X-Cart Review
- Date Established
- 2001
- Location
- Russia
Pros
- Highly customizable
- Intuitive UI
- Scalable
- Advanced features
Cons
- Developer skills required
- Annual upgrade fee
- Expensive customer support
Overview
X-Cart is a licensed shopping cart that lets you sell products securely from your own server. Since its launch in 2001, X-Cart has grown to support over 35,000 stores in 111 countries. Combined, all of those stores rake in an annual gross merchandise volume of over $2.5 billion. X-Cart offers two selling solutions: a shopping cart solution (build your own online store) and a multivendor solution (build your own marketplace). For the sake of this review, we will be focusing primarily on their shopping cart solution. Keep in mind that the platform is open-source and is based on PHP/MySQL, so the ideal user would have some understanding of PHP, or at least the resources to hire someone who does. Read on for a breakdown of X-Cart’s pricing and an unbiased analysis of the platform.
Table of Contents
Pricing
X-Cart comes as two different products, and both of them have their own unique (and complicated) pricing models. The two products are labeled on the website as X-Cart (which is version 5) and X-Cart Classic (versions 4.x). (View a brief comparison of the two products.) Essentially, what you need to know is that X-Cart is the current product (when you click the “Features” tab on the X-Cart website, you’ll see features from X-Cart version 5). Because X-Cart Classic is the older product, larger updates will no longer be applied to it. The company will, however, continue to maintain the platform for the time being. I’ve divided the pricing model by product. Unfortunately, each level comes with a different set of features, which makes things especially complicated. There are two things they all have in common: all plans come as lifetime licenses, which means you only pay once and the platform is yours, and X-Cart never charges transaction fees. That said, here are all seven of the different plans that X-Cart offers, listed with a few of the available features. X-Cart (Version 5)
- Free Edition — $0
- Unlimited Products and Orders
- Mobile Friendly Design
- Drag-and-Drop Layout Editor
- XML Sitemap
- Multilingual Capabilities
- One-Step Checkout
- Real-Time and Preset Shipping and Tax Quotes
- Product Options and Attributes
- Bulk Import/Export
- …and More
- Business — $495
- Includes All of the Above, PLUS:
- Multiple Currencies
- Product Comparison
- Product Filters
- Product Reviews
- Facebook, Google, and PayPal Login Support
- Ability to Attach Files to Products
- Product Variants and Combinations
- …and More
- Multivendor — $1,495
- The multivendor solution is a totally different shopping cart than the two above. Instead of allowing you to create an online store, it lets you create an online marketplace. Essentially, you can build your own eBay where many vendors can come to sell their products. For the specifics of what X-Cart’s multivendor solution can do, click here and here.
- Ultimate — $5,995
- Ultimate includes multivendor capabilities and even more additional advanced features, like the following:
- Advanced Top Menu
- Blog
- Wishlists
- Shop by Brand
- Infinite Catalog Scrolling
- Recurring Payments
- Ability to Save and Accept Credit Cards
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Exit Offers
- Loyalty Program
- Store Installation by X-Cart Team
- 1 Year of X-Payments Hosted
- Excel Export/Import
- Google reCAPTCHA
- and More
Note: X-Cart Ultimate used to be priced at $3,995. On April 13, 2017, X-Cart rolled out a new Ultimate offering, with a few dozen additional features. They raised the price of the plan to match the new functionality. For a full breakdown of the features that are available, click this link. X-Cart 4.x Gold
- $195
- Built-In Responsive Design
- Product Options and Combinations
- Downloadable Products
- Featured, Cross-Sale, and Related Products
- Coupons and Special Offer Tools
- SEO-Friendly Catalog
- MailChimp Integration
- Predictive Search
- Facebook Store App
- International and Multilingual Support
- Advanced Order Management
- Basic Customer Reviews
- Surveys
- Affiliate Partner Program
- Access Levels and Memberships
Gold Plus
- $495
- All of the above, PLUS:
- On Sale and New Arrival Products
- Banner System
- Sign-In via Social Media (Facebook, Google, etc.) Powered by Janrain.com
- Advanced Customer Reviews
- Multiple Currencies
- Custom Order Statuses
- Email Account Activation
- Email Product Notifications for Customers
Platinum (Multivendor)
- $1,795
- All of the above, PLUS:
- Multiple Vendors
- Separate Vendor Back-End
- Separate Vendor Shipping and Tax Rates
- Product Wizard
- Feature Comparison
- One-Year Support
- Installation
Find full information on X-Cart Classic. X-Cart also offers an enterprise solution. You’ll have to contact X-Cart for pricing. All of X-Cart’s plans come with one year of free upgrades. After that year, if you’d like to continue receiving the latest upgrades and developments, you’ll need to pay an annual subscription fee (which can be quite pricey). Here are the annual subscription fees for X-Cart (Version 5). 
And here they are for X-Cart Classic. 
