What’s the Best Shopping Cart Software of 2024?

When launching an ecommerce or SaaS project (or when digitizing your existing business), choosing shopping cart software is one of the first steps to take.

There are quite a few options available out there which makes choosing one option may be challenging.

There are a lot of pros and cons to keep in mind as well as your own unique business specifics and goals, for example, your budget and your target audience.

What is Shopping Cart Software?

Shopping cart software is what manages sales on your site: It allows your customers to choose a product, select buying or delivering options and pays.

A good shopping cart solution supports multiple payment options, allows you to add coupons and order bumps, and lets you integrate different payment types (one-time, recurring, delayed, etc.)

A shopping cart should also be secure, mobile-friendly and provide good user experience.

Obviously shopping cart software is crucial for your site conversions.

So what’s the best shopping cart software of 2022?

Paykickstart

Paykickstart is a multi-feature and highly customizable shopping cart software which comes with a multitude of integrations, a robust API and solutions making it a smart choice for just about any business.

Paykickstart has high ratings on all SaaS review platforms including Capterra and G2.

Paykickstart somes powerful customer retention and marketing automation features allowing you to re-engage inactive customers, increase your customer lifetime value and generate more sales. 

Paykickstart can also help you attract new customers by launching your own affiliate program. You can use a referral program to let other people, like niche influencers, promote your product, and manage it using PayKickstart that will track commissions, manage referral payments and let you identify your most active affiliates.

The platform is extremely versatile giving you a lot of flexibility: You can use it for one-time fee checkout as well as for creating an effective sales funnel. You can also set up recurring payments and automate your customers’ buying journeys. 

You can also use PayKickstart to increase your revenue using easy order bumps and multiple payment processing options, including enhanced PayPal integration.

Paykickstart starts at $99 per month and that plan offers full payment integration, subscription management, templates, and more.

Kartra

Kartra is a cloud-based business management solution that offers marketing and sales tools to build your own sales funnels.

Kartra supports both one-time and recurring payments and lets you set up payments with credit card or PayPal.

Kartra supports international payments by automatically converting currencies and offering automatic translations into 12 languages.

Kartra does have a few limitations, for example, lack of user demographics reporting and no integrations with many products, like webinars and quizzes.

Kartra’s starting plan costs $99 which allows you to sell 20 products.

SamCart

SamCart is a web-based shopping cart software that was built for direct-to-consumer brands.

Samcard offers a variety of landing page and checkout page templates and drop page builders.

On the flip side, SamCart has no support for usage based billing or no availability of payments by wire transfers. It has built-in email automation features but it offers no integration with existing email marketing services.

SamCart starts at $39 allowing you to launch a one-page site with limited functionality.

ThriveCart

ThriveCart is an online shopping cart platform offering checkout page templates and integrations.

ThriveCart offers a variety of shopping cart templates but it doesn’t have a visual sales funnel builder or surveys.

It has a solid affiliate marketing management solution but it lacks in customer retention front as it offers no cancellation saving options and audience demographics analytics.

ThriveCart costs $97 per month.

Keap

Keap is a CRM and marketing automation platform designed for B2B and service-based businesses.

Keap offers an ability to issue invoices and process payments, create landing pages and manage client appointments.

Keap has two plans: “Pro” being the less expensive one. It costs $129 per month and doesn’t include promo codes and upsells.

Chargebee

Chargebee is a subscription billing management platform that focuses on helping subscription-driven businesses.

It has a powerful toolset that helps you create advanced subscription billing workflows and subscription lifecycle including invoicing, recurring billing and trial membership.

Chargebee’s less expensive plan starts at $249 and it lacks some payment methods and advance invoicing.

Chargify

Chargify is a subscription billing software solution that simplifies recurring payment processing for SaaS businesses.

According to customers’ reviews, it may take a while to figure out how the platform works but once you learn how to use it, it becomes very useful.

The platform helps manage deferred revenue and streamline the accounting process.

Chargify’s essential plan costs $599 per month.

Recurly

Recurly is the subscription management solution that aims at helping recurring revenue companies.

Recurly offers a very targeted functionality, so it is lacking in integrations: There are no email marketing or webinar or membership integrations, and quite limited email marketing integrations.

There’s also no affiliate marketing integration which means you will have to look for a third-party solution for setting up a referral program.

Recurly “Core” plan costs $199 per month, billed annually.

How do I choose a shopping cart software?

Take some time to research. All of the solutions above offer trial periods and demos helping you understand whether any of the platforms may work for you. Your current CMS may already have some integrations or offers a built-in solution. For example, Wix offers its own shopping cart and it can be really affordable if you use a Wix promo code.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions and work with the customer support to clear any confusion. This experience will also be helpful in choosing the right shopping cart solution. Make sure that your future partner is responsive and reliable. If it takes too long to hear from them, avoid that company.

Your choice also depends on the nature of your business. If you are planning to offer both one-time and recurring payments, use a more flexible solution. If you are only interested in selling one-time downloads, there’s no need in investing into an expensive platform that targets big subscription-based businesses.

Ann Smarty

Ann Smarty is the Brand Manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas, as well as co-founder of Viral Content Bee. Ann has been into Internet Marketing for over a decade, she is the former Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Journal and contributor to prominent search and social blogs including Small Biz Trends and Mashable. Ann is also the frequent speaker at Pubcon and the host of a weekly Twitter chat #vcbuzz

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