price packages, suitable for all types of business. Moreover, 3dCart is easy to use and available in many languages. The solution also includes SSL certification making your store secure. However, 3dCart does not have an app on either the IOS or Android platform.

Highlighted features

• Easy to set up and use. The navigation process is more difficult but simple to get used to
• 24/7 customer support over LiveChat, phone, and email
• SEO prompts and marketing tools to increase your sales
• Available SSL certification making your store secure and more legit
• Changeable themes

Pricing

There are many pricing plans for you to choose from. The basic plan is only $19 per month, which is suitable for smaller businesses. If your business needs more features, look at more expensive plans in which the most costly is $299 per month. 3dCart also offers a free trial of up to 15 days so that you can make up your mind after testing it out.

Type: Hosted shopping cart software

Rating:4.5/5

9. Volusion

Volusion is suitable for smaller businesses, especially those targeting customers who use English. It is because the shopping cart software offers just English as its language option. Via Google Translator, the result may be incorrect. There are paid pricing plans on Volusion in which the unlimited solution can give you all features you need. Despite being quite challenging to use, the customer service of Volusion is excellent in which you can get help quickly any time you need.

Highlighted features

• Multiple language options via Google Translator
• Amazing customer support with 24/7 support, LiveChat, and phone
• Suitable for small-volume businesses
• The process is fast and secure
• SSL certification is available in the unlimited feature packages

Pricing

The free trial of Volusion lasts 14 days and ends automatically. You do not have to have any card to sign up for this trial. You can upgrade to make use of more features in which the cheapest one is only $29 per month and the most expensive one is up to $299 per month with all features needed.

Type: Hosted shopping cart software

Rating:4/5

10. OpenCart

The last shopping cart software we want to recommend is based in Asia, Hong Kong. This one is a free self-hosted solution that is suitable for all types of business, especially the small-volume ones. The software has everything you need from a shopping cart solution, although the extra features are quite costly. The SSL certification is not included, and you have to pay for it. It is also not easy to use, but the active forum support of OpenCart can solve your problem easily. In general, if you have a small store with a low budget or a huge one that is ready to pay for features, OpenCart is for you.

Highlighted features

• Customizable themes to suit your demand
• The initial setup price is cheap, which is suitable for small businesses
• Free software with basic features
• Good email customer support and an active forum to get advice

Pricing

OpenCart is a free product. You only have to pay for the SSL certification and extra features. Being free software, there is also no free trial but a demo.

Type: Open-source shopping cart software

Rating:4.5/5

How to choose a suitable shopping cart software for your business?

Besides the 20 shopping cart providers we have mentioned, many softwares offer the same features. It may be challenging for business owners to choose from such a huge number. However, don’t worry since we are about to give you an in-depth guide on how to choose a suitable shopping cart software for your business.

Step 1: Identifying the goals and objectives

Thinking carefully about the goals and objectives is important for any strategy. When it comes to selling online, it is even more essential. Before researching potential shopping cart software, you should question why you want to sell online first. That is not simply to gain higher sales but detailedly and precisely what you want from an eCommerce business. You can take it simply by answering the following queries:

• Do you want to drive more online traffic to your brick-and-mortar operations?
• Is your eCommerce store the main avenue for direct-to-customer sales?
• What’s your goal in terms of weekly sales volume or yearly sales volume?
• Are you going to sell all over the world or just within the country?
• What are you going to sell and how many of them are you going to sell?
• What are you going to do to build a customer lifetime value?

Step 2: Identifying what you want from your shopping cart features

Next, let’s use the goals you set in step 1 to list out features that your eCommerce website needs. It will be more serious than you think since this step may affect the pricing and the whole process. Features are related to your customer lifecycle. For instance, if you are not going to sell internationally, you do not need to list the multiple currency support feature. While it may be complex, follow the below guide:

• List out the most important features which are compulsory such as the payment gateway.
• Add in the additional features based on your specific demands such as automatic sales tax or shipping rate calculation.
• Prioritize the list from 1 to 5 in which 1 is an essential feature and 5 is a handy extra one

Step 3: Choose the type of shopping cart you want, a SaaS or a self-hosted one

There are two types of shopping carts which are hosted shopping carts (SaaS) and self-hosted shopping carts (open source). Both of them have their pros and cons and it’s impossible to tell which one is less risky to take.

The SaaS solutions bring about the balance of flexibility and ease of use in which you can save time and effort without developing all the features you want. This solution poses some constraints to customization. That means you will be limited in customizing the tools of your store.

On the other hand, the self-hosted or open-source solution lets businesses host their websites on their own via the platform provider. You have freedom in customizing, but it also means you need to have experience inin developing, technology, and more.

Many businesses choose to buy extra apps from the app store to connect marketing tools or extra order management features. You should consider carefully when selecting the type of shopping cart software. What do you want to join? Investing continuously in security and site maintenance or customizing in limits but no need to care about technical obstacles.

Step 4: Considering the ease of use

In this step, you need to test the ease of use, which is critical to prevent any crisis. What you expect may turn into friction if customers cannot use the shopping cart easily. So, be sure to take the following practices to make your cart as much user-friendly as possible:

• Provide the option “Guest Checkout”
• Make sure the shipping options comparison can be seen easily
• Make sure your customers can edit data on the order review step
• Make sure all the optional and required sections are marked

What’s more, remember to check if you can edit the checkout settings so that you can decrease the cart abandonment rates.

Step 5: Considering the customer support

Taking a shopping cart may be challenging for some business owners, especially those who are newbies in the industry. So, reviewing customer support is important. You should ensure that you can easily contact the provider’s support team and get satisfactory answers to your questions quickly.

Quick responses and multiple support channels will be plus points for shopping cart software. However, not many of them have that. Therefore, you should research carefully and also find out what troubles you may have. Can you solve these troubles by reading pages of technical articles or by calling the support team directly and get detailed solutions?

Conclusion

As you can see, shopping cart software is important for any online business to make customers’ experience easier and your management more cohesive. When it comes to choosing a suitable shopping cart software for yourself, it turns into even more complex since there are multiple providers available out there. You need to consider your demands, store locations, sizes, and more to decide which provider is right for you.

Now that you know more information about the best shopping cart software. We hope that you can rely on our list to find out the best shopping cart software for yourself. If you have questions related to the topic, be free to leave a comment in the section below. We will reply to you as soon as possible. Share this post with your friends and visit us for more if you find it interesting.

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