CS-Cart Free Version Is No Longer Available
UPDATE: We released CS-Cart Free. This is a totally free professional eCommerce platform tailored to developing small to medium online stores. Best for developers and web studios: they can build online stores for their customers on CS-Cart and save on the platform license.
Hi,
A heads-up that CS-Cart 4.3.7 no longer has the free mode.
Why?
Well, in analyzing the eCommerce market we understood that we need to focus on a single direction—paid professional eCommerce solutions. We arrived at a consensus that we need to work for those customers who are ready to invest in their businesses.
By concentrating our resources in that direction, we’ll be able to reach our goal—making CS-Cart a perfect shopping cart with the best support and service of all other eCommerce solutions.
Best Support and Service?
As we mentioned, our goal is to make CS-Cart the leading shopping platform among paid eCommerce softwares. It’s a big task we’ve laid out for ourselves over the foreseeable future, but we can share our short-term plans today:
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- Technical support based on SLA (Service-Level Agreement). SLA is an agreement between us as a service provider and a customer. This agreement will plainly describe the responsibilities and scope and quality of our support service, which will make the service clear and its quality measurable. This means our support team will react faster within the defined period in the agreement and will resolve customer issues satisfactorily.
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- Two new CS-Cart editions for the most demanding customers. These editions will be complete packages with unique features and premium support. Customers will be able to choose an edition that best suits their eCommerce projects. Stay tuned to our blog not to miss the announcement.
- Absolutely transparent pricing. You will always know how much you pay and what for. For example, for upgrading a store that has several storefronts we now charge for each storefront. Previously, didn’t expect that and got confused. But no longer. We plan to improve our pricing policy to avoid such extra fees.
What Now?
Newcomers who start from CS-Cart 4.3.7 now have 2 options after CS-Cart installation: trying CS-Cart free for 30 days and buying a license. After a 30-day trial, they must buy a license to continue using CS-Cart.
Actual free version users with live stores continue using CS-Cart legally. But they miss out on 3 important things that guarantee security, feature richness, and no downtimes of their stores:
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- No upgrades to newer versions. It’s important to regularly upgrade your store to keep up with new features, optimizations, and bug fixes. We regularly enhance security and performance. For example, the latest version supports PHP 7 and full-page caching, which dramatically increase the speed and stamina of CS-Cart.
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- No support. Our support specialists are the guys we are really proud of. They can save the day and keep your store running without downtimes. With the free version, you’re on your own against store and server issues.
- No must-have eCommerce features. With the free CS-Cart version you can sell, yes. But you cannot become a big player and compete with bigger online stores. The reason—the free version doesn’t have the most important eCommerce features that bigger stores have: cross-selling tools, customer reviews, reward points system, and more.
What Do You Get with the License?
As we mentioned above, the license unlocks must-have eCommerce features and allows you to upgrade and get professional support. Take a good look at what you get with the license.
Premium Technical Support
Sometimes you can encounter issues in the store or on the server. Some of them are minor and some can paralyze your store. The longer the downtime, the more money you lose. In this case, you need help ASAP. Our support team provides fast and professional help.
Before becoming a part of our support team, each candidate receives intense training. Each must pass a tough test to become a certified support expert. After their initial training, support specialists continue to improve their skills: they forward the most complicated issues to our architects and get the advice that solves the most complex of issues and keeps your business running.
Over 50 Built-In Add-Ons
The add-ons expand the functionality of your store and help increase conversion, average purchase size, and make your store more trustworthy and friendly in customers’ eyes. The free version only had 14 add-ons, but the license gives you access to over 50 add-ons, such as:
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- Cross-selling add-ons: Bestsellers & On-Sale Products, Buy Together, Customers Also Bought, and Required Products. These add-ons help you sell more to each customer, which increases the average purchase size. Use these cross-selling tools to offer more useful products to your customers.
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- Comments and Reviews. With this add-on, customers can post reviews for products and comment on the blog. Feedback from real customers makes your store look trustworthy and helps other customers to choose the right product.
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- Google Analytics. Metrics is essential for analyzing the effectiveness of your marketing. This add-on integrates your store with the Google analytic service, which provides detailed statistics about your visitors and gives a powerful insight into your store traffic. By monitoring the statistics you know on what marketing aspect you need to concentrate.
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- Reward Points. Thanks to this add-on, your customers get reward points when buying products. They can spend these points to pay for other products or reduce a product’s price. This tool motivates customers to buy more and makes them return to your store.
- Newsletters. This add-on allows you to benefit from email marketing without using paid email services, such as MailChimp. Send newsletters to your customers right from your store.
Powerful Marketing Promotion System
The promotion system allows you to offer your customers bonuses, such as free shipping and discounts. To get a bonus, a customer must fulfill conditions.
CS-Cart has two types of promotions: catalog promotions and cart promotions. In the free version, you could only use catalog promotions that gave product discounts. The licensed version unlocks cart promotions that offer more bonuses and conditions:
Other Cool Features
One post isn’t really enough to talk about all the advantages of the full CS-Cart version, so here are a few extra cool features that we’d like to mention:
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- Multiple storefronts—connect additional storefronts and manage them via a single admin panel (you’ll need to purchase additional storefront licenses).
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- User groups—assign customers to user groups and set privileges for your managers.
- Multiple languages and currencies—add as many languages and currencies as you need.
And much more…
Any Discount for Buying the License?
Yes! We offer a 30% discount coupon to current free version users, which will work until and including May 17, 2016. After that date, the coupon becomes inactive. We’ll send the coupon to all the free version owners via email within a day, so monitor your mailboxes.
The coupon code that you’ll receive in the email is for free version owners only. Please do not disclose the coupon code anywhere on the Internet and do not share it with anyone.
To buy a license using the discount coupon, click the button below, add the CS-Cart license to the cart, and enter the coupon code to the Got a promo code? field.
Yan Anderson is the Head of Content Marketing at CS-Cart with over 10 years of experience in the eCommerce industry. He's passionate about explaining complicated things in simple terms. Yan has expertise in building, running and growing eCommerce marketplaces. He loves to educate people about best practices, new technologies, and trends in the global eCommerce industry.