Updated: December 1, 2012
Alright guys... it's comparison time. Just how does CartThrob stack up? Take a look at the competition and judge for yourself.
If CartThrob can't do it out of the box, it can be extended to meet your exacting requirements. So, why bother with other tools that just go halfway and stop? Learn once and use repeatedly. That's a recipe for success.
It's our intent to fairly represent the products below, though we're obviously partial. Please contact us if you find any discrepancies in this list and we will correct immediately. CartThrob is a great product and it stands on its own so there's no reason for us to make anything up.
Status |
Version 2.3 Updated December 1, 2012 |
Version 1.6.1 Updated November 2, 2012 |
Version 1.2.1.0 Updated November 1, 2012 |
|
---|---|---|---|---|
Price | $299 |
$149 |
$150 |
|
Ratings from Devot-ee which runs on CartThrob! |
4.75 (24 reviews) |
4.72 (18 reviews) |
4.11 (38 reviews) |
|
Guarantee |
Yes
30-day money back guarantee |
Yes
30-day money back guarantee |
Yes
30-day money back guarantee |
|
Overview |
Battle-tested on sites taking in millions of dollars in transactions and processing hundreds of thousands of orders in a single day. Uses EE & its channel system to the fullest. Most comprehensive, powerful, feature packed solution available for ExpressionEngine. Robust post-order management system included. Support is available here |
Is touted as a middle solution between CartThrob and Brilliant Retail in terms of features and capabilities. All product pricing and option data is stored in 1 custom field (the Store fieldtype). Includes comprehensive post-order management system. Support is handled through a web-based portal |
Ecommerce system with a preconceived feature set. Does not use channels to store data. Support is managed through forums. |
|
Points of differentiation. |
Easy to set up. Includes point and click auto-install templates feature Twitter Bootstrap. Channels, and templates, the two killer-app features of ExpressionEngine are used to the fullest. CartThrob is built to adapt to your custom business rules. Built to be built upon. CartThrob is a framework, and existing add-ons gives it a tremendous advantage when it comes to long-term growth and maintenance |
Opts for simplicity over flexibility. A single fieldtype (Store custom fieldtype) is used to manage product pricing, inventory and option data. Strong focus on inventory management and ease of setup Order data is stored in a custom database with options for six pieces of extra custom data per order. |
Product data, categories, image management, files and descriptions are all managed directly by the application in a custom database (channels are not used). Finite feature set is easy to enumerate Sandboxed from other parts of ExpressionEngine. Great marketing and mascot. |
|
Showin' Off |
||||
Devot-ee Award-winning | Yes Product and Developer of the year. |
No |
No |
|
Cart platform used on Devot-ee | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Built by team that brought you SafeCracker | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Channel Support |
||||
Products Channel(s) | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Orders Channel | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Discounts Channel | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Coupon/Vouchers Channel | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Purchased Items Channel | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Products |
||||
Donation support | Yes |
Yes |
Limited |
|
Products can be free | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Price-modifying Options | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Add dynamic data to items in the cart (Gift notes, Special Handling requests) |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Inventory control | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Products can be stored in channel entries | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Support for totally dynamic items | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Automated Front-end Product Configurator | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Support for downloads (including large files over 1gb) | Yes CartThrob uses download chunking & streaming to process downloads of any size even while operating with a low memory footprint. Tested with 10gb movie files. |
No |
No |
|
Support for product bundles with special group pricing | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Product bundles with price modifiers | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Product pricing per member group | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Product pricing by quantity threshold | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Product Search | Yes |
Limited |
Limited |
|
Empty Cart Checkouts | Yes Great for registrations and data capture |
No |
No |
|
Multi-Add to cart functionality Add one or more items at the same time to the cart | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Automatic add to cart Just by visiting a page, and item can be added to the cart | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Automated Also Purchased Lists | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Ability to upload a file when adding an item to the cart | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Add-ons & Integration | ||||
Subscriptions | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Fees | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Giftcards Sales & Redemption | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Credits | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Micropayments | Yes |
No |
No |
|
DevDemon Credits Integration | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Wishlist | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Global Item Options | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Affiliate Marketing | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Multiple Shipping Locations | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Expired Cart Notifications | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Event Registration & Sales | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Wedding Registries | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Location Configurator currencies, shipping methods, taxation methods can change on the fly | Yes |
Limited (Shipping matrix only) |
No |
|
ExpressionEngine Multi-Site Manager Support | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Works with Safecracker | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
NSM Addon Updater Compatibility | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Quickbooks Integration | Yes Via ConsoliBYTE |
No |
No |
|
Quote Creator | No |
Yes |
No |
|
Orders | ||||
Dedicated Order Management | Yes Orders can be managed via the included order manager or as order channel entries. There's also a third party addon just for order management if you need even more power. |
Limited Built in order manager has no ability to store data in an order channel. |
Limited Built in order manager has no ability to store data in an order channel. |
|
Order statuses | Yes Using built-in EE statuses, or create your own unlimited field for setting order statuses. That's the beauty of channels! |
Yes Create unlimited order statuses in the order management utility. |
No |
|
Orders can be stored in channel entries | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Order Search | Yes |
Limited (backend only) |
Limited (backend only) |
|
Post-order detail view | Yes Manage data within the order management utility, export orders, print packing lists, invoice, resend emails, add additional charges to existing customer (requires supported gateway), or use standard channel entry editor for more advanced needs. |