Cloud-Based Or Locally-Installed
All of X-Cart’s solutions are locally-installed. You only pay once, but you’ll have to maintain your own web hosting and security. Or, you can choose to use X-Cart for your hosting. They offer plans from $29.95/month to $399/month. Some of these plans even include an X-Cart license and technical support. View X-Cart’s hosting plans.
Specific Size Of Business
X-Cart has plans to fit every business, from startup to enterprise. However, X-Cart is best for mid-size to enterprise-level businesses.
Hardware & Operating System Requirements
X-Cart has very specific system requirements, and after a pricing scheme like the one above, I think we could all use a break from long lists. So, you can check out those requirements on X-Cart’s site.
Ease Of Use
In order to really try out X-Cart, you can download their free edition. Because X-Cart is a self-hosted platform, you will have to take care of the downloading and installing yourself (view X-Cart’s installation guide). If you’re a little intimidated by everything that page entails, X-Cart offers an installation service for $75, which, in my opinion, is totally worth it if you aren’t used to this level of technology. Fortunately, if you don’t want to go to all that trouble (or you want to try out a platform with more features), X-Cart offers a 14-Day Free Trial, no credit card required. You can also try a limited demo of X-Cart without submitting any information at all. Upon signing up for my free trial, I immediately received an email with login details. I quickly jumped over to my shiny new admin. Here’s the dashboard: 
I was pleased to find that the trial was already filled with sample products and fake orders. It really helped give me a feel for how the software works without having to spend tons of time plugging in fake information. That said, I did add my own products. Adding a product is a two-step process. You first add the basic product information and save. 
From there, you are directed to another page with more detailed product information, like attributes, categories, and shipping. 
When I first logged into the admin, I noticed a couple of notifications in the upper-left corner. One notification alerted me to low stock on a few of my sample products (thereby demonstrating X-Cart’s inventory management features) and the other showed me my store’s recent orders. I took a look at X-Cart’s discount feature as well. It’s far from the most sophisticated I’ve seen (I’m only able to narrow my discount to apply to certain categories, not specific products), but it isn’t terribly limited. Fortunately, it’s a cinch to use. 
As far as self-hosted platforms go, X-Cart is as user-friendly as it gets. Sure, you have to take the time to download and install the platform (which is a pain, but hey, there’s always that installment service), and you’ll have to maintain the platform with regular upgrades, but fortunately, day-to-day operations are fairly intuitive. X-Cart scores highly in terms of ease of use for the admin.
Features
As I’ve stated before, when you select the Features and Pricing pages on X-Cart’s website, you’ll be presented with all the features for X-Cart 5. I’ve sought to make things a little easier for you by consolidating the feature list below. Admin
- Order management: Create and edit orders for your customers from the admin.
- Marketplace integration: Integrate with eBay and push your products to a marketplace using X-Cart’s bulk export features.
- Fraud prevention tools: Use X-Cart’s “Antifraud” app.
Mobile Features
- Mobile admin: Manage your online store from any mobile device.
- Responsive design: Use X-Cart’s mobile responsive templates.
- Mobile POS: Accept payments on the go with PayPal and an iPhone, iPad, or Android.
Inventory and Product Management
- Track inventory: Track each product by its variants so that you never sell a product you don’t have on hand.
- View best sellers and low stock: Know which products you should purchase more of in the future.
- Sell digital products: Don’t forget to disable shipping for these products.
- Auction features: Allow your customers to bid on unique items.
Storefront
- Filtered search: Let customers narrow their search results using product attributes.
- Cloud search: Offer a site-wide search engine with search suggestions and spell check.
- Sell globally: Enable your site to display different currencies and languages.
- Auto-calculate shipping and totals: Make sure those totals display in the correct currency.
Shipping
- Real-time shipping quotes: Connect your platform to major shipping carriers (Australia Post, Canada Post, FedEx, UPS, USPS) to display accurate shipping quotes from each provider.
- Custom shipping costs: Set your own shipping costs based on flat rates, weight, order totals, or per-item costs.
Checkout
- Checkout options: Create one step checkout or multiple step checkout, depending on what works best for your site.
- Checkout as guest: Allow customers to purchase your products without committing to an account.
Marketing
- Loyalty program: Award customers for their continued business.
- Abandoned cart reminder: The grand majority of shopping carts are abandoned at checkout. Reclaim a few of those transactions with automated emails.
- Exit offers: Set exit-intent pop-ups to keep customers on your site for a little longer.
- Discounts: Offer discounts on specific categories and offer volume discounts.
- Newsletters: Integrate with MailChimp to keep in contact with your customers.
- Up-sale and cross-sale: List and display related products.
- Ratings and reviews: Inspire customer confidence with genuine customer feedback.
- Social media integration: Let customers share your products and pages on their social media sites.
SEO and Stats
- SEO tools: Create clean URLs, page titles, META tags, XML sitemaps, and rich snippets.
- View site reports: Try it using Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrix, Cloud Search, MailChimp, and Diib analytics.
