I agree with Darius, multi store front should be available by default. But since it is not the case the best deal now is Ultimate.
If you buy simple CS CART and later on buy additional let us say 10 storefronts it would cost all together $385 + $2,450.00 = $2835
If you buy Ultimate it cost you $865 and if you were lucky to buy it during promotion then $350 (this is actually real fair price in my opinion). So for the same funcionality you pay 8 times less. That is the only differance as I can see.
The vast majority of cs-cart installations are single store.
There are a some from 2-3 store
And very few that manage more stores than that.
But if you need 10 storefronts then the obvious solution is go with the newer Ultimate product (not sure why they don't just make storefronts unlimited after a certain number). There is no code differences that I'm aware of.
Yea and if you got a live store and you think it is going to be easy and flawless process to expand store with additional store front without interruptions you think again..
The idea to enable/disable addons depending on the store is a must. Otherwise there is no sense of unlimited stores. Every store has to be an independent entity but with one admin zone, and one database.
The point that I can configure add-on setting individually is not the case if I want to have add-on enabled in one shop (storefront) and disabled in the other one. Of course I can hide active addon in clients area but i can not do the same in admin zone. That is not good.