Limited Export orders, view invoices, add payments, authorize transactions and make updates within order manager. No front-end editing in EE templates or custom administrative capabilities are possible. |
Limited Includes order management utility, where you can add payments, change status, notes, and view order details. No ability to use EE channel data or manage within EE templates. |
|
Custom order fields | Yes |
Limited to six |
No |
|
Guests can view invoices | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Control Panel Access | Yes Settings & Reports are controlled by completely different modules. |
Yes |
No |
|
Custom Administration | ||||
Can create & save products in templates | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Can modify orders in templates and create custom interfaces for orders | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Admins can checkout as a member | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Admins can checkout as a guest, and register the guest during checkout | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Reporting | ||||
Point and click creation & saving of custom reports | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Template based reports | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Order report | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Order exporting | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Daily sales report | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Customer report | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Product Report | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
CSV export | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
PDF report export | No |
Yes |
No |
|
Customizable report export | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Members | ||||
Guest checkout | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Create member during checkout | Yes |
Limited |
Yes |
|
Saves member data | Yes Saves to EE's member system as well as to channel entries when used with Profile:Edit |
Limited to EE's member system |
Limited Uses its own member data storage system |
|
Dedicated add-on repository | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Flexible customer flow | Yes |
Yes |
Limited Includes templates for cart, checkout and thank-you pages |
|
Member Permissions / Access Control Levels (ACL)Permissions management is like member groups on steroids. You can attach permissions to each product sold, and choose to show and hide content to your members based only on their purchased permissions, not on their membership. Member groups are great for content administration, but lousy for access control. That's where permissions management comes in. |
||||
Permissions based content access | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Permissions Admin Panel | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Notifications | ||||
Email notifications | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Can use EE template tags in emails? | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Can create additional email notifications | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Uses EE's standard template system to create, edit, and store email templates | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Low stock email notifications | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Multiple order status change email support | Yes Each status can have own template. Different emails can be sent based on starting status (eg. backordered to shipped, versus processing to shipped) |
Limited Each status can have own template |
No Uses one template |
|
API for third party notification support | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Security | ||||
SSL support | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Cart data stored in database | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Cart data encrypted | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Session fingerprinting available This allows you to have greater control over who accesses the cart. If your data is extremely sensitive, this can help keep phishing attacks and cart hijacking at bay. | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Shipping | ||||
Overview | One of Expresso Store's selling points is it's powerful rate matrix, which allows you to create multiple rules for Shipping. CartThrob has an analogous system with even more power called Multi-Location Manager (available at no extra cost) which allows you to set shipping methods, currencies, taxes, pricing schemes and control other configurations based on country, state, zip, region, or custom data that's been added to the cart. Multi-Location Manager is also integrated with EE's ip2nation module, so it will attempt to guess customer locations upon entry. | |||
Location based configurator | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Plugin based shipping methods this allows for expansion and modification of shipping calculations | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Per Item Rates | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Per Location Rates | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Per Location Price Threshold Rates | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Per Location Quantity Threshold Rates | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Per Location Weight Threshold Rates | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
By Weight | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Flat Rates | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Shipping Cost Override Per Item | Limited Calculations depend on shipping plugin used |
No |
No |
|
Non-shippable status per item | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Live Rates | ||||
Australia Post | No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Canada Post | Yes |
No |
No |
|
FedEx | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
UPS | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
USPS | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Taxes | ||||
Display item prices with taxes included | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Set items to tax-exempt status | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Plugin based tax methods this allows for expansion and modification of tax calculations | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Add tax classes to items | Limited requires custom tax plugin |
No |
No |
|
Tax methodology can be changed based on location
| Limited requires Multi-location add-on, or custom tax plugin |
No |
No |
|
Tax & Shipping Regions
| Countries listed in dropdowns can be adjusted point & click. Also, countries, and supported regions can be edited in the locales config file. | Control panel support for country and region editing | Static | |
Discounts, Sales & Vouchers/Coupons | ||||
Promo Codes / Vouchers | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Per item sale pricing | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Restrict discounts by member group | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Restrict via date | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Restrict via use limit | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Restrict via per-member user limit | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Restrict to specific products | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Restrict to categories | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Plugin based logic | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Fixed Discounts | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Percentage Discounts | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Shipping Discounts | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Buy one Get One | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Payments | ||||