Web Design
X-Cart offers 72 different templates. Five of these templates are free, and the rest are priced between $49 and $149. Design-wise they are, well, not awesome. They aren’t hideous, but they are certainly behind the times, and I wouldn’t be willing to pay $149 for most of them. Here is one of the least offensive templates and an example of a more dated template… 
There are a few ways you can go about editing your storefront, depending on your skill level. For those who are on the first page of their Web Design for Dummies Handbook, X-Cart provides a drag-and-drop editor. You can use this editor to rearrange large blocks of content on your website, but you can’t do much else with it. 
In order to make larger changes to your design, you’re going to have to edit the CSS style sheets. You can either do that in the admin or in the webmaster mode (which might give you a better idea of exactly which section you are editing). In the screenshot below, you can see what webmaster mode looks like… 
For the most part, if you want to customize your site, you’ll need to know CSS, or at least know someone who can help you with it.
Integrations & Add-Ons
All of X-Cart’s integrations and add-ons are available in their marketplace. You can filter by edition in the upper left-hand corner to view the apps available for the platform you own. Most of the modules listed in this marketplace are not integrations with other software, but are add-ons for your platform. There are, however, a few integrations available that you may recognize. Here are a few.
- ShipWorks (Free)
- DHL Shipping (Free)
- MailChimp Integration (Free)
- eBay Integration (Free)
Payment Processing
You can find X-Cart’s list of 80+ payment processors in their add-on marketplace. Here are a few options you may know and love:
- PayPal
- Skrill
- Amazon Payments
- 2Checkout
- Sage Pay
- Stripe
- Authorize.Net
- eSelect Plus (now Moneris)
- eWay
- Converge
- WorldPay
- BeanStream
- BrainTree
Customer Service & Support
As with most self-hosted shopping carts, you’re largely on your own when it comes to technical support. In order to get X-Cart’s help, you have to pay for their services, which include development, web design, technical support, and hosting. X-Cart offers 24/7 customer support with their hosting plans. For $199/mo or $399/mo, you’ll receive hosting and support along with an X-Cart license, provided you sign up for the annual plan. You can also purchase a single-incident support plan or a support subscription plan for personalized assistance. Otherwise, you’re going to have to pursue some self-help routes. Here are a few resources X-Cart provides.
- Help & Docs: The home base for everything support related.
- Blog: Stay on top of updates, new versions, and releases.
- FAQs: Find answers to all of your pre-sales questions.
- Developer Docs: Access the knowledge base for X-Cart 5 developers.
- Community Forums: Post questions and engage with an active user community.
- HelpDesk: Sign in to your HelpDesk account (for current clients only),
- Contact: Submit a question to sales or use another contact method below.
- Email: sales@x-cart.com
- Phone:
- USA: 1-800-657-7957
- UK: 0-800-048-8862
- International: +7 (499) 608-8900
Negatives Reviews & Complaints
In general, customers appear to be satisfied with X-Cart. However, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a few complaints about the software. Here are a few of the negative comments I encountered online, mixed with a couple of my own concerns:
- Price: This complaint is mine. In order to benefit from X-Cart’s continued development, you’ll have to pay for annual subscriptions, which are not cheap. Add those expenses to the cost of web hosting, security, web development, and any technical support that you may purchase, and you’ve got an expensive platform on your hands.
- Limited Customer Support: Support from a real-life human is not free. If you’re trying to save money on your support plan, you’ll need to utilize X-Cart’s self-help tools as often as possible. Customers say it can take a while to receive a response from an X-Cart support representative.
- Dated Themes: While X-Cart’s themes are fully mobile responsive, they are far from trendy. I’ve seen a bit of improvement lately, but they’ve still got a long way to go.
- Learning Curve: Clients report that X-Cart is not the easiest system to learn or to teach to employees.
Positive Reviews & Testimonials
The most positive reviews I found were on X-Cart’s clients page, which is to be expected. What’s nice is that these pages are actually written by the customers themselves, so while they’re filtered by X-Cart, they are not written by X-Cart. Here are a few other positive comments I found:
- Customizability & Flexibility: Customers report that it’s easy to make changes to their stores’ capabilities. A common phrase is, “My business plans are not limited by what my platform can do.”
- Helpful Customer Support: I’ve seen loads of customer comments (including on this very review) praising X-Cart’s support team. Reportedly, the company can handle custom code very well and is thorough when it comes to technical assistance.
- Scalability: Lots of the customers on X-Cart’s “Success Stories” page have been using X-Cart for years. As their companies grow, they are able to alter their platforms to handle their stores’ new needs.
- Intuitive Dashboard: This my own opinion. I was really surprised by how easy it was to use X-Cart’s admin. It was just as easy to use as any fully hosted, cloud-based solution. I was also impressed by X-Cart’s drag and drop theme editor.
Security
Because X-Cart is a self-hosted solution, you are responsible for maintaining your site’s security. Among other things, that means buying an SSL certificate, which you can purchase for your X-Cart platform starting at $89.95/year. You’ll also need to ensure that your site is PCI compliant. You can do this by accepting payments via a PCI-compliant payment processor. Or, you can use a PA-DSS certified software (like X-Payments) to accept card numbers directly on your site. Take a look at X-Cart’s advice on ensuring PCI compliance.
