1ShoppingCart Review

While they don’t offer the best features in the industry, 1ShoppingCart does have a few great things worth mentioning. Their email autoresponders, built-in subscription services and the ability to easily integrate affiliate links are among the notable features. 1ShoppingCart has basic features that feel outdated but get the job done. When it comes to web design, they don’t excel in this area either. Their user dashboard seems quite outdated and is far from being the most intuitive backend we’ve ever worked with. However, with their loads of tutorial videos, you should be able to quickly understand how to use most functions. Overall, 1ShoppingCart is an outdated platform, but some merchants may like the core features and experience users won’t really mind the outdated backend.

Ease of Use

Nowadays, there are numerous eCommerce platforms that provide you with great simplicity of use without compromising on features or functionality. Unfortunately, 1ShoppingCart is not one of those tools. They don’t have a very simple dashboard and the entire platform seems outdated. For those of you who have prior experience building websites, you’ll easily be able to find your way around. Even new merchants should be able to set up websites without too much hassle. However, when you compare the dashboard of 1ShoppingCart with other similar platforms, you’ll quickly see that the competition makes things much easier to handle. Overall, 1ShoppingCart should be used by experienced users only.

Functionality

1ShoppingCart does not have the largest selection of built-in features and you’ll find most of the features they do have built into other platforms as well. Most of their tools seem outdated or they tend to place a lot of emphasis on features that are available on most eCommerce solutions as well, making them not so exciting. They do have some core features that are interesting though, such as their email autoresponders which can end up saving you a lot of time by not having to manually email customers. You can also easily set up affiliate links so you earn commissions every time a sale is made via a partner’s item. Additionally, 1ShoppingCart has excellent support for selling all kinds of products, be it physical goods, digital downloads, or even subscription services.

Being able to integrate third-party apps is a great function when owning a website. While most eCommerce solutions make it easy for you to integrate apps and plugins, 1ShoppingCart does not. They don’t have an app marketplace, but they do have an API-enabled platform. This means you will be able to integrate third-party apps, but it’s a little more complicated and you’ll have to know a little more about websites than with most eCommerce platforms. Some of the third-party apps that you can integrate include Google Analytics, AWeber, PayPal, Kajabi, LeadPages, QuickBooks, Shipwire, and more. Overall, the lack of an app marketplace makes it difficult for you to add third-party apps, but it’s possible if you know what you’re doing.

1ShoppingCart seems to be stuck in the early 2000s. Their own website is quite outdated and you should expect the same type of web designs from their themes. Firstly, their selection of free themes is very poor with just a couple of themes to choose from. Secondly, the themes they do have are very outdated just like their own website. If you choose 1ShoppingCart, you should expect to have loads of customizations to do in order to get the websites looking the way you want them. This makes it crucial for you to know basic coding in order to be able to customize the sites yourself, otherwise, you will be looking at hefty programmer fees. However, if outdated themes are good enough for you, 1ShoppingCart could be a decent solution for your needs.

When it comes to tracking incidents and uptime at 1ShoppingCart, it becomes nearly impossible to do. The lack of a status page makes finding vital information such as server maintenance and downtimes very difficult. While their Twitter page mentions recent incidents, they haven’t updated their status on Twitter in over a year, making it another unreliable resource. 1ShoppingCart does have an uptime guarantee of 99.9%, but this cannot be proved due to their lack of information about downtime and incidents. We found their web page loading times to be quite good - in fact, they are among the fastest sites in the industry. However, with outdated themes and poor built-in features, you will most likely have to increase the loading time by making loads of customizations. Overall, 1ShoppingCart is far from impressive in this category.

Uptime

Choosing a platform with excellent uptime ratings will allow you to enjoy a much more stable environment. The last thing you want is to experience regular downtimes, especially when running an online store, since this could result in major profit losses. Fortunately, 1ShoppingCart guarantees an uptime of 99.9%. This is just about average for the industry, and you’ll find the same guarantee rating on most of the big eCommerce platforms as well. 1ShoppingCart does not have a status page, so we can’t see when and how often incidents occur, making it difficult to verify this uptime guarantee.

Incident Frequency

Tracking incidents and downtime are crucial if you want to enjoy proper maintenance of your website. Knowing when issues will occur or have occurred makes it much easier to deal with problems as they arise. Unfortunately, 1ShoppingCart does not provide any status page for reporting incidents, making it incredibly difficult for us to know when and how often they occur. However, they do seem to report some incidents on their Twitter page, but the last submission on their Twitter page was in 2017, so this may not be used for all incidents. Overall, there’s no real way of knowing whether or not their platform is dealing with issues other than constantly contacting their support team.

