The Ultimate 3dcart Ecommerce Reviews (2023)

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3dcart was founded in 1997 and is a well-known ecommerce platform designed to help e-store owners be as competitive as possible. With a plethora of features built directly into the software, opening and running an online store is fast and effortless. As of 2014, they power more than 17,500 global merchants. Read this 3dcart review to see why this company is regarded as one of the top ecommerce platforms.

Note:

In 2020, 3dcart was acquired by Shift4 Payments and renamed – please chek out our Shift4Shop review for updated information.

3dcart Reviews: Features

The features through 3dcart are rather plentiful, with mobile selling, and some of the best tools for selling on places like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Pretty much everything is built-in, giving you access to things like a blog, newsletters, CRM, and email. The backend dashboard is super easy to play around with, and they have a responsive version of the dashboard for making quick updates while on the go.

What's most interesting is that 3dcart has a powerful API for integrating with various other apps and tools. We like this for more advanced developers who really want to get in there and customize.

api

Along with selling through social sites, you can connect your store to places like Amazon, eBay, and Shopzilla.

They also offer an app store with a substantial number of add-ons, even though the platform doesn't offer as many add-ons as Shopify or BigCommerce they still offer access to the most important ones such as Quickbooks, Shipwire, and ShareASale.

3dcart Reviews: Ease of Use

backend

Upon landing on the 3dcart dashboard, you'll be able to recognize where to go to start building little pieces of your website. It looks similar to WordPress and Shopify, and both of those are fairly easy to understand, with the navigational bar on the left-hand side. We particularly enjoy the fact that 3dcart has a few intro and tutorial videos right on the dashboard. This isn't always the case with ecommerce platforms, so the support here is smooth.

In addition, the steps you need to take are all outlined right in the dashboard, walking you through tasks like customizing your store, adding a product, selecting a payment method and setting up your shipping methods. Other tabs on the left include Orders, Products, Customers, Marketing, and Reports.

product_page

So, let's say you want to add a product. Is it easy to do? It's really not that bad, but I would say that the product pages look a little more intimidating than that of Shopify and BigCommerce. However, everything is there like images, categories, pricing, shipping, descriptions, keywords, discounts and upselling. In fact, I would argue that the product page is more similar to BigCommerce because they have tons of product features built-in here. Whereas Shopify is more simple and watered down, but you are expected to use apps.

3dcart Reviews: Pricing

The pricing is 3dcart is pretty straightforward, as the company offers five plans to choose from. Some people may think that this will make the decision a little tougher, but it's always for the better that you have more pricing options. This way, you don't have to get stuck paying for a plan that's too robust or one that doesn't have enough features.

  • 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:

  • Domain Registration
  • API access
  • 24/7 support
  • Over 100 payment providers
  • A Bing Ads credit
  • Facebook store

Also, if you decide to pay for your plan on a yearly basis, the monthly costs drop a bit. And you get three extra months for free.  Finally, a 15-day trial is offered.

3dcart Reviews: Templates

3dcart_themes

The theme store is connected to the dashboard, so you can quickly jump in and out of it by choosing and testing out different themes that catch your eye. Over 100 conversion optimized templates are available, and they all look nice on mobile devices.

Upon first glance, I felt like the templates were a little rudimentary, but I just wasn't looking at the right ones. They actually have a strong variety of designs, so if you'd like to go with a more modern look, that's available. If you're more into a professional design, with a simple header and navigation buttons, that's an option as well. Overall. The themes are quite impressive, and you don't need to pay for any of them, which is a huge bonus.

Not to mention, one thing you'll notice with Shopify is that many of their themes are super similar, with a few colors or items modified. That's not the case with 3dcart, as each theme is unique in its own way, and they have some wonderful solutions catered to certain industries as well. For example, if you'd like to sell music equipment, they have a theme for you.

3dcart Reviews: Inventory

inventory

Managing inventory is pretty smooth, considering you can check in on your orders and quickly see which items you need to restock. In addition, all of your items are outlined in a huge list, which has filtering and inventory management fields provided. We also enjoy that you receive a page reserved just for a waiting list, meaning that customers waiting for products show up here. This you can't find in most ecommerce platforms.

