Hello,
after looking at most of the carts out there, I’m now torn between the last two candidates:
I’ve never tried LiveCart… but I did try out 4-5 other cart systems before deciding to stick with CS-Cart. None of the other carts were as easy to navigate as CS-Cart. After adding products and images in CS-Cart, trying to do the same in others was just too complicated.
In several other carts I tried, trying to add product options was ridiculously confusing however CS-Cart makes it pretty straight forward in my opinion. One thing that made me nervous about staying with CS-Cart was how slow the forum discussion is. Other cart software has forums with 20,000+ members whereas we only have 4400 with only 900 being active.
I do believe there should be more participation by the CS-Cart development team… or at least a development liaison that can acknowledge bugs or feature requests and keep the customers in the loop as to progress.
Overall I am enjoying CS-Cart and looking forward to customizing it to suit my needs. I’m trying to do my part by answering questions in the forum. Hopefully things will pick up and CS-Cart will continue to grow.
Livecart looks very interesting and apparently has bundle add on too. Wait for the next version product cs-cart add on bundle and then decide.
Livecart looks very interesting and apparently has “bundle” add on too. I belive a real competitor comparing other carts to cs-cart. Wait for the next version cs-cart add on bundle and check the both for product options, attributes, product bundles etc. as well.
check the both cart forums
i have tried both live cart and cs cart. which one is better?
you choose:
1: cs cart has much more addons while live cart has few. 2 i think and the others are for sale. you need to purchase them.
2: live cart seems to work faster (but i think this is because of the few addons)
3: live cart update takes a very long time. i think there is only one person who does it. while cs cart has many people to take care of the problems and the update.
4: structure is kind of same
5: cs cart is stable , few bugs but not really that important. while live cart bugs can be nasty. you can loose all your products in one click , delete one product and deleted all the products. (happened to us)
6: the guy at live cart is really helpful. Rinalds. he would look after you for sure, here at cs cart you need to write a ticket and they quote you, but maybe its because cs cart has much more clients so they dont have much time…
7: i think live cart can be a real competition to cscart in 2-3 years but not now.
so now hands up for cscart. later??? who knows:) better service always win.
To date I had zero experience with shopping carts so this makes choosing very difficult… And also means I’m probably gonna need lots of support to get started.
Forums are definitely more active here, but activity/numbers is not always a good indication (e.g. phpBB forum when I last checked was hyper active but just try to get any real help there! Impossible).
From my initial demo testing, the last two carts look very similar indeed, and quite different too… Livecart looks more simple and intuitive, but in my opinion CS-Cart has more features? Also there is question about support (time/quality/patience) and money involved in custom development if any is needed.
I’m planning to sell digital goods (downloads), so many of the standard cart features are not really necessary… and for selling digital goods both carts look ok…
Maybe anyone here is using CS-Cart to sell downloads and subscriptions to access “free” downloads? Would be interesting to see a live store.
dustundag, what do you mean by “bundle”?
And is there any place to check a roadmap for the future and see the past change-logs?
Thanks silverbestbuy! It’s really helpful to hear from someone who has first hand experience with both systems!
[quote name=‘silverbestbuy’]
1: cs cart has much more addons while live cart has few. 2 i think and the others are for sale. you need to purchase them.
[/QUOTE]
Right, and the ones I need are already built-in in CS-Cart.
[quote name=‘silverbestbuy’]
live cart seems to work faster (but i think this is because of the few addons)
[/QUOTE]
You mean the backend of the store, or is this also affecting the front-end?
The unused addons probably can be switched off to speed things up, or is this not an option?
[quote name=‘silverbestbuy’]
the guy at live cart is really helpful. Rinalds. he would look after you for sure, here at cs cart you need to write a ticket and they quote you, but maybe its because cs cart has much more clients so they dont have much time…
(…)
better service always win.[/QUOTE]
That’s another point I’m trying to solve in my head. I kinda like the personal approach and the ticket system looks very bureaucratic…
I looked at & followed Livecart for several weeks when looking for a new shopping cart system and decided on CS-Cart. Livecart is an extremely small start-up company, common sense tells you that startups quite often don’t make it…
Livecart was interesting & does some things well, but in my opinion they have quite a long way to go to be in the same leaque as CS-Cart.
