EasyCart Software Review

From the Easycart Website: “Easycart has been in development since 1995 by one of the nation’s top perl programmers. He also works for the fourth largest newspaper chain in the United States and became a "media star" because his newspaper site was one of the first to generate income on the Internet.

It’s interesting to evaluate shopping cart software based on its Website characteristics. From the Easycart site, I would conclude these guys completely enjoy what they do and eschew as much as possible of the “corporate way.”

The question is does this degree of personal involvement translate into cart functionality that not only doesn’t give you headaches but can help to grow a substantial business.

Functionality and Features

The demo feature is uniquely configured, with an invitation at the top: “If Easycart is right for you this is the cart you will purchase. (If it is not right for you the cart will be deleted in 15 days)”. If you choose to purchase, the information you enter in the demo can be used in your company profile.

Pricing for Easycart is currently set at $399 per year (which includes the hosting), but it may be twice that at startup since it appears $399 is also the one-time start fee. I’m sure the personal care representative can clarify the details.

Base Functionality

Easycart is an ecommerce shopping cart software service that provides hosted transaction processing for companies selling products and services on the Internet.

General Observations

Here are the top six features identified:

• Easycart product entry - no HTML needed.

• Web based.

  Secure online operations - no need for SSLs, etc.

• Advanced encryption

• Unlimited number of products

• Search-engine friendly (This can become very important over time. Most carts are databases that do not show on search engines.)

…along with several other features (many of them relatively minor or common to virtually all shopping carts; for example, I’m not sure being able to use separate shipping and billing addresses is a feature).

Limitations

The shopping cart from Easycart is quite simple, with very elementary merchant tools, limited reporting, no inventory management capability, and no online order tracking.

You may use Easycart to create a home page, with a search capability built in to each page, but using the Easycart setup program tends to stick you at various points… you can wind up on pages that have no links back to the main menu.

Support and Documentation

According to one published experience the help system is adequate, but from the Easycart site, there is no evidence of any customer service function besides, “If you get into a jam, just call Fred over here in the basement—he’s one of the best fellows at e-commerce we know—and that should take care of it, yup.”

Same thing with documentation. One post claims it exists online in connection with the demo, but this reviewer has no clue where documentation is “documented” on this strikingly simple Website.

Conclusion

If you have $800 to spare and plenty of time to chew the fat with the friendly and familiar Easycart design team, and you’re a small firm not concerned about a scalable e-commerce solution, Easycart may be the right choice for you. No doubt these dudes are the most fun.

Rating: 1.5 stars (out of 5)

The “How E-Commerce Works” section is a helpful learning tool for beginners, and the quick-start tutorial gets rave reviews. But I think most firms will want to be a little more rigorous about getting e-commerce right.

A 5-star e-commerce solution is available with Premium Web Cart, which is full-featured and usable across the widest range of business size. It is also built on the latest Web technologies and comes to you in an affordable suite of options designed to aggressively grow your core business.

Best Wishes,