Final Verdict
As far as features go, you could do much worse than X-Cart. This eCommerce platform appears to have enough functionality (and customizability, if you have the technical ability) to handle growing businesses. What gives me pause is X-Cart’s pricing (and not just because it’s mind-bogglingly confusing). In order to keep your site up to ever-changing industry standards, you’ll have to spring for the annual subscription. Every year, you’ll have to pay 20-50% the amount you originally paid for the platform. Compared to free, open-source solutions like Magento, X-Cart is expensive. In my opinion, X-Cart redeems itself (in pricing, at least) with the hosting plans. $199/month for a platform, hosting, and support is much more in line with other eCommerce solutions geared toward mid-size and larger businesses. If I were to use X-Cart myself, this is likely the plan I’d subscribe to. If you’re interested in X-Cart for your online store, I recommend you click the link below to download your own free version of the platform. Test it out before you make the plunge.
Liz Hull
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Organization Name: Bluemax Productions
I have been with X-Cart since practically their beginnings with a much more elementary, primitive actually, shopping cart. Had to ‘hand code’ much of X-Cart software, in other words. Since then, however, X-Cart has become extremely easy to configure for a shopping and in fact very intuitive like Apple’s operating system to make a comparison. Not everyone will have the same experience as mine, true, but I find the X-Cart software engineers to be extremely intelligent and highly helpful. My experience. Interestingly X-Cart’s headquarters reside in Ulyanovsk, some 400 miles east of Moscow, where the University of Ulyanovsk, School of Software Engineering, provides a majority of X-Cart’s personnel which explains to me the high quality of their engineers. Oh, and their level of English writing is superb!! This is in addition to their superb level of software programming and troubleshooting. My experience. They do offer a free version of X-Cart shopping so it certainly cannot hurt to try them. Of course, no one will have the same amount of experience with X-Cart as have I. And no one will perhaps rate them as highly as myself. But, I do indeed offer X-Cart as a shopping cart software for the beginner all the way up to expert web programmer. You will do no better. My experience! Yes! Don Saar, Relativity Physics and Science Calculator website.
Organization Name: SAFEWORLD SYSTEMS PVT LTD
X-cart is a very progressive and easy platform for the e-commerce website. The support is awsome.
Organization Name: We Fix Any Mobile
Hi Many Thanks for your Fast help support , we have 2 website run by x-cart system more than 9 years ,
Organization Name: SkyFall Meteorites
I cannot state strongly enough how great the technical support team has been in solving a particularly difficult issue. Truly excellent work and very dedicated team to make the customer feel really great about the support subscription service.
Organization Name: Wilson Marine
X-cart has been a GREAT platform with my Business. The Customer Support Staff is superb and is always helpful. The Flexibility and options are endless. Life is Good! Thank you X-Cart and Staff!-JayMichigan – USA
Organization Name: Spartacus
We like X-Cart because of a very friendly user and store interface, and very helpful and responsive customer support team. X-Cart is a very good choice for an e-commerce platform. We are happy with it for many years.
Glad I picked X-cart in 2009. Solid product, pricing is reasonable, and great service when I need it. We manufacture products and sell both wholesale and retail in 2 countries. I have some background in software development, coding and managing groups doing coding, but no specific experience with PHP or MySQL. I was able to install it on my ISP myself with very little help. The hosting savings have really added up over the years. Did some custom features with the X-cart team in the first few months before going live, mostly to tweak some features to align the cart to our business methods for our wholesale clients versus our retail clients. Since then when I need support for features and the evolving CC standards, the X-cart team have been there with pricing that seemed reasonable and quality support. From time to time I’ve also done some minor tweaking in PHP to customize a few things, but left it to the pros at X-cart for anything that I didn’t have confidence in myself. I’m not sure how big they are but I’ve probably interacted with 15 or more different X-cart staff over the last 10 years and they all seem like pros, with some names popping up again after a few years so I think they retain their staff well too. When doing upgrades, I have no issues giving them live access to my store and FTP access through their secure password management portal. They’ve never broken the store in upgrades. In summary, I have confidence in their product and the professionalism of their team and it has saved me a lot of money over the years compared to other products and hosting I could have picked.
Organization Name: Three Custom Color Specialists, LLC
We have been using x-cart many, many years. The tech support is phenomenal. Our issues are always solved in no time. They have some very talented people working for them!
Organization Name: X-Cart
Hello Scot,
Thank you for your feedback!
