Hi Guys,
After a few years with CS-Cart I think its really time for us to move on.
The carts problems have been around for as long as we’ve used the cart, and even though we are only a small business, its becoming a real hindrance to us.
There are problems for Australians wishing to display products with GST showing, which requires code modifications to fix (Seonid display prices with tax addon partly fixes the problem, but adds lesser problems itself too)
There are shipping problems, ie we cant set up free shipping on certain products to Australia only without code modifications.
We can’t have a terms and conditions for each shipper (this is especially important for ATL shipments)
Everything that a simple cart should do requires code modifications, which amount to a small fortune.
To date, we’ve spent about $800 on v4 addons
Support is poor, and even the most basic support requests are met between 3-days to a week later with a “You need to pay for code changes”. Then you reply and wait another week.
99% of our problems have been resolved by users in mere hours. Thanks guys, your support is fantastic.
We’ve been charged support credits in which the problems were created by the cart itself or buggy upgrades.
Everywhere we look to try and expand or grow the website, we are hitting barriers that CS should have ironed out YEARS ago.
So we are looking for a cart that
A) Works well with Australian Taxes (GST)
Allows us to have the most basic shipping features and working localizations that this cart doesn’t have!
C) Have addons available for XERO or Saasu support
D) Work with Merchant Warrior or eWay
We are thinking of Magento, as it has all of the above.
Plus the community support seems to be great!
Has anyone any advice for us? We truly are an the end with CS-Cart’s lack of basic features and third party addons.
Thanks
Byt
I do not think you'll find anything better, well you might find with those specifications you need but other areas will be poor. Magento was among my candidates but changing code will be very complicated when on cs-cart I do all myselft, used to code and structure.
Also in magento even most simple everyday tasks like adding new product to store looks very inconvenient and time consuming…
My advice if your business cannot handle 800$ investment to selling and income tool, close it and find a job.
Brilliant answer dude. The problem isn't the addons or the cost, its the lack of basic functionality and design limitations within the cart itself. Which is the whole reason we asked if anybody knew something better.
I would advice you to forget about cs-cart support for now and spend $2000 on a good developer to fix the couple of issues you have, and to keep in close contact with this developer so they can help you quickly on issues and with upgrades. Your online shop is your business, and spending a couple of 1000 dollars on it per year is simply to be expected. Even if you could do it yourself, your time is also worth money because the time you are trying to code and fix little things might be better spent on other things like getting more customers to your shop, improving processes, and so on.
Moving to Magento will probably cost you more time, money, and stress, as I am absolutely sure 10's of other issues will arise, and development is a lot harder and more expensive for Magento. You will always need some custom coding done if you want your shop to run exactly the way you need. Add-ons can be a good start but there is usually always something that you would like differently.
You should make a clear list with the problems you have, and what should be done to fix them. With checklists, milestones, etc, and work from there with a good developer to see if things are oversee-able.
If you still want to move, I do agree Magento is kind of like the only option out there, unless you want to go with a hosted option. You might want to get a quote from a developer who works with both platforms, to see what the move would cost you.
Lastly, you will probably also need a heavier server if you move to Magento, and don't forget that even though cs-carts support might not be top-notch sometimes, Magento does not come with ANY support unless you are willing to spend an s-load of money on it.
Sorry to hear about it.
[quote name='bytraper' timestamp='1410489922' post='192050']
…There are problems for Australians wishing to display products with GST showing…
[/quote]
Could you please provide me with more details about this problem?
Flow, there's some good advice there, thanks, I'll have a long think about what you've said!
Ecom, you can only make the default cart display 2 prices at once, the with gst and without, but here in Australia the law states, if you display 2 prices, the customer is entitled to get the product for the lower displayed price. CS-cart wont display the price by itself with the inc gst (tax label)
There's no way to only show the one price, and because the localizations are so poorly implemented, we couldn't make it remove tax when people overseas made purchases except by promotions based on the destination address.
