If you are choosing an ecommerce software solution for building your own marketplace like eBay or Amazon, then you should know that there are many offerings from different software developers. Frequently I’m asked questions about other multi-vendor solutions. Some people asked me about IXXO Multi-Vendor platform, about how it compares to CS-Cart Multi-Vendor, so this is how this comparison came.
We will compare them to understand that even though the name and the price of the marketplace software is practically the same, you get different products for your money.
According to their support page, their latest multi vendor ecommerce platform release was in January 2017.
Nevertheless, I studied the virtual platform in order to share with you my findings. There will be several key features on which we compare these multi seller ecommerce platforms.
Contents- Type of the software (license)
- A bit of a history
- Programming and customisation
- Ease of use
- Cost
- Conclusion
1. Type of the software (license)
With CS-Cart Multi-Vendor it is all clear – a downloadable licensed software. Purchase of the license is a one time fee and it is all yours for a lifetime.
IXXO Multi-Vendor is available as downloadable licensed, WordPress Plugin and Joomla Component. You can choose either to pay for the lifetime license or lease a subscription license for a year.
2. A bit of a History
Both virtual mall software solutions are not new on the market. They come from the year 2011 when their first versions were released.
Nowadays more than 1,300 online marketplaces are powered by CS-Cart Multi-Vendor worldwide.
The most outstanding example is shopclues.com, an Indian marketplace that shows great scalability of CS-Cart Multi-Vendor platform. It has 53,000,000 SKUs and 500,000 vendors. Can you just imagine that?
Another remarkable online shopping mall powered by CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is yumbles.com, which is very good in design and shows good results—1,200 vendors in 4 years. And all products there are handcrafted. It’s important that this marketplace is made and working without global software modifications.
More success stories with links to the live stores are available on this page. Take a look. Unfortunately, we’ve managed to find only a few live stores powered by IXXO Multi-Vendor, here’s one of them:
https://odissa.co.uk
Builtwith.com doesn’t recognize IXXO as a standalone product, so no chance to find more web stores.
Actually, even those two Internet stores were very difficult to find, and I must explain how we did that. We entered the text “Powered by IXXO Multi Vendor eCommerce” on Google Search, so it was searching the exact phrase. This text appears on the bottom of websites powered by IXXO Multi-Vendor solution.
The catch is that removing this text from the store costs additional fee and I can’t believe that everyone except these two shops spent pretty big amount of money and did that.
If you know some other online shops powered on IXXO Multi-Vendor platform, please, post it in the comments to this article and we will add it to the list.
3. Programming and customisation
These multi vendor eCommerce platforms are built using open source technologies, PHP/MySQL, Smarty.
According to https://w3techs.com 83.2% of websites use PHP. For you, it means no problem to find a programmer for your project. But it works only for CS-Cart Multi-Vendor as it provides open access to the source code, so all kinds of modifications are possible. There is a number of registered partners who provide custom development and design services on a paid basis.
As for IXXO Multi-Vendor, custom development service is provided by IXXO eCommerce Solutions only, otherwise it’s a violation of their copyright. Here we see a huge problem since IXXO Multi-Vendor may not be supported anymore.
We can imagine the situation that IXXO Multi-Vendor is alive, but there is no marketplace similar to CS-Cart Marketplace where you could find some ready-to-use add-ons and themes that would extend IXXO Multi-Vendor functionality according to your needs. So each new feature required for your project would be developed from scratch, which means more investment in development and time loss.
4. Ease of use
E-commerce itself is difficult enough, but when we speak about Multi-Vendor platform you multiply the number of transactions, vendors, products so you should have reliable and easy-to-use tools for managing it. In this part, we will have a quick look at the admin panels, and the tools that should make the administrator’s life better while dealing with hundreds of vendors, thousands of products, and millions of orders.
Ok, there is living website of IXXO Multi-Vendor software and there is demo version available. So let’s compare the shopping mall platforms.
The first thing you see in the admin panel is the dashboard with some statistics to understand quickly how well your marketplace doing. You can compare it on your own:
Both software solutions allow mass product and category import, so you and your vendors will not have to add them one by one manually.
Product import also used for mass product update. In IXXO Multi-Vendor this is the only option you have.
In CS-Cart Multi-Vendor you can add and edit your products in bulk right in the administration panel.
From there you can select what product fields you would like to edit.
Product price, code, quantity, and status are editable right from the product list.
To understand the difference you should try updating at least one product in IXXO Multi-Vendor.
5. Cost
As I mentioned before, IXXO Multi-Vendor has two options of purchase the license: lifetime license and lease.
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor costs $1,450 almost as IXXO Multi-Vendor perpetual license which price is $1,495.
Actually, it’s good option to pay annually – you may pay less than full price and if the virtual mall software won’t satisfy you, it will be less painful to pay $559 instead of $1495. But what becomes when the developer finishes supporting the product? You have multi-vendor license which expires within a year and what will you do for not stopping your store?
But CS-Cart Multi-Vendor has 30 day money back guarantee, so if the multi vendor ecommerce script won’t fit your demands you’ll have full refund.
Now let’s speak about additional payments.
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor provides 1-year free subscription plan with license purchasing Then it costs $385 usually. But within 1 month from active subscription end you can purchase it for $245.
Also with CS-Cart Multi-Vendor purchase, you get 3 months of free technical support. Later you will have to buy support credits to have an access to tech support. The price is $165 for 100 credits. Each contact to technical support is rated from 5 to 20 credits usually, so you can estimate approximately. Don’t forget, CS-Cart has a huge community with a forum where you can ask your question for free and get answers.
And what’s with IXXO Multi-Vendor?
The upgrades are available in 1 year after purchase, then you have to pay $179 within 1 month. If you don’t, the upgrade subscription will be $523. With the license you get one month of free telephone support. After that month it will be $225 a year.
Don’t forget about removing “Powered by IXXO Multi Vendor eCommerce” phrase for $159 and software installation by technical support for $69. By the way, you can have an installation of CS-Cart Multi-Vendor on your or recommended hosting for free, just ask sales specialist for that.
But I think all those additional payments for IXXO Multi-Vendor are not needed. Why do I? Oh, right! This marketplace builder seems to be dead.
6. Conclusion
There is no sign that IXXO Multi-Vendor is still operational. Once again:
- No blog posts since 14th of March 2017; (update: the latest one was posted on February 17, 2021, so it looks like the blog is alive)
- Their live chat is always offline;
- No response from support;
- The latest Facebook post – 4th of August 2017 (update: February 27, 2020).