Just wondering, what are the reasons for your 4-star rating? Should it be a 5-star rating? 🙂
—
Sincerely yours,
Sergey Fomin,
Chief support group engineer
Organization Name: www.aaawatchclub.com - a Fotowatch site
We used to have PDG Soft Commerce 5 – but they went out of business and had their software hardcoded & password protected. With the requirement of TLS 1.2 this June 2018 we left with the task to find a new shopping cart software. I looked into several solutions from OpenCart to Prestashop and read a lot of reviews about self-hosted shopping cart software. However ONLY X-Cart provided a solution to use HTML code for adding items – exactly what we used to in the past because our shop is hard-coded HTML and not an on-the-fly solution. We decided for X-cart 4.7.9 Gold Plus as it has everything that we needed. After adding the PayPal DPM Module from BCSE we could use our PCI compliance website and process CC via PayFlow Pro. There service (Bug tracker/Helpdesk) and response time for any inquiry are excellent. Shopping cart looks good – Responsive Light skin, and one-page checkout on a desktop and mobile view.
Organization Name: Brewers Hardware
We have been using X-Cart for about 7 years and it has served our company well. Sometimes it can be frustrating or have a bit of a learning curve getting set up, but they have a plethora of addons that can help customize your website to your liking. X-cart is very flexible and adapts to what you want to do with your website. We have had times where we explain what we want an addon or feature to do, and they try and find a solution to our problem. The best part of x-cart is the customer support. Whenever we have an issue or need help installing an addon, they are eager to help and always find a solution. Thank you to the entire team of x-cart for making a great product and even better customer service!
Organization Name: Half a Bubble Out Advertising
Ildar did a great job handling our support question and then went above and beyond to help me with a couple of other issues that weren’t on the original ticket. Great work!
Organization Name: vine2home, LLC
I work as a contract software engineer, in test engineering. I am part owner of a couple of smaller companies. My partners selected me to maintain our company websites, when I have time. While I do possess the ability to learn and do what is required for our websites, my expertise is not within the server and website domain. My time is better spent allowing individuals who possess that ability do the work for me. To that end, 10 years ago I selected X-Cart as our shopping cart platform. Initially, the hosting platform that I selected was on a shared server. When I needed to upgrade the PHP, MySQL, etc. software on the server, the hosting company informed me that they could not upgrade the server because that upgrade would affect other companies hosted on the server. I switched to a virtual private server which gave me complete control of everything on the server. That switch reduced my annual server expenses. I did not have the time and ability to properly setup the server. Fortunately, X-Cart has competent personal that handled all the required work for me. My only work, at that point, was in maintaining the shopping cart by adding our products and handling order processing.While I am exceptional in what I do, I know my limitations. I will not work a contract for which I am not qualified to perform. As a contract software engineer, I have met many software people in my travels. Some are exceptional in their abilities while others are just trying to stay employed with little knowledge of electronics, computers, software, etc. Be careful of the kid down the street whose only experience is playing video games or trying to hack into someone’s computer. For those who are not familiar with computers, software, etc., know that the staff at X-Cart wrote the code for the product. They know how it should work and what the requirements of the server need to be. While software errors do happen, the staff at X-Cart has always corrected the issues when they become aware of them. They are not responsible when a you allow someone else to modify the code or server which causes the shopping cart to malfunction.I have worked with the staff at X-Cart for 10 years. They are extremely competent in their abilities. The staff completes the requested work in a fast and efficient manner. I have the latest version 5 business edition along with the backup module. I apply updates as they become available. I will continue to use X-Cart for our shopping cart applications.
Organization Name: AOK Inc. The OEM Parts Store
I have been using x-cart since 2009 and can honestly say that had it not been for them i doubt my business would be around today. I have dealt with specific agents at x-cart and can honestly say that they care about your business. They have often gone above the required targets. I have not been the easiest customer to deal with and yet still i am happy with their services. Especially in recent projects got to work with Ildar Nizamov and he was extremely helpful and i hope i get to work with him again. Absolute top notch.
Kind Regards,
Marc Ledder
AOK Inc. The OEM Parts Store
http://www.theoempartsstore.com
http://www.oregonpartsstore.com
Organization Name: Logix, Inc.
Logix has been an X-Cart Business Edition user since 2006. We have always been impressed with the feature set, flexibility, and the easy setup and maintenance of X-Cart software. The X-Cart support crew has always excelled in their prompt support whenever we have questions. X-Cart also provides our hosting and email services and we’ve been extremely pleased with these services. We would recommend X-Cart to any small or medium-size business looking for an affordable, full-featured e-commerce solution. Thanks to the entire staff at X-Cart for a great product!
Organization Name: smek digital consulting llc
X-Cart’s support was fantastic during my migration from v4 to v5. There were many details involved and they were all handled expertly.
Organization Name: Autostripe
Excellent service. Excellent company. Very professional. Very smart. We are pleased.
Organization Name: Hollywood Disc
I am a small business owner trying to make a online success which is getting more difficult day by day. But with X-Cart I got enormous help to build my online presence and make business going to right direction. Thanks to X-Cart customer service and talented engineers I am doing better day by day.I am very thankful for quality of the service they provide. X-Cart is very friendly and powerful even me without any programming skills I can work and get what I want to get. Tagging, SEO, content creation, creating a products or categories is easier than ever. The bottom line is in business language it is money making machine. So I want to thank X-Card for being there when I need them.With Love Harout Hovsepyan
Organization Name: Spring Works Inc
X-cart 5 is very easy to navigate and make changes to. The support is mostly very good and lots of plug and play add on’s and modules.