Speed

When it comes to speed scores at 1ShoppingCart, they do alright. While they don’t have the absolute fastest eCommerce platform on the internet, they definitely have adequate web page loading times for a pleasurable experience. Most of their web pages load in under 2 seconds, with some web pages loading in under 1.5 seconds. This is incredibly fast and is way above the industry average. However, 1ShoppingCart still had some areas that could use some optimizations to gain additional speed. The following areas could have been further optimized: adding expires headers, using a content delivery network, and using cookie-free domains. Overall, 1ShoppingCart does very well with website loading speeds.

1ShoppingCart does not offer the best support team online. When you compare them to other similar platforms, they are quite terrible. They don’t offer any live chat support when choosing their cheaper pricing plan, and they only provide email support between Monday to Friday with a 2-day response time. However, by spending more towards a larger pricing plan, you will get to benefit from 24-hour response times for email, and you’ll also be allowed to contact them via live chat. Phone support is decent but can often take some time for you to get connected. Additionally, the phone is only available Monday to Friday regardless of the pricing plan you choose. One of the nice things about 1ShoppingCart is their huge selection of tutorial videos to help you understand most of the features and tools available on their platform. Overall, you shouldn’t expect the best customer support from 1ShoppingCart, but if support isn’t a huge deciding factor for you, they should be just fine.

Support Availability

Customer support availability at 1ShoppingCart is decent, but you’ll have to pay more to get the best available support. With basic inquiries, they were helpful, but more complex issues would require you to upgrade your pricing plan to a more expensive option. Their basic plan only includes Monday to Friday email support with a 2-day response time, which is quite terrible. However, as you upgrade your plan, you’ll gain access to phone and live chat support as well, and you’ll get to enjoy 24/7 availability along with a 24-hour response time. It would definitely be nice to see 1ShoppingCart add more support channels for lower plans, but if you opt for a more expensive plan, you should be satisfied with their service.

Speed of Response

A fast response time is crucial for getting the assistance that you require in due time. Quickly calling up the support team and immediately getting the answers you need is crucial, but it doesn’t always happen at 1ShoppingCart. In fact, they only guarantee a 24-hour response time for email support, even on their most expensive plan. When attempting to call them, we found ourselves being put on hold way more often than with other similar platforms. Additionally, their live chat had waiting times up to 30 minutes, far below the average of 10 to 15 minutes of wait time. Overall, 1ShoppingCart is far from impressive for the speed of response for their customer support.

Friendliness & Helpfulness

The staff members seemed friendly when contacting them, but as mentioned earlier, they were unable to provide lots of information when contacting them through smaller pricing plans. When we upgraded to more expensive pricing plans, we were met with more qualified technicians, but we didn’t find it worth the extra money when other similar platforms offer quality support for all plans. However, 1ShoppingCart does offer a nice selection of tutorial videos, so you should be able to get most of the information you need right there without having to contact them directly. This is truly the only positive aspect that we found revolving around the customer support team at 1ShoppingCart.

Telephone Support

Phone support at 1ShoppingCart is decent but not the best. It’s not available 24/7 for their cheapest pricing plan. Even their most expensive plans seem to have longer waiting times than other similar platforms, even though they guarantee a priority queue. Phone support often resulted in long waiting periods of 15 to 30 minutes, which should not be the case since they have fewer clients than other larger eCommerce solutions. Furthermore, phone support is only available Monday to Friday from 10 am to 8 pm EST. They offer a USA phone number and an international phone number, which is one of the very few nice things we noticed when reviewing their phone support.

Live Chat Support

Live chat at 1ShoppingCart is quite bad. We did not like our experience using their live chat experience, and we recommend all 1ShoppingCart users skip it entirely and phone or email them instead. Most of their live chat support agents could not help us resolve our issues, and the waiting time was far longer than we’re used to seeing on other eCommerce platforms. When we attempted to contact 1ShoppingCart via live chat, we sometimes waited as long as 30 minutes before getting connected to a support agent. Even with such long waiting times, we weren’t always able to get the help we needed. Live chat isn’t available on their cheapest pricing plan to make matters worse - you will have to pay more to benefit from this support channel.

