After almost two decades of development, OpenCart has become a prominent eCommerce solution with a collection of dedicated features. And our OpenCart review today will help you understand all about this platform.
Wait no further, LitExtension – #1 Shopping Cart Migration Expert will reveal:
- A rudiment about OpenCart and its pros & cons;
- Detailed analysis of notable features;
- An answer to whether OpenCart is an optimal choice;
- Some OpenCart alternatives.
Want to Migrate to OpenCart?
If you are intending to migrate to OpenCart, LitExtension offers a great migration service that helps you transfer your data from the current eCommerce platform to a new one accurately, painlessly with utmost security.
What is OpenCart?
OpenCart is commonly known as an open-source MVC (Model-View-Controller) solution specially designed for online eCommerce businesses, structured by PHP programming language. This platform provides users with customization in website design as well as a modern, easy-to-use dashboard interface.
A typical function of OpenCart is multi-store creation, allowing you to access and manage multiple stores on the same interface. Also, this platform provides eCommerce features such as promotion/discount services, product category management, point accumulation for loyal customers, etc.
FYI: In April 2023, OpenCart officially launched OpenCart Cloud to all users, a cloud-based solution that allows users to easily create an eCommerce store. The pricing ranges from $59 to $199/month for subscription plans.
Note: When discussing OpenCart, we refer to the open-source edition as OpenCart, and the hosted solution as OpenCart Cloud.
OpenCart Review – Pros & Cons
When you start to research a platform, what is the first thing you are concerned about? That is the platform’s strengths and weaknesses.
So what can OpenCart do, and what are the limitations? Here are the key points to think about if you’re taking a closer look at our OpenCart review.
OpenCart is user-friendly, easy to integrate, and does not require any payment. Additionally, it provides a secure eCommerce solution for your website.
However, OpenCart has one major drawback: the page loading time on OpenCart is relatively slow. Therefore, website optimization may be necessary to enhance user experience.
Let’s dive into a full OpenCart review to uncover all the facts and secrets of this platform!
OpenCart Review – All Aspects Analysis
#1. Performance
When it comes to OpenCart review, the first and foremost part is its performance. It’s because site loading speed is an important factor that mainly affects your online business. All of your hard work on marketing and website interface might be completely ruined if the online shop fails to respond quickly.
Badly, this is one of the drawbacks of OpenCart. This platform’s average load time is 831 milliseconds, which is more than 4 times higher than Google’s recommended ideal response time of under 200ms.
However, it should be noted that site speed also depends partly on the hosting service you are using, the quality of your products’ images, and the theme you are applying. So make sure to optimize your OpenCart store for better performance.
#2. Pricing
Regarding OpenCart pricing, we will break the pricing down into 2 different sections, which are open-source and OpenCart Cloud.
#2.1. OpenCart Open-Source
It’s easy to get tricked into thinking that open-source software is free, but there are always some extra fees you have to consider.
Is opencart free? Yes, but to be able to create an OpenCart store, you might need to pay for some extras:
- Hosting plan: Those usually start at around $10 / month if you’re on a budget (the quality host will cost you more).
- A domain name for your store: Around $10 / year or so.
- An SSL certificate: Depending on the needs of the store owner, the price will vary.
- An eye-catching template and any additional modules/extensions that you want to have in your online store (those tend to cost $100 on average).
#2.2. OpenCart Cloud
OpenCart also offers a cloud hosting solution based on AWS (Amazon Web Service) Server. It comes with an “all-in-one” package that is fully equipped with the latest version of OpenCart. Therefore, users won’t need to go through the complicated installation process.
All OpenCart Cloud stores will get unlimited products, categories, and orders regardless of their pricing tier. This is a preeminent feature of OpenCart Cloud compared with some eCommerce platforms, which require higher tiers of subscription to get more products displayed.
Specifically, OpenCart offers 3 different pricing plans for their Cloud version with a 7-day free trial.
- Bronze: $59/month
- Silver: $99/month
- Gold: $199/month.
Higher levels of subscription come with exclusive privileges like better support and multiple stores.
#3. Built Time
OpenCart runs on PHP and requires a database as well as a web server to work properly. Fortunately, it can run seamlessly in both Windows and Unix-based operating systems. Therefore, there’s no need to prepare a reliable computer for it.
Just to give you a heads-up, the installation process might be a bit challenging and not as straightforward as you may think. OpenCart users will need to have considerable knowledge of technology and devote a significant amount of time and effort to go through this step.
If you are not tech-savvy, hiring a developer to run the installation and initial setup could be a great option to quickly get started with your OpenCart store.
To fully set up OpenCart, you can refer to our detailed tutorial on how to install OpenCart.
#4. Ease of Use
In this section of our OpenCart review, we will mention its ease of use – a crucial yet often overlooked when choosing an eCommerce platform.
