-Can postage be automatically calculated depending on:
-Destination
-Quantity
-Weight
We have a number of built in shipping methods. How they calculate shipping depends on the plugin. We have one called “Per location rates” that charges shipping based on customer location and cart weight (which factors in item weight * quantity). IF that doesn’t do it for you, we can build a custom shipping plugin. Our shipping system relies on plugins… we know that sooo many different systems have wildly different shipping. Rather than do everything, shipping is handled by plugins. If you know PHP they’re easy enough to build. If not, we build them regularly at reasonable rates.
-Is there a way to give a referral discount? Or would this have to be achieved through discount codes? If so could this be automated?
Are you giving the person that provided the referral the discount? Or the person that received the discount? We have a companion product called Affiliator that will track commissions for referrals. We’ve had a feature request to make those commissions be applied as credits, but we haven’t implemented it. So… no automated discount yet… but referrals can be tracked with Affiliator. I think my original intent was to make it so Affiliator commissions could be paid out as CartThrob Credits… but that hasn’t been implemented yet.
-Can you design a confirmation message to be sent out after the order has been placed?
Yes. CT uses the build in EE template system, so you can make those look like whatever you want.
-Would it be possible to allow customers to determine the cost of their order before logging in, but only allow purchases to be made once logged in?
Yes.
-For customizable products, would it be possible for a customer to upload an image, and link it to an order? (like moonpig etc)
Yes, though this is more of an EE thing. What I usually suggest is that you use EE’s SaferCracker module to output a form for the customer to create a product and upload a file. Once that item’s been added, it can be automatically added to the cart. From the cart perspective it’s pretty simple. The EE SafeCracker is also simple… as long as you have some familiarity with EE already. If you’re coming into it cold, it might be confusing.
The advice I have is this: If you like EE as a platform (and I think it’s a GREAT platform getting better all the time) CartThrob is a great product. CartThrob’s really a framework, unlike OSC, Magento, or ZenCart, etc. It’s not so point and click as those are, but in mine (and most of my customers) experience it’s a great time saver over OSC. We basically built CT to reduce our time working with OSC. When we started it’d take about 1.5-3 months to build OSC ecom sites (with annoying and hard to update bits left in still) . With CT… our time is generally more like 1-3 weeks… even with complex stuff. And CT is built to be very anti hacking. With OSC Core hacks were common. When our customers find some reason why they MUST hack CT’s core, we put in an extension hook, so that the core product is easy to maintain.
Anyway, personally I think CT’s a great foundation. Like any system, there are things that I’m sure will annoy you, but we’re always here to help. If you need custom work, we’re glad to help out.