Email Support

Unlike most eCommerce platforms, 1ShoppingCart does not make their email support simple. Usually, everybody can access the same level of email support, but at 1ShoppingCart, you’ll get better support via email as you upgrade your pricing plan. They essentially want you to pay more money to get a better support service. When choosing their cheapest available plan, you will only get to benefit from 2-day response times, which is incredibly long. To make matters worse, this plan only provides you with email support from Monday to Friday. However, as you upgrade your pricing plan, you’ll get bumped up to 7-day support along with a 24-hour response time. Still, 24 hours is quite long for priority support.

Before choosing the eCommerce solution of your dreams, there will be many factors that you’ll need to compare. One of these is the pricing and the overall cost that you will end up paying each month. 1ShoppingCart is not a tool for beginners and it does not have beginner-level pricing. This means you won’t find any type of free plan or cheap plans for that matter. In fact, we feel that 1ShoppingCart is incredibly overpriced for the number of features that they deliver. Their services are sub-par when compared to other similar platforms and they lack a lot of functionality. They even have very outdated designs, yet they charge more expensive than most eCommerce solutions. If money isn’t an issue, choose 1ShoppingCart, otherwise, you’ll probably want to look into other alternatives.

Plans Pricing

1ShippingCart is not the most affordable option on the market. They have a few different pricing plans to choose from, but they don’t offer any type of free plan, which is often the case with other similar platforms. The first payment plan is called “Plus” and comes with basic free templates, the ability to list up to 500 products for sale on your website, 1 user per account, and 1.25% transaction fees. The second plan is called “Premium” and comes with the same standard support but you get to enjoy premium themes, unlimited products, 5 users per account, and 1% transaction fees. The final plan is called “Ultimate” and comes with unlimited products, 5 user licenses, a custom SSL certificate, premium support, and 0.75% transaction fees. Overall, their pricing plans are much steeper than most of the competition and the added transaction fees are an additional cost that you’ll need to factor in.

Transaction Fees

While most eCommerce solutions have decided to remove their transaction fees, 1ShoppingCart hasn’t made this transition. They still charge you for every sale you make and as you increase your pricing plan the transaction fee drops a little. However, this means you’ll be spending more on your pricing plan so you may not be saving all that much. Additionally, eCommerce platforms that drop their transaction fees usually limit you on the number of products you can sell to compensate, but 1ShoppingCart has this limitation as well. Overall, this means you’ll end up spending a lot more money than you would with other mainstream eCommerce solutions.

Other Fees

We looked through their platform in search of additional fees or any hidden fees that may be listed elsewhere on their platform. We did not end up finding any information about other fees so it seems safe to say that the only fees you will have to pay are the monthly pricing plans along with the transaction fees with every sale that you make.

As one of the oldest eCommerce platforms in the industry, 1ShoppingCart is definitely worth a second glance. This company was first established in 1999, but they were purchased by Web.com in 2006. Web.com specializes in “do it for me” services online for small and mid-size businesses, making it the perfect fit for this eCommerce solution.

Based out of Ontario, Canada, 1ShoppingCart has less than 200 employees, making it a rather small eCommerce platform when comparing it to some of the major competitors. They state that they have over 25,000 business owners using their platform and while this is a rather low number when compared to similar platforms that have hundreds of thousands of users, 1ShoppingCart remains a great option for select businesses.

While they don’t offer the same level of simplicity that comes along with other similar platforms, they do still keep things easy to use. Ideally, 1ShoppingCart should be used by merchants who have a little bit of experience building websites. While you couldn’t certainly setup an entire online platform without having any prior coding skills, 1ShoppingCart isn’t the most intuitive eCommerce solution. It will definitely become much easier to use if you have some sort of background in the industry.

Their mission statement mentions that they aim to increase business productivity while helping merchants cut down on costs. They achieve this by offering innovative features at lower prices than the competition, allowing business owners to streamline many of their daily operations. If you’re looking for a powerful platform and you have prior experience building websites, 1ShoppingCart could definitely become a solid option for your specific needs.

1ShoppingCart is one of the few eCommerce platforms that seems to have been stuck in the past decade. They have outdated themes, transaction fees (which most other similar platforms have now dropped), and a difficult-to-use dashboard. Major downsides to 1ShoppingCart include their lack of features, their outdated web designs, and their poor customer service. Combine all of these facts together and you might as well simply look into better alternatives. The customer service actually improves as you pay more, so unless you want to spend high monthly fees, you won’t be able to enjoy full service for support. One thing they do get right is their web page loading times, which are very fast and well-optimized. Additionally, their full month of free trial period allows you to really get to know the platform before committing to a paid plan. Overall, 1ShoppingCart is outdated and complex - most newer eCommerce platforms offer better features, better looking designs, and lower prices, but a select few may still enjoy 1ShoppingCart.