Best Shopping Cart Software Compared

Shopping cart software can help you create a more convenient checkout experience for your customers while making it easier for you to track and manage sales trends. After reviewing dozens of options on the market, we found that Shopify is the best ecommerce software for most people due to its versatile checkout system and actionable insights. 

The Best Shopping Cart Software for Most

Shopify is one of the biggest names in the ecommerce platform space. It’s a powerful way to build a new online store, promote and sell your products, and build a business from nothing more than a website and any inventory you have. From branding and store setup to selling and marketing your business, Shopify gives you the tools to help you attract the right audience and keep them coming back for more. 

As part of this ecommerce suite, Shopify can help you create the best shopping journey for customers through its shopping cart feature. Beyond just being a secure checkout page, it can handle over 100 different payment gateways, convert to local currency, calculate taxes for you, and deliver helpful features like abandoned cart recovery. 

The Best Shopping Cart Software Options to Consider

1. Shopify – Best for most 
2. Shift4Shop – Best for flexibility
3. Ecwid – Best for high security
4. WooCommerce – Best for WordPress stores
5. X-Cart – Best for enterprise-level stores

When It Makes Sense to Invest In Shopping Cart Software

Often, the platform upon which you build your ecommerce site will provide a shopping cart feature. However, it’s possible that that feature is lacking or has flaws that you’d like to eliminate. 

Maybe the security features aren’t strong enough, and you’re either worried about data security or losing the trust of shoppers. Perhaps it’s lacking important tools for maximizing conversions, like abandoned cart recovery or email follow-ups. Or, it may lack the payment gateways your customers prefer to use, costing you sales that would be in the bag if you had the right payment processor. 

Whatever the issue, this can necessitate looking at other ecommerce platforms to deliver a better checkout experience to your shoppers. Or, if you’re running an online store on a platform like WordPress, you may look at different plugins to enhance the shopping cart function on your site.

Not only does shopping cart software help you build an online store that people can buy from, but it will help simplify the purchasing process and create a self-service system for your customers, making your customer’s shipping journey more convenient. A more convenient shopping process can also lead to future purchases and recurring customers. 

If you want to learn more about your customer’s shopping patterns and performance management, shopping cart software can ensure all transactions run smoothly and deliver insights like what products are most popular and the percentage of abandoned carts.

#1 — Shopify — The Best for Most

If you need a reliable shopping cart feature on an easy-to-use ecommerce site builder, Shopify is the perfect place to start. With more than 5.5 billion worldwide orders processed, Shopify is scalable and will help you process orders lightning-fast.

Instead of forcing customers to sign up for an account before hitting the checkout screen, Shopify provides one-click checkout with Shop Pay. This streamlined function allows you to convert more sales by reducing abandoned carts and even offering pay installments. Shop Pay checkout lets customers track their orders via the app, helping mobile users purchase products in the easiest way possible.

The best part about Shopify’s Shop Pay feature is that it helps customers reduce their carbon footprint. With every order processed through Shop Pay, the company plants one tree at no extra cost to the customer. 

Not only does Shopify allow one-click checkout, but it also allows shoppers to pay in any other way that suits them, including digital wallets and multi-currency. Shopify supports Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and over 90 other payment gateways. With Shopify, you can also offer more purchase options, such as subscriptions or pre-orders, which helps you branch out and find diverse revenue streams. 

If you want to measure your success, Shopify helps you turn your customer’s data into actionable and valuable insights. You can discover insights on customer behavior, sales by a campaign, checkout recovery, discount codes, and returning customer rates. 

For shipping, Shopify offers built-in tools that can help you save up to 88% on processed orders. Shopify offers three carriers, including USPS, UPS, and DHL, which each offer deals to help you save money and ship out faster domestically and internationally. 

This set of shopping cart features can represent a huge improvement on the stock shopping carts of other platforms. So, if you’re stuck somewhere else and Shopify looks better to you, fear not—Shopify offers site migration services to move your online store to their platform with no headaches. 