3dcart Reviews: SEO & Marketing

In terms of SEO, 3dcart has the tools compiled under the Marketing tab. This is much easier to find than with other systems, and it's all compiled into one page. The SEO settings look a little confusing, but most of the check boxes you need are already checked off. For example, you have access to settings for changing URLs, canonical URLs, robots.txt, Google Analytics, social links, rich snippets, sitemaps and much more.

You might also be interested in a separate article to find out which is the best shopping cart software for SEO.

marketing

The Marketing tab is packed with items for you to promote your store. Some of these nifty items include like buttons, social bookmarking, promotions, auto responders, email newsletters, group certificates and connections to shopping engines.

3dcart reviews: Payments

Just about every payment option you need is in the 3dcart system. You can accept credit cards, cash, check, money order, split payments and more. And it has the functionality to work with brick and mortar stores as well. Over 160 payment options are available to choose from, and there's a quick key on the dashboard for going to the right page to set it up.

You'll also get a smooth integration with QuickBooks for managing your accounting records in one place.

3dcart Reviews: Security

3dcart is Level 1 PCI compliant, which means that you get the same security used by large financial institutions and banks. Your customer data should always remain safe, and you shouldn't have to worry about losing anything on your end. The company also uses a tool called FraudWatch, which monitors certain transactions, alerting you when something looks fishy. A free SSL certificate is also given to you with your plan.

3dcart Reviews: Customer Support

support

If you go with 3dcart, the customer support team is available 24/7. We'd argue that those who crave the ultimate customer service will find exactly what they need with 3dcart. You can call the company at anytime, send in an email or go to the knowledge base to complete your own research. User manuals, videos, webinars, blog posts and something called Ecommerce University is all there for you to educate yourself on the system. They can even connect you with third-party design experts if you'd like to work on your branding.

3dcart Reviews: Conclusion

3dcart offers most of the tools you need to sell your products online. As you can see in this review, it does have a few drawbacks compared to other platforms such as BigCommerce and Shopify.

One advantage 3dcart does have over other competitors is the fact that the platform is very easy for everyone to use, while still offering more advanced features for those designers who need it. In addition, the customer support team is amazing and the themes are rather tempting. If you are still on the fence, then I suggest you sign up for this 30-day free trial, or you can check out my Shopify and BigCommerce reviews.

Joe Warnimont

Joe Warnimont is a Chicago-based writer who focuses on eCommerce tools, WordPress, and social media. When not fishing or practicing yoga, he's collecting stamps at national parks (even though that's mainly for children). Check out Joe's portfolio to contact him and view past work.

Comments 12 Responses

  1. Unhappy Joe says:

    I have been back and forth with 3D Cart and Intuit trying to get the credit card processing working. All I can gather is that the problem is with the Developers, and tech support at 3D cart can’t help.
    I wish the “developers” could call Intuit QuickBooks and figure out the problem. I have spent countless hours trying to fix this and getting passed back and forth between companies. it is made worse by it taking half a day to get thru when I call or message 3D cart support. They need more people.

  2. selphie says:

    3d cart is the worst of the worst company. they are very rude and choke people neck.

    I payed 2000 usd for custom design and they really make my design hard to change unless we pay them another 1500 USD. those things such as enlarging photos, which is easy to do when you are on a free template.

    I asked them to change they told me “you need to pay, if you dont want to invest go take the free template. Good luck for you.”

    yeah I moving out soon. anyone know what is the best online shopping cart? I dont spend thousands of dollar for this kind of bullshit.

    thanks
    sb

    1. Gonzalo Gil says:

      Hi Selphie,

      We’re very sorry to hear about the negative experience you received from us here at 3dcart. Customer service is something we take very seriously, and we seem to have failed you in that regard.

      Although this reply is coming very late, if you’re still having any trouble with your store’s design, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team or your Project Manager for further assistance.

      We value you greatly as a customer, and we never want you to feel that we’re not doing out best to help you in every way we can.