This is how it looks without Seonids mod.
Twist Grip Throttle
$9.35 ($10.29 inc GST)
This is how it looks with his mod(below), it works well, but the problems it creates are caused by CS-Cart code.
Twist Grip Throttle
$10.29 (Inc GST)
The problems begin virtually straight away… Look at the rich snippets… that's in Google Australia search. So people get upset when they get to the page and the price is higher.
Google rich snippets preview
Hall Effect Twist Grip Throttle
www.motiondynamics.com.au
‎ $9.35 - In stock
Hall Effect Twist Grip Throttle (Motorbike Style)
@bytraper,
Thank you for your message and review on the CS-Cart software.
We are sorry to hear that you are disappointed with the CS-Cart shopping cart.
First please let me cover the point on the functionality. As you know, CS-Cart is an off-the-shelf software and it has a set of functions and features that work in a particular manner. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to meet the requirements from all our customers all over the world in one software. As for the tax system, each state (a region and sometimes even a city) has its own tax regulations and I am afraid it is not possible to cover all of them. Sometimes it is possible to have some functionality to be tailored for your specific requirements. That is why we recommended to use some customization services to make the store system work according to your specific requirements.
I should add that now you can search for the desired add-ons on our Marketplace:
[url=“http://marketplace.cs-cart.com/”]http://marketplace.cs-cart.com/[/url]
It provides add-ons and themes for the CS-Cart branches 2.2. - 4.2.2.
As regards the technical support service, indeed our department is heavily loaded currently due to the big number of requests we get and such delays occur. We sincerely apologize for this situation . Our technical support team is doing their best to improve the situation and and cover all the requests in a short period of time. Anyway, please accept our apologies regarding this situation and the inconvenience it may caused you.
Also I would like to note that our technical support is a paid service. Each request is assessed in credits that are deducted from your credit account. Credits are used depending on the work required to answer your questions and resolve issues. For more information on our technical support service please visit the following page:
http://www.cs-cart.c…rt-service.html
Please note that if the issue is caused by a bug in the default software, we fix it absolutely for free if it is possible within current CS-Cart or Multi-Vendor versions.
I hope my answer explains the current situation and you will change your mind regarding our software. We will be glad to see you among our customers.
@Darius, @Flow
Thank you for the comments. We highly appreciate your opinion.
—
Anastasiya Kozlova
CS-Cart Support team
Support is a paid service??? Then what the hell are we paying for? 7 days response time? No answers, or blaming us for bad untested software?
CSCART is a joke!
Yep, that's a pretty abysmal answer…
I asked you how to fix my tax display problem, you sent me a copy of the kb article that didn't even work and charged me 10 credits for it.
I also am in Australia and I know exactly what you mean bytrapper. In Australia it is the law that all prices must be shown inclusive of GST (tax). Now, I would like to also sell to our neighbors in New Zealand…forget it CS-Cart won't let that happen. The prices have to be shown excluding the Australian GST and you also have to incorporate the exchange rate…impossible.
However, this situation is not uncommon and can be found all around the world…online stores don't just sell to the people in your street, there are different States in the same country with different taxes and different countries that neighbor on to each other all with different currencies, taxes and exchange rates.
I have been looking for a CS-Cart replacement for a long time as I also are sick of the bugs that continually stay there and increase with every update…the current CSS is absolutely appalling and would normally only be found in 3rd rate free software.
I am with you bytrapper and the only other shopping cart software I have found to be worth considering is OpenCart but the thing for me is being one of the very early CS-Cart customers I have a lifetime license with free upgrades and would need a couple of weeks of my dedicated time, which I don't have as I am so busy fixing CS-Cart, to completely set up OpenCart to make a full appraisal of it.
Bytrapper, please keep me in the loop on which way you go as there are a few other CS-Cart owners who have contacted me and are in the same boat and looking to leave CS-Cart