I know X-cart.com from 2004, whenever I needed them, the were next to me with professionalism.With their software I have created dozens of online stores and only positive feedback I have gained.Thanks Xcart
Organization Name: iGadget Depot
I want to say few good things about our experience so far with X-Cart:1. Increase sales by integrating and synchronizing your marketplaces and ecommerce store.2. Fulfillment options, decrease operational costs by automating key workflows and processes, and it’s good for people who are not computer software experts.3. Better data visibility, easy, friendly, all users friendly, you focus on sales, because everything easy automated.4. Ecommerce website software without monthly fees, PHP shopping cart platform.5. Excellent professional service, sometimes they try to take more money for services, but you can talk to them nicely and they are coming towards their customers to help them increase business and revenue.
Organization Name: Arcamedia Corp.
I am a seasoned owner of an 18 plus year old web design and development company. We started this client with x-cart years ago and I was always amazed at how well the site kept ticking along for years and years and the customer was always happy (with almost no issues or problems as the decade came to close). When the day finally came to move x-cart to the latest version. Version 5, we decided to work directly with X-carts team to build out a new design and implement the latest features version 5 brought to the table. A ten year old site would need to be migrated to the latest platform and a new infrastructure put in place for the server to work with the latest version. Working with the team at x-cart was a wonderful experience. They explained everything to us clearly and without any issue. They helped us map out a smart plan and put dollars and time deliverables to a clearly explained process document that allowed us to go back to the client and easily let them know next steps and stages in the build, design and implementation of the new site. The client had specific requirements for the site that admittedly were not typical of your average install. X-cart team was able to design a custom skin and code to allow those custom features to make the client not only happy but excited when they started using the new site. Its important to note in this review that x-cart is a great ecommerce solution. I have worked with Woo commerce and a couple other solutions before. And though they are different in some ways and similar in others, x-cart has one edge over the others. Its easy to mange, learn and understand. The client learning curve is not only fast, but the simplicity and logic in the layout and function of its tool build both confidence and creativity and store administrator. They allow them to not just cautiously use it to grow the store and its presence but they instead engage and invite the administrator to get involved and dive right in to the breath of options and choices within the admin. From the front end the tool shines as well. Its fast, responsive and intuitive to anyone using the store. Its checkout process is clean and simple. Beyond the tool itself its important to note the people we worked with at x-cart. People like Olga, Diana, Sergey, Igor, Alexey, and Danila all deserve a shout out. Patient, professional and responsive are three words that come to mind in describing working with them in building, maintaining and upgrading the site. They made sure all milestones were met and worked through any and all issues to my complete approval along with the clients. x-cart offers what other ecommerce solutions does not. It offers a solid reliable tool with the added bonus of a support group you don’t find at other solutions. The hands on aspect of their support staff is what makes a big difference when working with an ecommerce solution.Lastly I would like to highly recommend the x-cart hosting solution for anyones potential or existing x-cart store. We tried other hosting solutions and when we moved it to the x-cart one speed differences were extreme to say the least. 2-3 times as fast. Easy to maintain. Again excellent support and fair prices.I look forward to working with x-cart again on future projects.thanks Adam Halem 🙂
Organization Name: Goltab Pty Ltd
We were using X-cart 4 since 2008. Recently, we upgraded this to X-cart 5 as we were advised that the version 5 has more advanced and secure features.
The transition was carried out by X-cart professionals smoothly and efficiently. During the upgrade, whenever there was a problem, the technical support provided to me was excellent and commendable.
It is a pleasure to be working with X-cart Professionals due to their professionalism and efficiency.
Chandra, Luxury Perfumes
The premium support and Xcart hosting was implemented smoothly and effectively…very happy with the entire Xcart platform and service! Thanks to their tech support team :)Laura
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We have been with x-cart for over 10 years and use only them for all customer development. Everything and good exempt there is absolutely no QA done prior to uploading projects.
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We’ve used X-Cart of years. We started with an old flavor of version 4. It worked. Now we’re using X-Cart 5 Business Edition–hosted by X-Cart. We’ve been on version 5 for a couple years and they just brought us up to the newest dot version of everything. They provide a test area separate from your real store. We just request an update and test it when it is completed. We DON’T need to know PHP despite what the review suggests because they set it up, configured it, support it and update it. Isn’t that what we want these days?The staff at X-Cart are professional and competent. They proved themselves quite capable when asked to bring our store software up to date and when asked to change the entire look of our store. They have so many new themes to just choose from and use and lots of modules to meet the needs of a huge variety of stores. Also, if you need *anything* custom or customized they will make it for you and do so at very competitive prices. Yearly support and maintenance pricing is very reasonable.