    2. Home Decor says:

      Agreed! My experience with them was abominable as well.
      Never could get the shopping cart to work. Support was no help at all. I was paying annually to save money rather than pay monthly. I finally decided to cancel.. at which time I was told “oops.. you are too late.. we’re going to charge you for another year anyway.”
      Obviously they are not doing well or they would not have to do business in this manner. Don’t waste your time with these people.

  3. Max says:

    3D Cart must be having an internal contest for worst customer service ever going. We currently have 3 websites with them(soon to be 0). We have been trying for 3 months to have them cancel one of the sites, after following the “instructions” posted on their admin site, they continued to withdraw fee every month. After 2 months we called and were told they will not cancel any service unless they have a verbal request(not mentioned on their website). We then called twice but received a message that nobody was available please leave message, we did, three times. Month 3, still no refund and withdrew fees again. After calling again we spoke to John, who told me on the phone that he saw our request to cancel from back in June, but of course he couldn’t help us we would have to speak to billing. We asked for John’s supervisor and we were refused, John said “That’s our policy I can’t forward you to a supervisor AND it was company policy that he couldn’t forward my call to billing, I would have to contact them myself.” So I emailed billing, got an email back from Tiffany, who essentially said”yea…sorry…I can’t help you, it’s policy to need a verbal request”. I told Tiffany I called 3 times and left message to call back, she said she never received any message although she too saw the request from June. Tiffany also said she is available at any time to speak to customers, I asked her for her phone number so I could call her right away……..never heard from her again. The “F-you attitude 3DCart employees have with the people paying their salary rivals the worst in the industry, do whatever you have to to keep your business with another merchant. I may pay more but I’m moving my remaining two websites(I have the $129.99 per month Power Plan) to another merchant.

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Thanks for sharing your experience with us Max, sorry you’re going through this :/

    2. sophia says:

      I am desperate to leave 3dcart but cannot find the right fit. Who are you moving to? Shopify doesn’t have real time shipping quotes unless you want to pay and extra $20 a month for what everyone else has included. Big Commerce is out as I have had too many problems there. Volusion needs html.

      I need randomization of products or a numerical position listing that I can change. They refuse to do both so far.

      I find their platform to be very illogical. On my product there are two places for reviews instead of all of them together… and only one says reviews… the other says “Feature 6” . What the heck does that mean? How would anyone know there are reviews there?

      I really find their platform antiquated, annoying and tedious.

      1. Gonzalo Gil says:

        Hi Sophia,

        We’re very sorry to hear that you’ve had a difficult time with your products.

        It is possible to list your products numerically. This can be done by using the “product sorting” feature. Full instructions can be found at our knowledge base here: https://support.3dcart.com/knowledgebase/article/View/83/9/how-can-i-manually-sort-my-categorys-product-listings

        We’re not sure what you’re referring to in regards to “reviews.” The feature field is typically used to list generic features in bullet-point fashion. We have more detailed information about Product Reviews here: https://support.3dcart.com/knowledgebase/article/View/184/9/how-do-i-use-product-reviews

        If you’re still having any difficulties with sorting your products or product reviews, or if the above articles do not prove helpful, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our support by phone, chat or email. We’d be more than happy to help you with any features that are giving you trouble.

    3. Gonzalo Gil says:

      We realize this reply is coming very late, but we wanted to reach out and offer our sincerest apologies for all the trouble you had to go through to cancel one of your accounts.

      The level of support you received is unacceptable, and there’s no excuse for the difficulty you faced for such a simple request. Thanks to your feedback, however, we were able to make improvements at 3dcart where they were most needed. In addition to our support team having been restructured, we’ve also introduced company-wide training to ensure all of our customers always receive prompt, friendly service.

      We realize this doesn’t change the negative experience you had with 3dcart, but we do hope that you’ll give our team another shot.

      We wish you the best of luck with your online stores.

    4. Kathy says:

      Ugh. This is frustrating just to read. I am sorry! From a current brand new yet soon to be former 3DCart company!

  4. Ross R. Mason says:

    Catalin: thanks for your contribution. I found it helpful. Just wanted to point out though that you have a spelling error in the header image. Keep it up!

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Thanks for pointing that out Ross, fixed!

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