[chris102]

Hi Imac,

When I bought ultimate a long time ago, I was very excited, because I thought I would be able to have different shops that could all have their own look, feel and marketing tools.

We have nice, funny, friendly status emails coming from our shops. Of course with the name of the shop that's sending the mail in it (branding!). Naturally, our professional shop has another tone of voice than our end-customer shops.

Not seeing the importancy of us being able to send individual status mails per shop, prooves again that Cs-cart doesn't understand anything of marketing... I simply can't believe you still didn't make this a feature. It's such an obvious one and it makes it impossible for us (and many others, just look at the forum!) to upgrade from 2 to 3, and now 4.

Cs-cart sucking at marketing is really too bad because not only is cs-cart not to be seen anywhere where it's not posted by users (reviews, blogs, themeforest, etc) even though it's a good system, now it's also hurting shop owners.

Now of course we can spend another couple of 100 bucks to fix this, or we could install 2 cs-cart ultimates (since pro is gone) and connect the databases, but I'm getting a bit sick of this improvisation just to make a product work the way it should. I am very dissapointed.

Hi Imac,

I totaly agree with Flow that ultimate edition isn't ready for live stores yet, because of its numerous limitations.

You write on your site:
"Each Ultimate Storefront Is a Complete Online-Store. Every Ultimate storefront is an independent web-store with its own domain, design and a full set of configurable parameters. It is in fact a full-fledged CS-Cart Professional store, only enhanced with the CS-Cart Ultimate functionality.

It happens to be far from truth.

• Not possible to share custom emails with email statuses (Flow's post)
• Not possible to edit website content (about us etc.) for the second storefront. New site has to be added to create separate content for each store, however this is my workaround only.
• Not possible to import data for the products that are shared. If we want to change the price via import function so that the price of a product is the same for all storefronts then this is impossible. For shared storefrons we have to updated the products manually! To be honest I really can’t imagine, in XXI century, going through 10 000 products to set their prices manually.
• Not possible to bulk edit of share products (edit selected)
• Not possible to share blocks nor tabs. Posible to copy, but for instance "enable for" is lost.
• Not possible to edit seo name in "all store" mode.

This is what I could quickly recall, but there are some more limitations.

I am actually fan of new technologies however I must somehow agree with users claiming, that you are chasing the technology and the basic functions are missing or working incorrectly as for instance importing products' features that doesn't work and what is more deletes all features' pre- and sufixes after each import!

• No possiblity to sell decimal products i.e. 0,25 kg
• Paypal accepting only one currency set in admin
• No possibility to import options modifiers
• Tracking number in email not linked
• % quantity discounts working only for base price, not taking modifiers into account
• Not possible to attach payment instructions to comfirmation e-mail.
• SEO for testimonial page missing
  etc ...

To Flow:
Did you manage to open the second storefront under Ultimate v3? After comming across all obstacles I mentioned above as well as upcomming v4 we gave up for now.


Regards,

Chriss

[Flow]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the detailed post. I fully agree with you. In the end we never even launched 1 cs-cart 3 store (even though it's 95% ready and we updated all our custom addons) and we're still running on 2.25. Why?

Main reason is that I think conversion would go down if we'd move to 3. I didn't measure but my gut says it. Checkout looks much more cluttered, getting shipping costs has become more complicated, and the system is quite a bit slower.

As running more than 1 storefront with ultimate was made impossible for us because of the reasons you mention. we decided not to upgrade at all and wait for the version with API since this is a feature I really was waiting for.

4 does seem to run a lot faster than 3 so that obstacle seems to be out of the way. Also, it looks like we'll be able to have status mails per shop now.

THe other things, cs-cart should be able to tune them and get them out of the way.

I think it's great that cs-cart is adding important features and technology, but they never tune anything to perfection. Good example is the clickable tracking number - I was able to add this myself in about 15 minutes. So I wonder why cs-cart hand't implemented a function like this... because now THIS is s function that makes shop owners happy.
There are many, many of these little things that should be tuned.

Anyway, I have high hopes for cs-4 - I hope they have build a platform now that they can work on for some years, just tuning it to perfection, while adding new features very slowly.

[chris102]

Hi Flow,

Unfortunately that's the way it is that theoretically many features are there, but many of them can't be acutally used properly.

Let's mention languages like for instance German - I contacted you some time ago about it
Is it really so big effort to for CS to hire sb to translate all terms? Would it be so bad investment in the cart ?
If several variables were missing we could survive, but there are 80% translations missing.