As far as cart speed, I visited every customer live site they displayed, none of them made me stop & say “wow, that site is fast”. I have visited several CS-Cart customer sites & have found several that are extremely fast (including ours) & that includes sites running on the latest 2.xx versions!
As far as service, you will notice that Rinalds (the owner) at Livecart answers like 100% of the support questions, sorry, but that simply tells me they are a one man show & no way was I going to put my eggs into that basket! 
I have now tested the “product bundle” add on of livecart. I was not able to get the option of a product required as part of the bundle . The cs-cart bundle under the labs development does support the product options. This is good news.
The livecart seem do not have product configurator with compatibility classes . Cs-cart has product configurator add on as well but unfortunately currently does not support the product options like "required parts . But they can do it as they have quoted price to me.
Livecart was one of the carts that I looked at, but I feel they are too small right now and they are having problems with releasing solid code and patching problems. They also don’t have an active community and developers that are creating addons for the products.
Just my two cents.
Adam
LiveCart is now free and open source!
CS-Cart license price: $285
Now Livecart seems a better choice.right?
[quote name=‘ruman’]LiveCart is now free and open source!
CS-Cart license price: $285
Now Livecart seems a better choice.right?[/QUOTE]
Read the above posts - I would not consider a one man show for any reason.
Also Live Cart will probably start charging like Magneto
[quote name=‘ruman’]LiveCart is now free and open source!
CS-Cart license price: $285
Now Livecart seems a better choice.right?[/QUOTE]
It’s not free. Private label costs 149 USD.
Yes, it is free.
Quoted from the live cart website-
“The free Community license requires to retain LiveCart copyright messages with a link to livecart.com in footer of all frontend and admin pages, as well as “Powered By LiveCart” notice in all page titles and LiveCart logos in the admin pages.”
The private label for $150 allows you to rebrand the cart as your own, AND you can sell your web business with the cart, unlike cs-cart.
According to their website, the only difference between the community licence and the private one is the copyright message.
[quote name=‘red280z’]Yes, it is free.
Quoted from the live cart website-
“The free Community license requires to retain LiveCart copyright messages with a link to livecart.com in footer of all frontend and admin pages, as well as “Powered By LiveCart” notice in all page titles and LiveCart logos in the admin pages.”
The private label for $150 allows you to rebrand the cart as your own, AND you can sell your web business with the cart, unlike cs-cart.
According to their website, the only difference between the community licence and the private one is the copyright message.[/QUOTE]
If you like “Powered By LiveCart”, then it’s free from your point of view.
Even live cart is developed by Lithuanians I would go with cs-cart. I am not sure but I get a feeling live cart support and development team is very small, things would be fixed and updated too slow. I’ve did such mistake in the past with shop-script.com spent many hours of work, then again when was moving to cs-cart.
With cs-cart I am a year now and to this day there is not a single stable release. Developers always introduce something new, where they have to modify full cart, upgrades are painful unless you have not modified cart. Basically things are very slow here also but at least with progress.
Developers should release one stable release and assure their buyer it is final stable release 99.9% bug free. Current version should be sold as beta (clearly indicated). People buy beta, pay money for it and also buy support to fix their bugs…
Received a letter today
[QUOTE]I’m located in the US but want to buy and send to my family in Korea (Republic of). Is that possible? [/QUOTE]
in version .15 developers decided it should be no longer possible… Same as they decided to reposition additional images without even asking anyone.
I’d go with the cart that offers more support. It is not the features but the smooth sailing is what important.
[quote name=‘joe’]If you like “Powered By LiveCart”, then it’s free from your point of view.[/QUOTE]
Joe, there is no “point of view”. It is free, ie, does not require a purchase for use. Just trying to keep the information from being misinformation.
Livecart is essentially a one man show…
If the perceived value you place on your business justifies building around a platform that could easily vanish overnight, then their free cart is a great deal for you!
[quote name=‘red280z’]Joe, there is no “point of view”. It is free, ie, does not require a purchase for use. Just trying to keep the information from being misinformation.[/QUOTE]
It doesn’t require you to purchase it to use but what reputable store would have a powered by Livecart link at the bottom of their site? So I agree with Joe’s point of view. This isn’t misinformation.