The Best eCommerce Platform for Developers
Find out why 35,000 developers trust X-Cart to power eCommerce websites
Why SaaS eCommerce Platforms Frustrate Developers
With the growing number of SaaS eCommerce website platforms today, the entry in eCommerce business is easier than ever before.
Low cost and risk‑free cloud‑hosted SaaS solutions, requiring no setup and installation is a gem for I-do-not-know-what-MySQL-is type of businessmen. Thanks to “renting” a ready‑made eCommerce store, they can invest both their money and time into growing and scaling their business. So, a SaaS solution seems to be the best eCommerce platform for a start up eCommerce business. Thanks to “renting” a ready‑made eCommerce store, they can invest both their money and time into growing and scaling their business. So, a SaaS solution seems to be the best eCommerce platform for a start up eCommerce business.
Yet, a SaaS is not the right fit for everyone. Large international enterprises with complex omnichannel feature requirements or retailers with specific business processes require extremely complex customizations to their shopping cart platform. If your business can’t fit in the box of a SaaS platform, on‑premise software can give you unlimited customizations.
Most of the best ecommerce sites are not SaaS based. This is where the self-hosted software shines, and php developers can get their hands into code and create amazing eCommerce websites. This is where CIOs and founders start the open source ecommerce software comparison. So the question rises — what is the best eCommerce platform for developers and development?
Top eCommerce Platforms Comparison Chart
Let’s take a look at the ecommerce platforms comparison from the point of view of cost, number of extensions, availability of support directly be vendor, type of license. We will review the best free ecommerce platforms available, like Magento Community, OsCommerce, Prestashop, and Opencart, as well as proprietary software X-Cart and Magento Enterprise (and by “Magento” we mean Magento v.2)
Extensions
1,459
7,700+
3,000+
13,000+
114
114
749
Hosting
hosted or self-hosted
hosted or self-hosted
self-hosted
self-hosted
hosted
self-hosted
self-hosted
Support by vendor
24/7 premium support. Paid, included in the top plan.
not available
paid support
paid support
included into price
included into price
not available
Customisation
provided in-house
not available
third-party agencies
third-party agencies
third-party agencies
third-party agencies
third-party agencies
Services
all kinds of services provided in-house
provided by third-party agencies
provided by third-party agencies
provided by third-party agencies
provided by third-party agencies
provided by third-party agencies
provided by third-party agencies
This quick eCommerce platform comparison shows that X-Cart stands out against the competitors for several reasons:
it allows for extensive flexibility;
it provides premium support 24/7 and a whole pack of services directly from the vendor;
it offers both Cloud and Enterprise solution with various pricing tiers for greater scalability.
So it’s very likely that your search for the best eCommerce software ends here – you have just found your perfect fit.
Why X-Cart Is The eCommerce Platform Development Tool Of Choice
Thanks to its modular architecture with forwarding decorators, as seen on sitepoint.com, X-Cart is meant to allow for a high amount of extensibility, preserving amazing upgradability even in heavily modified ecommerce stores. This modular architecture makes us the best eCommerce website builder for developers.
Easy upgrades.
In X-Cart 5, major upgrades, i.e. the ones between branches, are installed by 62% users. Minor ones – within the branch, to get latest bug-fixes and security updates – by 80% of all X-Cart 5 based stores. In any other self-hosted platform with equal amount of customisations this figure does not exceed 10%.
The trial by fire is successfully passed.
Rolled out in 2013, X-Cart 5 has already passed the trial by fire: thousands of online business have chosen it for their production ecommerce stores, dozens of community developers have already passed the learning curve and created their extensions. The eCommerce platforms comparison shows that even the closest opensource eCommerce competitor, Magento 2, is only starting to earn the trust of users and web-developers .
Nail your presentation to the board.
24/7 premium support, 99.99% uptime hosting and daily off-site backups managed by X-Cart, 400+ marketing and industry integrations — that’s what makes X-Cart highly competitive when you’re presenting it to the board of directors.
Easily Integrate 1400+ eCommerce Apps With 1‑Click
What makes X-Cart’s built-in marketplace so special? 1-click add-on installation right within the admin backend of the store without necessity to patch the code, connect to the store by FTP and so on makes it easier for the store owners to access hundreds of modules and themes by both X-Cart team and 3rd party vendors.