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BEST customer support on the planet. They are very responsive, and professional. They have always fixed every problem I’ve ever had. I will never leave them
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The support has improved immensely over the past year or two. Super responsive and very helpful.Thank you!
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I’ve been using Xcart for several years now. The yearly subscription for tech support is well worth the money. They take care of all issue and not only tell me how to handle it but they actually do it for me,To upload items onto the site is easy and we have our POS updating our website hourly. Super stoked on everything. Over the past few years they’ve been improving on the platform and Im glad to be on board. David
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We have used xcart for more than a year now. It is user-friendly and easy to maintain. xcart support engineers are highly knowledgeable, efficient, friendly and quick in solving website tasks and problems. We will surely recommend xcart to our colleagues as an e-commerce software of choice.-Engr. Emmanuel L. Josue Web Designer/Developer
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The x-cart team did and upgrade for me and did a fantastic job. Not only did they do the work quickly but they stayed with the project and fixed issues that came up right away. They even fixed some custom code I had that they had nothing to do with. I definitely will be using their services again when I need any custom work or major changes to my site.
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My company has used X-Cart since 2003. It was rough a few times and things weren’t always perfect. We’re currently using X-Cart 5 and I have to say this is good software. The modules are easier to deploy, the configuration choices are numerous and the admin interface is robust.If you’re just starting out, or, if you’re running one of the World’s oldest web sites, like us, you need to look at X-Cart. We depend on it everyday.
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I have been working with X-Cart for the past year on a custom design shopping cart. (They also host my site.) They do good work, and I have been very pleased with their customer service– knowledgable, prompt, helpful and ethical. They have worked doggedly on several occasions to fix some bugs unique to my custom design. As I am new to the shopping cart world and e-commerce, X-Cart has been a valuable resource for my business. I was referred to them by another client of theirs, who is a very seasoned developer, and they have served him equally well. It`s nice to find a team who can deal with all experience levels. Their products and services continue to evolve, and they are keeping my site up to speed as e-commerce changes at light speed.
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We have been working with X-Cart for the past six months on developing our new online e-commerce site, as well as hosting through X-Cart. Everything has been a smooth process from initial design process, to our launch and everything in-between. Even though they are based out of Russia it hasn’t impacted the work flow. I can compile all of the changes and questions I have throughout my day here, and send it off before leaving for the night. By the time I get back in the next day, I have all of my questions answered and requests completed. There is also a few hours of overlap time in the morning, where I can come in and fire off a few quick responses,questions or concerns, and they will usually be able to respond to those before leaving for the night on their end (I am on PST, anyone further east would have a few extra hours in the AM than me). They also have the option to do a “hot rush” ticket, for any time sensitive issues, or questions can be answered very quick instead of the next day. So if it is the time difference that you are worried about I wouldn’t be too concerned. After switching to X-Cart we have had zero issues with website downtime and any problems get resolved in a very timely manner. I would recommend X-Cart and their hosting services to anyone looking for a stress and worry free e commerce website with great communication, customer service and very affordable pricing!
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We have a number of sites using the X-cart platform and have been using X-cart for over ten years so across the different versions and compared to Magento I feel the support is excellent the innovative and easily accessible modules a varied and pretty much cater for every requirement. On the odd occasion we have had to develop bespoke modules the service from X-cart has been outstanding.
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X Cart engineer Roman Nikiforov made a fix for my website through a great deal of determination and energy (it took a little over 2 weeks to finish). X Cart has people on hand that think “out of the box” and while a problem may be difficult, it doesn’t stop them from meeting with ultimate success. It gives me a great deal of reassurance, that when other technicians throw their hands up in the air and say “it can’t be done”, I can always turn to, and rely on X Cart engineers to find a solution.
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I agree with Robert on several issuyes, but I don’t think X-cart deserves just one star. I think it should get 50% which is 2,5 stars, but since that is not possible I will give it 3 stars rather than 2.”Tech Support could not fix the issues” – I agree. They don’t pay much attention to even simpliest things and seem to have very little knowledge even about things that average Joe knows.Their Fraud Points used to cost a reasonable $20 for 10000 Fraud Check Points. Now their pricing scheme for those points is very convoluted, unreasonable and unaffordable. They charge $50 to $100 roughly for one year of points, which means if you serve 1000 orders a ear, all you get is 1000 points for $50 to $100, which is an increase of 30+ fold or 3000% from previous pricing.”Some issues they said were not covered by Tech Support and wanted us to pay a ton of money to fix them. ” – I agree, so typical. “X-Cart Techs will blame 3/4 of the issues on your server host and try to get you to switch to their hosting.” – I agree. “In most cases you will turn in a Tech Support request and get an e-mail within the following couple days saying they need more info to work on the issue.” – I agree.”We had some support request handed to personal that were heading out of the office on vacation.” – X-cart engineers are often on vacation, that is so true,and the customer has to wait, but they offer to assign another engineer that is not familiar with your case.X-cart pricing can be very damaging to one’s pocket. To apply a patch they ask $99 and it takes them literally a minute or twpo to do that. Every simple task is divided into $99 payments each. While the basic X-cart costs $195, one can easily spend another $198 on having two tiny repairs done to it. Payment method set up each costs over a whopping $600+. Prepaid tech. support – huge cost.Now regarding dependability of the cart. To me, it worked for many years and did not create problems.So I am confident to give it at least 50% or 2 1/2 stars. Originally I was going to give X-cart 4 stars, but the costs involved and skyrocketing and some issues with their knowledgeability, causes it to drop to 2-3 stars level. Still, a very good cart and I only tested 3-4 carts so far. So I am not the best cart reviewer.X-cart is a good cart and I would recommend it, especially to those who have unlimited money to spend.