Overview | Our wildly robust and flexible payment library makes it possible to support direct, direct post and offsite payment methods of all kinds with tight integration and full feature support. If we don't currently support a gateway, our seasoned team can build just about any gateway with a little bit of documentation. | |||
North America & Global Gateways | ||||
AlertPay (offsite) | No |
No |
Yes |
|
Authorize.net AIM (direct) | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Authorize.net SIM (offsite) | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Authorize.net CIM (token) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Authorize.net DPM (direct post) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Beanstream (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
CardSave Server (offsite) | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
CDG Quantum (direct) | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Chase Orbital (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Google Checkout (offsite) | No |
No |
Yes |
|
Echo NVP (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Eprocessing Network (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
FirstData Global Gateway (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
iTransact (direct) | No |
No |
Yes |
|
Moneris (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
PayPal (offsite) | Yes - Express |
Yes - Express |
Yes - Standard |
|
PayPal Pro (direct) | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
PayPal Hosted (direct post) | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Payflow Pro (direct) | No |
Yes |
No |
|
Payleap (direct) | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Pivotal (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Sage (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Sage ACH (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Samurai (direct post) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Stripe (direct post) | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Shopatron (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Skipjack (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Transaction Central (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Australia & New Zealand | ||||
ANZ eGate (direct) | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
eWay Hosted (direct) | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
eWay Shared (offsite) | No |
Yes |
No |
|
Paystation (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
DPS PaymentExpress PxPay (offsite) | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
DPS PaymentExpress PxPost (direct post) | No |
Yes |
No |
|
NAB Transact (direct) | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
PSIGate (offsite) | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
SecureTrading (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Vanguard (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Europe | ||||
2Checkout.co (offsite) | No |
Yes |
No |
|
CardAccess (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Commidea (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Elavon VirtualMerchant (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
GoCardless (direct post) | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
iDeal (offsite) | Yes - Rabobank Omnikassa |
Yes |
No |
|
Netcash (offsite) | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Nets B (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Nets M (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Ogone (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Ogone (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Paypoint (direct) | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Paymentsense (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Pay4Later (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Przelewy24 (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Pin.net (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Realex Remote (direct) | Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Sage (direct) | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Sage Server (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Worldpay (offsite) | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
China | ||||
Asiapay PayDollar (direct) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Alipay by PayDollar (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
China Union by PayDollar (offsite) | Yes |
No |
No |
|
GeneralNote: CartThrob handles transactions that don't require immediate payment as well | ||||
Offline Payments, Save Order, Pay by Check | Yes |
|||
Payment Tools | ||||
Accept manual payments | Yes Add manual payments to your order channel if you'd like, or use preset options for 'offline payments', 'pay by account', 'pay by check', 'pay by phone', 'save order' |
Yes You can create unlimited manual payment options and then capture them in the order manager when payment is received. |
Yes Preset options for 'mail in', 'pay at store' and 'no payment required' |
|
Take partial payments during checkout | No |
Yes |
No |
|
Payment history | Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Authorize & Capture | Limited All gateways can be modified to support auth-only transactions |
Yes Authorized payments can be captured from the control panel |
Limited Authorize.net only |
|
Process refunds | Yes Can be processed directly from the control panel for supported gateways |
Yes Can be processed directly from the control panel for supported gateways |
No |
|
Vault/Token Payments | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Ability to add additional charges after purchase | Yes Where supported by the gateway. Requires gateway with token support. |
No |
No |
|
Additional gateways | Yes Custom gateway development is available, generally for a flat fee of USD $800 |
Yes Custom gateway development is available (cost not advertised) |
Yes |
|
Templates | ||||
Auto-installation of channels | Yes |
No |
N/A |
|
Auto-installation of templates | Yes |
No |
Limited Upload template files & sync templates to load |
|
Sample templates feature Twitter Bootstrap | Yes |
No |
No |
|
Javascript Tools | Yes In sample templates all customer data is submitted via ajax. Gateway fields change dynamically based on user selection of gateway. CT Configurator JS automatically changes displayed SKU and stock level based on customer selections. |
Yes SKU and stock level changes based on customer selections. Region dropdown is updated when country is selected. |
Yes Shipping options change dynamically based on user selection. |
|
Hardcore Development | ||||
Cart Object Easily Accessible to Third Party Addons. CartThrob is seriously expandable | Yes Cart Object & Methods are available everywhere in modules, extensions, and plugins just by instantiating EE. The cartthrob loader method makes all cartthrob libraries and files accessible to your application. |
|||
Backoffice / ERP Data import and export options available | Yes Generally requires custom development on top of basic framework |
No |
No |
|
Extension Hooks Available | Yes hooks |
Yes hooks |
Yes hooks |
|
SDK Available | Yes |
No |
No |
|
First party freebie addon repository | No |
No |
||
Shipping API | No |
No |
||
Coupon/Discounts API | No |
No |
||
Tax API | No |
No |
||
Payment Gateway API | Yes And the payments library is even open source too! |
Yes |
||
Price Fields API | No |
Yes |
||
Third Party Notifications API | No |
Yes |
||
Links | ||||
Support | Direct support is available via Phone or Skype. |
|||
Docs | ||||
Devot-ee | ||||
Changelog | ||||
Videos | ||||
Features | ||||
Gallery | ||||
Add-on Repository |