With 1500+ apps on the marketplace, there are ready-made extensions to meet almost every need of your client – on the one hand, and to supply you with a magic toolbox for making something unique – on the other.
Web Developers and Web Designers like these X‑Cart apps
Powerful theme tweaker with webmaster mode
Lightning fast predictive product search and smart product filters. It’s an Enterprise level faceted search tool to ensure that every product will be found by the searcher, if only it exists in your store.
Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping
Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, Optimizely and more – 400+ integrations, direct or via Segment.
A bunch of tools that will put your website to the top of the SERP: rich Google snippets, SEO friendly URLs, XML sitemap, image alt tags, titles and meta descriptions, integration with WordPress
122 payment gateways, including the ones supporting tokenisation for recurring payments, subscriptions and reorders. It’s much more than many other eCommerce solutions can offer.
Single Sign-On with OAuth 2
and a full set of magic wands to develop the best online store ever!
Architecture: Back-end — MVC with hierarchical widgets; Front-end — Fast and dynamic client side widgets built with MVVM in mind; Several caching layers (data cache, widget cache, query cache) ensure outstanding performance;
Open code, OOP, PHP 7.2.x+;
Database: MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.2+;
Front-end framework: Twig templating engine, Bootstrap 3.3.7 with LESS support; Javascript frameworks and libraries: jQuery 3.3.1, jQuery UI 1.12.1, Vue.js, underscore.js;
Doctrine 2.10 with fixtures in YAML format.
For more details, view system requirements and study the Knowledge Base. The X-Cart team will stretch out a helping hand if you need a consultation or even a high-qualified dedicated developer to outsource your task to.
Developer Friendly Features
Upgrade without pain
With systematic releases, major and minor ones, your ecommerce website will always be secure and up-to-date. Even custom features will not be an obstacle for installing the upgrades
Customize it far and wide
The unique X-Cart architecture aimed at bringing together the upgradability and customizability makes it a dream of a platform for developers. 100% open code, for sure!
So much faster
thanks to PHP 7 support, making a huge improvement (at least 40% – even without any caching!) in comparison with other ecommerce solutions running on its predecessor PHP 5.6
Advanced security capabilities
to keep calm and eat your popcorn when another POODLE or Dirty COW is discovered. Also, X-Cart does not touch the Credit Card info, even if “storing” cards is enabled (tokenization ftw!)
Webmaster mode
Apply changes to storefront templates while browsing the store in this mode and see the results instantly – it’s as easy as via the “Firebug” or “Developer Tools”. The “Theme Tweaker” will wrap your edits into a module to preserve the amazing upgradability of X-Cart core
REST API
Works with all models — from products, orders and users to shipping rates, taxes, makes-models-years and so on – with any model that already exists or will be added by you. GET, POST, PUT or DELETE data. A secure and powerful tool for your integrations
FREE Developer license
of a commercial X-Cart edition will be given out to you upon request to create a development copy or to start working on the project before the premium license with paid features is even purchased
Feature-rich releases, timely bug-fixes
An entire team of 10 full-time developers, QA specialists and designers is dedicated to X-Cart 5 project. We don’t wait for contributions. We’re just doing it. Doing it right. Doing it right now. Making X-Cart better every single minute
Mobile and SEO ready
All the themes are responsive out of the box. All the SEO features you may ever need are already there, including but not limited to xml sitemap, rich Google snippets, SEO URLs and even a bidirectional integration with WordPress
Quick migration to X‑Cart
from any eCommerce shopping cart to make the transition a snap. 100% Uptime, guaranteed. Individual approach tailored to cover your unique requirements. FREE quote upon discussing the task details.
Code samples
Architecture basics explained, customization examples provided, design tutorials – overcome the learning curve and feel at home with X-Cart development.
More Ways to Earn for Web Developers and Web Agencies
Reseller program gives you the right to resell X-Cart licenses and extensions, getting them with crazy discounts – up to 50% off!
Marketplace of modules and services is another way to earn some $$ in case you developed the module for your client that seems to be in demand. You write, we market, we sell, you earn.