Shopify offers three pricing plans:

• Basic: $39 per month. Includes 2.9% + 30 cent fee for online credit card purchases
• Shopify: $105 per month. Includes 2.6% + 30 cent fee for online credit card purchases
• Advanced: $399 per month. Includes 2.4% + 30 cent fee for online credit card purchases

See all that Shopify can do for your web store and checkout experience on its three-day free trial. 

#2 — Shift4Shop — The Best for Flexibility

Shift4Shop offers one of the most flexible shopping cart solutions on the market today, optimizing its checkout system with world-class features that offer a seamless and bug-free customer experience.

This ecommerce platform lets you customize each aspect of your checkout system. 

For example, choose what happens when a customer clicks the Add to Cart button. You can opt to send your customer to the checkout page, allow them to view their cart, or let them add the product to their cart without leaving the page. 

With Shift4Shop’s QuickCart feature, you can also offer a pop-up summary of the customer’s cart whenever they add an item. The pop-up lets customers preview or edit their cart, go to checkout, or close the window to continue shopping. 

Shift4Shop’s shopping carts also let customers save their cart for later, which is fantastic for maximizing conversions. Even if a customer navigates away or closes the browser before saving their cart or purchasing, Shift4Shop uses cookies to save the cart’s contents, so nothing will be lost. 

You can integrate a multi-page checkout into your online store and switch between single-page or three-page checkout systems in just a few minutes. 

Whether your customer wants to create an account with your online store or remain as a guest, Shift4Shop also lets you present a customer account page or a guest checkout page at the end of the checkout process. 

Shift4Shop supports more than 160 payment providers and a versatile shipping setup that lets you connect with several carriers, including USPS, UPS, Canada Post, FedEx, and more international suppliers. This is a great platform for international selling because it also supports translating your site into over 100 languages.

And, best of all? Shift4Shop can be used entirely for free. Head to Shift4Shop today to learn more about this powerful, free shopping cart software and ecommerce platform.

#3 — Ecwid — The Best for High Security

Ecwid offers one of the most secure shopping carts for the peace of mind of you and your customers. Confidential information and customer data are handled in a highly secure manner.

Ecwid does not collect, store, or process your customer’s credit card information in any way. Instead, Ecwid offers you two secure options for third-party payment gateways that redirect your customers to the payment page or allow them to stay on the storefront to complete payment. 

Ecwid is PCI certified and is a PCI DSS-validated Level 1 Service Provider, which ensures the highest international standard for secure data exchanges. Ecwid also uses secure hosting and regularly scans for breaches to protect your data. 

Whether you use WordPress, Wix, or any other website platform for your online store, Ecwid will always ensure your site is protected, and your customers can check out in the safest way possible. Everything happens on a secure HTTPS connection and, during each checkout, Ecwid will let your customer know that their data is secure. That’s huge for maintaining the trust of your shoppers. 

With that said, the rest of Ecwid’s shopping cart features are valuable as well, and simple to use. Customers can view items in their cart, the order subtotal, any automatic discounts or promotions, and the estimated shipping costs and tax rates, plus there are fields for them to use promo coupons and gift cards. 

When it comes to shipping, Ecwid offers carriers for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, and New Zealand. Ecwid will help you automatically calculate the cost of shipping and present this pricing to your customers. 

You can try Ecwid free forever for up to 10 products, but there are three paid plans for unlocking better features in addition to more products:

• Venture: $12.50 per month for up to 100 products, plus advanced SEO tools
• Business: $29.17 per month for up to 2,500 products, plus multilingual catalogs 
• Unlimited: $82.50 per month for unlimited products, plus 12 hours of free customization service

Try Ecwid’s free plan today to try this shopping cart software on for size. 

#4 — WooCommerce — The Best for WordPress

WooCommerce is the most prominent name for WordPress sites looking to tap into ecommerce functionality. As fully open-source, free software, your options for designing and customizing your online store (including shopping carts and checkout pages) are nearly limitless.

To increase your conversion rate, WooCommerce offers a floating sticky cart button that you can customize and place anywhere on your online store. This gets rid of long checkout forms and allows your customers quick access to their cart without ever having to leave a product page. Plus, paying with PayPal is built right into it, meaning there’s no need to go to a separate payment page, either. 

