Shift4Shop

Score1.2 out of 10

17 Reviews and Ratings

What is Shift4Shop?

Shift4Shop (formerly 3dcart) is a customizable eCommerce platform designed to build an online store. Some features include Level 1 PCI security compliance, the same level used by banks and large financial institutions, along with search engine optimized templates and no transaction fees. The former 3dcart was acquired by Shift4 Payments in November, 2020.

Categories & Use Cases

eCommerce

Media

1 / 2

Order processing
Includes tools or integrations for order processing.
Category average: 8.2
Shipping
Includes tools or integrations for order fulfillment of physical products.
Category average: 7.8
Personalized recommendations
Display or recommend certain products depending on the customer’s identity or shopping/browsing history.
Category average: 7

Multi-site management
Administrators can manage multiple storefronts or websites under one umbrella.
Category average: 8.1
Inventory management
Includes tools or integrations for managing inventory.
Category average: 7.8
Custom functionality
Users are able to customize the functionality of their eCommerce operation with custom code or add-ons.
Category average: 8

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using Shift4Shop.

Based on HG Insights installation data

View all Reviews

#1 most frequent

Retail Trade

21.3%

141 installations of 661

#2 most frequent

Manufacturing

18.8%

124 installations of 661

#3 most frequent

Wholesale Trade

11.2%

74 installations of 661

Scott Walker View profile

Director of Digital Marketing in Marketing at 407 Marketing (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

eCommerce platform for relatively cheap
Since being purchased by Shift4, some updates have been added

Cons

Page structure is all over the place. It can be difficult to find where to go to make page edits.
Base platform isn't very robust and requires multiple add-ons in order to add CRM, Taxes, and other capabilities
Reporting isn't very strong, necessitating outside analytics
File system is also pretty wonky and feels very primitive
Customer service and technical help leaves MUCH to be desired.
Not as many supported add-ons/plug-ins as other platforms, and many of them cost additional fees. Many of them also don't seamlessly integrate, meaning you'll need to dev the integration yourself.
In general, what you see in the WYSIWYG is not what you get.
Order System is not very intuitive for the modern era

Return on Investment

For the subscription license of the base product, the cost isn't bad.
The development time is heavy, which outweighs the cost of the license
Small, everyday changes and updates are a lengthy affair, which means more labor hours.
Additional software is needed (labor + licensing) to compete with modern site platforms (CRM, Accounting, Shipping, Taxes, marketing, Abandoned cart, etc.)

Alternatives Considered

BigCommerce, WooCommerce, AspDotNetStorefront, Lightspeed eCom, Pinnacle Cart eCommerce and Squarespace

Other Software Used

BigCommerce, Lightspeed eCom, Squarespace, Wix, Ascend, by Wix, eClincher, WordPress, WooCommerce, Pinnacle Cart eCommerce

Verified User

Administrator in Corporate (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Web store
We have been using Shift4Shop for close to 15 years , back when it was called 3D cart over. In my experience, back then it was good service , and Values was there , SEO was fantastic . In my opinion, once Shift4Shop took over, it became a steady decline in quality and SEO is now the very worst.

Pros

In my opinion, charge you too much for what it is worth
In my opinion, tech support is always blaming client and end up fixing it own issues
In my experience, make you believe client is important

Cons

Stability
Better updates
No multilingual

Return on Investment

Website seldom have bugs that prevent any client to purchase
In my opinion, website dosent have very good modern feature
no provision to use export information by product is selling to other countries
multi language is run from google translator , making it , in my opinion, unsuitable for any professional work

Alternatives Considered

WooCommerce

Other Software Used

Freshdesk

Usability

Verified User

Executive (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Shift4Shop bought 3dCart and "things" started to develop. In my experience many issues - servers down, updates caused issues, constantly having to contact support only to have tickets just sit somewhere for endless amounts of time. Used this platform for 8 years! Gave them time to figure out how to run it after the buyout. Finally, in my experience too many constant issues - integrations were breaking and API's were not working. Always the same response given - submit a ticket! Many former employees were leaving and the platform was not stable. Then, they announced a price increase of 40% and we decided to leave. We should have left years ago as we have had ZERO issues with the new platform we are using. Also another odd thing you can't view their forums until you have an account - they don't want you to see all the current customers complaining about issues all the time. In my opinion, if you enjoy keeping an eye on your website daily for anything that might be broke - by all means get Shift4Shop, if you just want to run an online business and not have to constantly monitor your website, then go somewhere else. Best decision we ever made!

Pros

Good forums to get in touch with others having same issues

Cons

In my opinion, support is plain out terrible! Constant replies to submit a ticket when most tickets would never be answered - EVER.
Continual repeat issues with API's that were integrated like shipping platforms not connecting and bringing orders into the shipping platform. Copying and pasting order details gets old real quick!
Updates cause issues - not sure they even test the updates before making them live.

Return on Investment

They didn't seem to understand when a business has their website down that it impacts a business negatively especially when 100% of their business comes from online sales.
Sales support were hired just to answer the phone - in my opinion, their product knowledge was weak and speaking to them you'd get frustrated since they seemed clueless to how the platform worked.

Alternatives Considered

Shopify

Verified User

Vice-President (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

15 years with 3dcart. Then I was 'automatically' bumped to the higher plans because our sales went over a certain amount for the year. This year I requested to be bumped down as our sales are down by 50%. I was told those other price points are ONLY for new customers and they cannot bump anyone down. Ever since [then] the service and website have been literally [bad]. Every time they do an update to their systems, it causes something to break and stop working or work differently on our website. We are constantly trying to fix the site every month with them. Totally ridiculous. Hopefully we can move our site to another company soon.

Pros

good if you are USA based ONLY I am not.

Cons

everything

Verified User

Administrator in Marketing (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used them for 2 years and had minor problems up until the end. For the last 2 months, customers were unable to checkout, or connect to our payment processor. We put in like 3 to 5 hot tickets to get fixed and day after day nothing was fixed and support got ruder and ruder with us! We lost thousands of dollars online with this company and now they are chasing us for a renewal payment! Simply put, this is bad software with a poor customer care staff!

Pros

Cons

Tech support
Customer care
Billing

Return on Investment

Cost us thousands of dollars in sales
no return back on tech issues
poor customer care on important technical issues

Wix

Squarespace

WooCommerce

Shift4Shop

What is Shift4Shop?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Shift4Shop Key Features

Top Performing Features

Order processing

Shipping

Personalized recommendations

Areas for Improvement

Multi-site management

Inventory management

Custom functionality

Who Buys & Uses Shift4Shop

Most Frequent Users

Retail Trade

Manufacturing

Wholesale Trade

Most Frequent Users

Small Businesses

Mid-sized Companies

Enterprises

Most Frequent Users

United States of America

Canada

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Most Frequent Users

Marketing

IT

Sales

Shift4Shop Reviews

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Usability

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Shift4Shop Alternatives