Grain by grain and we filled our bellies spending a lot of money and time tuning all this "little things" as you call them.
Maybe, if the basic features were working the way they should, pople wouldn't be complaining so much about the new ones.

Transport costs that you mentioned is another excellent example.
Customer is able to estimate the shipping costs in the cart page giving necessary details and then after going to checkout the shipping cost displayed in summary block is 0 ! The customer thinks that there is a free shipping and in the next steps the shipping cost apear again! Exactly as you told, most probably 10 minutes of work, but still - it is missing.

I hope that you won't be disappointed with v4, because we were actually waiting almost one year for v3, buying it in pre-sale and then waiting for the "stable" version introducing all correction and now unfortunately we faced the wall with the second storefront ...

[ypg]

Dear Pascal,

We plan to rewrite store import add-on completly in v4. It will work in two possible ways:
- Move Professional store to Ultimate with one storefront. (in this case all object ids will be unchanged
- Move Professional store as an additional storefront to Ultimate (in this case all object ids will be renewed)

May be store import can provide an option to import only certain tables at a time. This would enable to import data in multiple steps in case of big stores.

[CarStickersDecals]

This is a horrible move if you don't support v2 upgrade. To the point where I may actually consider switching to another shopping cart platform if the import tool doesn't get done.

I'm surprised you would potentially abandon your v2 customers like this when v3 has barely been out for that long.

We would second this.. Without the proper import tool going from V2.2.5 to V4.. Its just not worth our time anymore. We will look elsewhere for another cart platform..

[Triplex]

Hello Flow,

you know me we chat already in the past

I agree 100% with you. And i tell more, i posted today this at uservoice from cs-cart

WOW really i love cs-cart the architecture, the functions, but the extending of new features are so very slow, that cs-cart is not up to a up to date shopping cart. There are so many missing features that a company that would do a right decision would NOT decide for cs-cart. Because everybody must be frightened from extending the business. Because you cannot handle 200 packages each day with cs-cart. How? Not possible. Because i must check bank wires by hand, i must check sales by the other plattforms like amazon, ebay and so on, i must fill out DHL germany and other parcel companies by hand, so endless work. Really i love cs-cart long time, i have even still a lisence with endless update rights, but i cannot use it because so many missing functions. And here you need 3 years for Amazon and Ebay? come one, thats not true!?
Consider about it, other clients like me have no other chances to choose SAAS shopping carts like this check them, copy the functions and your customer numbers will explode!!!

i am very sad to write something like this, but it´s the truth!

CS-Cart Team do not hear the users, or they wait to long time to solve/fix problems and cs-cart is not fast enough innovative enough! I tell Cs-Cart Team since round about 4-5 years that they could fix the problem with multilanguage URL´s insead of only multilanguage content. It´s neccessary in times where shop merchants have more competitors.

The other things like mentioned, no ebay no amazon and not much other connections are a no go!

Dont get me wrong, i love the Cs-cart system itselfs, but damn no big company with a lot of packages can use it. The usibility for shop owners are to less. The automation grade is to less!!!

Shop owners must have:

• auto connect to bank account through HBCI (i wrote this 5 years ago already)
• better label printing for more than only some parcel companies
• ebay and amazon 100% integration
• facebook 100% integration
• generally better Multichannel ability (very important!!!)
• 100% twitter connection
• Much better ERP is needed (very important!!!)
• central inventory and price adjustment to Multichannels needed
• Much better CRM is needed!!!
• additional but would be very good -->Print the shipping documents (invoice, packing slip, package labels & self-generated mailing labels) and this for many parcel companies

[P-Pharma]

All very good points Chris & triplex.

[tbirnseth]

May be store import can provide an option to import only certain tables at a time. This would enable to import data in multiple steps in case of big stores.

As with most merchant issues, cs-cart is simply not a merchant and has never taken a store to a new version without resetting to a new baseline.

The reality is that an merchant will do a store import from V2 to a development version of V3. They will then spend the next month trying to get things as they want them. Then it's time to convert the store to being live.

The store import should have an option to only move order and user information to the new store and leave all existing addons and other data alone. This matches a business model versus a development model.

The store-import should be smart enough to know that someone is importing from V3.0.6 to V3.0.6 and only update the order/user data (or a set of checkboxes that those functional objects should be imported, but not all the others.