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If there were a rating higher than excellent I would use it for the team at Xcart.Everybody has their job to do there and they all do it above and beyond expectation.I’ve been with them since 2001 and I would never stray from Xcart and encourage everyone that reads this to do the same, if you’re on the fence on who to host with, pick Xcart! You will NEVER be disappointed!
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Hands down working with X-cart has been the best decision we have made for ecommerce. The staff always responds to all of our inquiries immediately and provides an extremely knowledgeable level of support.
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We have used X-Cart for about 5-6 years nowWe are very pleased with the cooperation we have with the X-Cart team – we always get done what we want – while we think that our X-Cart site are working very safely and correctly -We can only recommend X-Cart for all who want a complete and safe commerce siteJohn
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Disadvantage is that you need an expert programmer to tweak it, and a very good server to host it, but when it is up, you have full control and it runs fast. Content Management Systems that handle the tech issues for you will host thousands of sites but dont give you freedom or control, and they are down at the worst possible moments, like in the middle of you high season day. That is why x-cart is good. You have control. Site is always up. You can put anything you want on your own server.If you dont have a programmer, go with something that is easier to use.Other issues:Not most popular choice, so not as many turnkey ready modules as other platforms.Difficult to find shipping management systems that have an interface that works with x-cart. Tried 3 of them and only 1 shipping system had a module that worked. The other 2 didnt work at all.
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Hi Allan,
Thank you for your useful feedback. I love the pros you describe. These are strong sides of X-Cart indeed.
and as a software vendor rep I’m especially interested in the cons you listed ( we want to become better!). You mention that it lacks ready-made integrations with shipping management systems. X-Cart integrates with Stamps.com, ShippingEasy, ShipStation and several more. Could you please let me know which 3 ones you considered and why?
If X-Cart lacks these integrations indeed, we will think of adding them.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
We currently use Shipworks and have zero issues integrating with X cart.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Thank you for this comprehensive overview. I have a single comment about pricing. You state that ” Every year you’ll have to pay near the same amount you paid for the platform originally. When compared to free open source solutions, like Magento, X-Cart just doesn’t make sense.”Actually, the cost of upgrades for a _commercial_ edition ( say, Business, with the original price currently equal to $495) is about 50% of the original cost (for Business edition it’s currently $247,5), and if you upgrade within one month since expiration, you will need to pay even less, about 20% of the oriiginal license cost ( for Business edition, it’s $99). Therefore, $99 is not even close to the sum you originally paid, that is $495.And this is the cost of access to upgrades which gives you not only fixes, but also new features which come out quaterly. At the same time this is not mandatory to purchase the upgrade access prolongation, if you’re happy with your current store behaviour and features set.Last but not least, all that info is about _commercial_ edition. If you’re using Free edition of X-Cart , you do have a lifetime license AND a lifetime access to upgrades for free. While I’ve heard from different developers and project managers, that the communty edition of Magento ( i.e the free one) does have issues with providing the bug fixes not only on timely manner, but with providing them at all. There’s a known bug related to checkout of Magento – Community v.1 and the developers were requesting the fix for ages, and finally they had to code a workaround. The situation is way better for the Enterprize edition of Magento, where you pay $14K -$30K or more a year, every year, but here we see absolutely different costs. Hence we can hardly speak about _free_ bigfixes of free Magento, and with this background, $99 cost of access to upgrades in X-Cart seems absolutely affordable.
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We had been running X-Cart for 3 years. Had to close our store because we had nothing but problems with X-Cart. Lots of integrity issues, Google said the Mobile Module has lots of issues such as the buttons being to closes to each other and gave it a very low ranking. X-Cart Tech Department told us to stop using the Refine Filters and Infinite Scroll Modules as they have issues. I highly suggest you don’t invest a dime in X-Cart software. We had full Tech Support and they could not fix the issues. Some issues they said were not covered by Tech Support and wanted us to pay a ton of money to fix them. X-Cart Techs will blame 3/4 of the issues on your server host and try to get you to switch to their hosting. In most cases you will turn in a Tech Support request and get an e-mail within the following couple days saying they need more info to work on the issue. It does not matter how detail you make your request. We had some support request handed to personal that were heading out of the office on vacation. Over all experience with X-Cart was a nightmare each day.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.