CS-Cart Multi-Vendor vs. Podia

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
Score 8.6 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is an eCommerce marketplace software for SMBs available in cloud (No-Code) and self-hosted (On-Premises) versions. It allows users to open an online marketplace, where the user is the admin, and all the others—invited sellers. Each seller has his or her own micro-store with a customizable storefront, categories, filters, and search. Just like in Amazon. In the CS-Cart Multi-Vendor marketplace platform, managing vendors is designed to be simple:…
$660
per year
Podia
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Podia in New York offers their ecommerce platform for managing memberships and selling courses online.
$39
per month
Pricing
CS-Cart Multi-VendorPodia
Editions & Modules
Standard
$660
per year
Plus
$1,320
per year
Ultimate
$3,300
per year
Unlimited
Contact Sales
one-time fee
Mover
$39.00
per month
Shaker
$79.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CS-Cart Multi-VendorPodia
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
CS-Cart Multi-VendorPodia
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
8.6
Ratings
9% above category average
Podia
8.1
Ratings
3% above category average
Product catalog & listings8.80 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Product management8.90 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Bulk product upload8.30 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Branding8.70 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Mobile storefront8.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Product variations8.50 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Website integration8.60 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Visual customization8.70 Ratings8.00 Ratings
CMS8.80 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
8.4
Ratings
9% above category average
Podia
8.0
Ratings
4% above category average
Abandoned cart recovery8.20 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Checkout user experience8.50 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
8.9
Ratings
7% above category average
Podia
8.0
Ratings
4% below category average
eCommerce security8.90 Ratings8.00 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
8.4
Ratings
9% above category average
Podia
7.0
Ratings
10% below category average
Promotions & discounts8.80 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Personalized recommendations8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO8.40 Ratings5.00 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
8.0
Ratings
0% below category average
Podia
8.0
Ratings
0% below category average
Multi-site management8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Order processing8.50 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Inventory management6.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Shipping7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom functionality8.90 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
CS-Cart Multi-VendorPodia
Small Businesses
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.0 out of 10
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CS-Cart Multi-VendorPodia
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
CS-Cart Multi-VendorPodia
Likelihood to Recommend
Great for a quick and easy setup of a multi-vendor solution, supporting multiple stores / languages / payment options. Will probably need some tuning if you have 1 million products or so. Great if you have a PHP dev or team, probably not the best option if you don't know the language and need to customise backend logic.
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If you are not techy want to create a course creation type of business then I think its really great. I have used a lot of programs and only a few are complete and Podia is there except for a full fledge blogging platform (you can do a version but it's not quite the same). It's probably the most user friendly email system I have used and the website builder is very user friendly as well. I think if you are a serious blogger and wanting seo traffic to drive to your site, this one thing to watch and consider not as competitive then vs Kajabi.
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Pros
  • Easy to use
  • No third party control
  • Great support
  • Lost of [an] add-on to make it [a] more vast platform
  • Can sale [almost] any product
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  • Emails
  • Course hosting
  • Website creation
  • Website chat
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Cons
  • update subscription
  • 3rd party theme & addons subscriptions (its not sure that you have also updates in 2 years)
  • expensive license prices (if everything is cheaper, more peoples will buy it)
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  • I sometimes wish there was more that I could customize on my website and digital programs
  • I wish their email service (for broadcasts/group emails) had more features and customization
  • I would like to use my brand font
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Usability
The software consists of most of all e-commerce related features. Also, there are plenty of third party addons are available in the market which can improve our business. There are a lot of powerful themes available in the cs cart market which improve the look and feel on the front store. If CS-cart adjusted the price on their software license cost, controlling the third party addon cost and provide more freelancers with cheaper hourly rate for the customization on the cs-cart multi vendor software, the cs-cart company can be a master among other e-commerce software companies in the world.
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It has a great user interface, it's fast to edit and create courses, to edit and create emails, to find chats, to develop the website. Support has been friendly and I haven't found anything that hasn't worked. It also has basically all the tools you need outside if a complete blog platform
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Support Rating
I've had very good support over the years. They've helped solve some issues here and there that were difficult to track down. Thumbs up.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Mostly extremely easy to implement, both back-end logic as well as styling. Great addon marketplace helped, particularly around payment options.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
For big vision in doing something in online marketplace, I think CS-Cart can help to scale up and run business smoothly. CS-Cart started their business in 2005 and since [then has been] running successfully worldwide. It means they have a large scale of experience in implementing online marketplace based software and we can rely on them.
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Kajabi had lots of features all in one place. I liked their digital course creator program. I liked the ease of their their membership site program/host, too. It had an app for my clients to use. There were some problems with not being able to customize the look of pages, but they allowed coding/programming if you had training, so I sometimes hired someone to do that for me. I couldn't figure out how to use their website builder, so I didn't do much there. When it came down to it, I could use Podia and it was cheaper and easier to use. GoDaddy was my website host for a few years. I did a lot on there. It was my website builder and host and I liked it. It was easy to use. My website looked great. It had more features than Podia with blogging and connecting to social media. I had a storefront but it wasn't great for selling digital products. Back then, it wanted to show my inventory and shipping options, which don't apply for services and digital products. I did a little with my digital courses on there, but in the end, I liked other sites better for this. It didn't work out. Weebly was just a starting point for me when I create my first digital course. I liked how it looked and it was easy to build, but there are better options for this sort of thing now.
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Return on Investment
  • From an investment point of view, it is naturally much more profitable to purchase CS-Cart Multi-Vendor than to assemble a team of developers and try to create such a platform from scratch.
  • Creating a marketplace is a rather risky business. If you don't know a lot about marketplace building technologies, consider investing in a different business. But if you have already decided on the idea, and all you have to do is find a suitable platform, then CS-Cart Multi-Vendor will probably be a profitable investment. And if your sales go at least half a year after purchasing this platform, then you will quickly enough recoup these several thousand dollars.
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  • Increased sales by $8000 from January to June (Added 2 more programs quickly and easily)
  • Saved almost a thousand dollars in the first year in costs by switching to Podia
  • Improved customer satisfaction by using 1 site instead of 4
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ScreenShots

CS-Cart Multi-Vendor Screenshots

Screenshot of Multi-Vendor marketplace storefrontScreenshot of Multi-Vendor marketplace product pageScreenshot of