If they were a merchant they would realize this and adjust the software appropriately. I had to comment out the vast majority of the store import (after copying as a new addon) to get this functionality.

[Flow]

@ Chris - I think the bug with the shipping cost showing 0 is actually fixed in versions after 3.04 or so. If not let me know and I can send you the fixed file or code... I have it in our own bug tracking system.

Update here ya go:

controllers/customer/checkout.php
				 }
		 }
-	   list ($cart_products, $_SESSION['shipping_rates']) = fn_calculate_cart_content($cart, $auth, !empty($completed_steps['step_two']) ? 'A' : 'S', true, 'F');
+	   $shipping_calculation_type = (Registry::get('settings.General.estimate_shipping_cost') == 'Y' || !empty($completed_steps['step_two'])) ? 'A' : 'S';
+
+	   list ($cart_products, $_SESSION['shipping_rates']) = fn_calculate_cart_content($cart, $auth, $shipping_calculation_type, true, 'F');
		 // if address step is completed, check if shipping step is completed
		 if (!empty($completed_steps['step_two'])) {

Remove the line with a - in front, add the lines with a +. Make backup!

I'm sorry I didn't get back to you about the German language, I just became a dad, our business is growing quickly and it's been very hectic. I'm much more relaxed again now though... we have new employees and things are under control again.

@ Triplex - I have an add-on for DHL intraship that can produce and print labels straight from the admin area, for 2.2x as well as version 3. I'd be happy to share, contact me if you want it.

Concerning most things like ERP and 3rd party connections: most shopping carts do this using their api and sometimes also 3rd parties. Now cs-cart 4 is coming with API, I have high hopes many developers will get onboard to get cs to talk to 3rd parties like ERP, CRM, twitter, and so on.

HBCI is simply not interesting because1) it's a German system only and cs-cart hardly has customers in Germany, and 2) there's really no need for cs to connect to banks. This is a PSP's job. You should look into getting a PSP that does all this for you... most good psp's accept vorkasse (bank transfer) and will put orders on processed when paid.

Don't forget cs-cart is a shopping cart, it's not compeeting with systems like brightpearl and shouldn't. It's there to let people shop and place an order. That's what is does and it does that well.

[Tim Hensel]

Hello Flow,

you know me we chat already in the past

I agree 100% with you. And i tell more, i posted today this at uservoice from cs-cart



i am very sad to write something like this, but it´s the truth!

CS-Cart Team do not hear the users, or they wait to long time to solve/fix problems and cs-cart is not fast enough innovative enough! I tell Cs-Cart Team since round about 4-5 years that they could fix the problem with multilanguage URL´s insead of only multilanguage content. It´s neccessary in times where shop merchants have more competitors.

The other things like mentioned, no ebay no amazon and not much other connections are a no go!

Dont get me wrong, i love the Cs-cart system itselfs, but damn no big company with a lot of packages can use it. The usibility for shop owners are to less. The automation grade is to less!!!

Shop owners must have:

• auto connect to bank account through HBCI (i wrote this 5 years ago already)
• better label printing for more than only some parcel companies
• ebay and amazon 100% integration
• facebook 100% integration
• generally better Multichannel ability (very important!!!)
• 100% twitter connection
• Much better ERP is needed (very important!!!)
• central inventory and price adjustment to Multichannels needed
• Much better CRM is needed!!!
• additional but would be very good -->Print the shipping documents (invoice, packing slip, package labels & self-generated mailing labels) and this for many parcel companies

Well said Triplex!

I really love the CS-Cart software even with it's lack of some important features (hopefully CS-Cart 4 will address them all!) ... but it has been tough sometimes with dealing with the Cs-Cart support/staff.

[colortone]

In Layout Manager>Editing Layout:default, I'm trying to change the page title and metadata but it created a new "default" page. Same for "Home Page". I'd like to test v4 fully but why don't you at least finish to activate all the options. I may missing something.

[Hungryweb]

On cs-cart 4 ultimate free mode you are not allowed to install 3rd party addons? http://forum.cs-cart...__fromsearch__1


---
Valentin

[phxprint]

I have a couple of questions. I'm not a web design guy. I've hired a web design company, and they decided that cs-cart was the best fit for my business.
1) I'm working in version 2 because I was told by my web design folks that only cs-cart would be able to do the upgrade, because of add-ons and the programming involved with my website. The quote I received was going to cost $$thousands$$. So, we decided to postpone the upgrade. Now that 4 is coming, can I go straight from 2 to 4, or is this another money scam created by cs-cart to take more of my money?