WooCommerce offers more than 700 extensions to enhance the capabilities of your online store, including over 70 pertaining to customizing your shopping cart and checkout process alone. These run from connecting with shippers like UPS and FedEx to support for product add-ons, scheduling bookings, related product suggestions, custom thank you pages, and much more.

If you want to make your online store even more customizable and protected, WooCommerce also offers an additional Jetpack extension for free. Jetpack can help protect your site while providing accurate data reports and real-time backups. 

While some of these extensions can come with fees to use them, WooCommerce itself is free forever to use on your WordPress site. Get started by signing up with WooCommerce today and connecting it to your WordPress account.

#5 — X-Cart — The Best for Enterprise-Level Stores

If you’re looking for a shopping cart software that scales to the size of your growing online store, X-Cart is the perfect solution. This platform lets you create your online store without compromising your ideas and scales perfectly for enterprise-level stores (or ones aiming to grow to that level soon). 

This is especially true for ambitious ecommerce sites that host a multi-seller marketplace.  X-Cart gives you admin control and lets you separate your vendor storefront and dashboard to allow other vendors to have their own marketplace. 

X-Cart lets you create a personalized shopping journey for your customers through language translations, targeted messages, and pleasant visual aids. You can also utilize over 120 payment processing providers, from PayPal and Stripe to Skrill and Opayo, to give your customers the options they deserve.

You also get access to powerful email marketing tools, one-step or multi-step checkout, PCI-approved subscriptions, and integrated analytics tools to turn your insights into action.

X-Cart offers affordable international shipping carriers, too, including Australia Post, Canada Post, FedEx, UPS, and Pitney Bowes. You can also transform your site for international visitors with multi-currency transactions, global expansion features, and automated taxes. 

Here’s a quick overview of the three pricing tiers: 

• Platform: $199 per month
• Auto: $299 per month
• Marketplace: $399 per month

Schedule a free demo with X-Cart to learn more about getting started with this platform.  

Methodology for Choosing the Best Shopping Cart Software

It can be difficult to choose the right shopping cart software, so we put together this methodology of the four most essential elements to consider before investing in a solution. 

Platform Compatibility  

Before you invest in shopping cart software, you need to consider what platform you will build your ecommerce website on and if the software is compatible with that platform. Many shopping cart software extensions usually come with ecommerce platforms already, but if you are going with a completely different platform, make sure it supports the software you choose before making a purchase. 

Some of the most popular platforms include WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly. If your shopping cart software isn’t compatible with your ecommerce website platform, you will need to decide to change one of these two aspects, making it a more time-consuming process. 

Payment Gateways 

The best shopping cart software offers a wide variety of payment gateways for your customers to pay through. The most common processors are PayPal and Stripe, so make sure your chosen software has at least one of these options, but more payment options is always ideal because it won’t exclude a portion of potential customers. 

Some other popular payment gateways include Apple Pay, Google Pay, After Pay, AliPay, and the usual credit card options, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. 

Worldwide Shipping and Multiple Languages

Are you an enterprise-level online store or have dreams of scaling to this size? If that’s the case, you will need to consider worldwide shipping and multiple language options. 

It’s crucial to find shopping cart software that offers storefront translation, currency conversion, and shipping in multiple languages and countries. Keep these considerations front and center when picking a solution if you’re aiming for global reach. 

Shipping Setup and Fees

Most shopping cart software will offer a variety of shipping companies to choose from to help you fulfill orders. However, be mindful of associated fees, which can become expensive if the software you choose also has additional fees on top of the shipping providers’ own. Also, make sure to scan through user reviews to make sure the integration of the platform with shipping providers is smooth and simple. 

The Top Shopping Cart Software in Summary

Overall, Shopify is the best shopping cart software for most people because it’s also the best ecommerce platform for most people. The software helps you process orders fast and delivers one-click checkout with Shop Pay. With actionable insights, affordable shipping options, and store migration, Shopify can help you transform your online store and create an enjoyable shopping experience for all visitors. 

However, it may not be the right software for everyone. If you are looking for more flexibility, higher security, extensive integrations, or more scalable plans, the other software options on this list are excellent alternatives.