2) my company is a custom printing company. we created an e-commerce website, where you could select a product and then choose the various options that are associated with that product. The problem with cs-cart is that the pricing abilities for a product and its associated options only increases linearly, based on the "base price". I'm not selling individual widgets, i'm selling customizable products, where the price changes in many variables, ie. quantity, colors, paper type, etc. The only way to get close to the pricing I needed was to create literally hundreds of "forbidden/allowable" options. Quite an unproductive, time-consuming way for me to set up pricing. It caused me to have to create many more products than I wanted to, because of this pricing limitation with cs-cart. As a result of creating many more products, I've now created what google sees as "duplicate content pages" Does version 3 or 4 deal with what I'm talking about?

If not, does anyone know of a platform that might better suite my needs?


Thanks

[imac]

On cs-cart 4 ultimate free mode you are not allowed to install 3rd party addons? http://forum.cs-cart...__fromsearch__1


---
Valentin

Dear Valentin,

Thank you for the information, this is a bug. We will fix it in next Beta.

[imac]

I have a couple of questions. I'm not a web design guy. I've hired a web design company, and they decided that cs-cart was the best fit for my business.
1) I'm working in version 2 because I was told by my web design folks that only cs-cart would be able to do the upgrade, because of add-ons and the programming involved with my website. The quote I received was going to cost $$thousands$$. So, we decided to postpone the upgrade. Now that 4 is coming, can I go straight from 2 to 4, or is this another money scam created by cs-cart to take more of my money?

2) my company is a custom printing company. we created an e-commerce website, where you could select a product and then choose the various options that are associated with that product. The problem with cs-cart is that the pricing abilities for a product and its associated options only increases linearly, based on the "base price". I'm not selling individual widgets, i'm selling customizable products, where the price changes in many variables, ie. quantity, colors, paper type, etc. The only way to get close to the pricing I needed was to create literally hundreds of "forbidden/allowable" options. Quite an unproductive, time-consuming way for me to set up pricing. It caused me to have to create many more products than I wanted to, because of this pricing limitation with cs-cart. As a result of creating many more products, I've now created what google sees as "duplicate content pages" Does version 3 or 4 deal with what I'm talking about?

If not, does anyone know of a platform that might better suite my needs?


Thanks

1) Yes, you will be able to transfer you data from v2.2.5.
2) We do not plan to add such functionality. I think the best solution for you is to contact out custom development department; they will implement this feature for you.

[pbannette]

imac,
Can you please clarify/confirm that there will be an upgrade path from 2.2.4 and 2.2.5 directly to the new 4.1 version without first upgrading to 3.0x version first.
Thank you,
Bob

[mrfoameruk]

My sister wants to dabble in cscart as she's been using prestashop but when she has a problem I cannot help her and I've mentioned cscart..
How do I go about
1.downloading the free edition,
2.what are the limitation of free compared to the ultimate.
3 Do you then plan to discontinue the free version soon afterwards so people have to upgrade like you did to the community edition.
4. if she decides to upgrade to ultimate from free is there any difference in price if i buy it using my account where I already have a licence compared to her buying it herself from new. (is there any loyalty discount if I buy it).

Thanks

[buging]

imac,
Can you please clarify/confirm that there will be an upgrade path from 2.2.4 and 2.2.5 directly to the new 4.1 version without first upgrading to 3.0x version first.
Thank you,
Bob

This is a very important question that I hope cs-cart team can officially answer ASAP. There's no use for some of us to participate in the beta if we can't upgrade from 2.2.4 to 4.1

[ThomH]

imac,
Can you please clarify/confirm that there will be an upgrade path from 2.2.4 and 2.2.5 directly to the new 4.1 version without first upgrading to 3.0x version first.
Thank you,
Bob

We are receiving daily mails with update problems.
So I agree with pbannette, the update mechanism is very important for store owners.

[imac]

imac, Can you please clarify/confirm that there will be an upgrade path from 2.2.4 and 2.2.5 directly to the new 4.1 version without first upgrading to 3.0x version first. Thank you, Bob

I confirm that there will be a tool to transfer your data directly from 2.2.x to 4.0.x.

Please note that blocks and settings will probably not be imported, but you surely will be able to transfer Orders, Products/Categories, Users, and Pages.

More details on the Store import add-on will be anounced a bit later, because at the moment we are focused on bug fixing.