Despite being an open-source eCommerce platform, using OpenCart is not a real struggle after the installation. Sure, if you have technical skills and knowledge, managing this PHP-based solution is just a breeze. But don’t worry if you are a newbie in eCommerce since OpenCart is well-known for its user-friendliness, even for inexperienced users.
OpenCart is a great platform to build an e-commerce store and my clients love it too. I am amazed by OpenCart, it has everything that my clients need to run their e-commerce stores fluidly. The platform is not too complex so even the new comers can easily get up to speed with this toolkit.
Nishtha M. – Capterra Review
Notably, OpenCart offers a very modern and easy-to-use Admin Panel interface. On the admin page, you’ll be able to accomplish all of your primary tasks, like managing your products, installing extensions, choosing a new OpenCart template, monitoring sales and customer groups, and even running marketing campaigns.
Although there were minor difficulties during the setup process, the site is intuitive and all features are clearly laid out.
#5. Themes
One thing that shouldn’t be ignored in this OpenCart review is the OpenCart template. Like every other open-source platform, OpenCart gives users the freedom to customize it.
When it comes to customizing your theme on a granular level, you’re going to have to know how to work with the code. Despite a little inconvenience compared to other hosted solutions, OpenCart’s theme editor uses the template language Twig for easy integration and maximum site performance.
Unfortunately, OpenCart’s core software doesn’t come with multiple designs of OpenCart themes. What you’ll get is a basic stock template to start building your store. However, this default template is responsive and quite modern-looking.
Therefore, you’ll probably want to shop for paid themes on the OpenCart marketplace, where you’ll find over 103 catalog pages of templates, all rated by the user community.
#6. Ecommerce Features
With detailed information, this OpenCart review section will be very useful for those who want to kick off their online store on this platform.
#6.1. OpenCart Analytics
As you might know, Google has specially added its feature to OpenCart, which is Google Analytics. This extension allows you to measure the number of transactions and revenue that your website generates. With this tool, you can record your sales transaction with Google Analytics.
Additionally, you can generate detailed reports to monitor your sales and product performance, view transactions, monitor eCommerce conversion rate, track unique purchases, and gain insights into shopping behavior, checkout behavior, and product listings.
Here are some features of Google Analytics in OpenCart:
- Track the activities of both admin and customers
- Enable/disable modules at any time
- Support multi-store
- Have full control to enable/disable the tracking of the admin/catalog end
- Provide tracking options.
#6.2. OpenCart POS (Point of Sale)
Basically, the OpenCart Point of Sale System (POS) is a system that allows merchants to create orders from their physical stores. With POS integration, these orders will be synchronized and created on the OpenCart online store.
The advantage of this add-on is that it gives an option to the customers to walk into the physical store and pick up the product directly. This process will cut out the time of going online and, checking out, then waiting for the shipment.
With the OpenCart POS system, merchants will be able to manage their sales, inventory, and customers. Moreover, they can easily manage their day-to-day transactions without any hassle.
Besides, the OpenCart POS system is a powerful tool to manage sales and revenue. The admin can set up and manage multiple physical stores along with the online one from OpenCart.
#6.3. OpenCart Inventory Management
Inventory management is part of supply chain management, which aims at selling the right products in the right quantity at the right time. Hence, proper inventory management will help you to track your inventory and automate this process in real time. When performed effectively, companies reduce excess inventory costs while maximizing sales.
OpenCart inventory management features:
- Reduce costs, improve cash flow, and boost your business’s bottom line
- Track your inventory in real-time
- Help you forecast demand
- Prevent product and production shortages
- Prevent excess stock and too many raw materials
- Allow for easy inventory analysis on any device
- Be accessible right from your retail point-of-sale (POS) system
- Optimize warehouse organization and precious employee time
- Offer quick barcode scanning to speed up the intake
- Allow for multi-location management, tracking inventory across several locations or warehouses.
#6.4. OpenCart Payment Gateways
The OpenCart comes with a variety of payment methods, from bank transfers to online payment gateways. There are 51 payment gateways that are pre-installed with the installation of OpenCart. If you want to use other types of payment, there are more methods available on the OpenCart Extension marketplace.
To be able to use these payment gateways, you need to edit the supported extensions. Besides, OpenCart also supports additional functions such as payment method in checkout and payment method in the order history.
#6.5. OpenCart Marketing
The Marketing section in your OpenCart dashboard allows you to add and track the marketing campaigns you create. This feature helps to create a code attached to the link, which enables you to track the number of clicks and orders from that link. From there, you can see where to set up a Marketing Campaign that will work.
To access the Marketing section from the dashboard, click on the Marketing field and select it from the submenus, including Affiliates, Coupons, and Mail.
#6.6. OpenCart SEO
On a product level, this platform lets users customize some basic information like product name, meta tag title, or URL path.
On a higher level, OpenCart lets users add 301 redirects and rel canonical. However, using these options requires PHP coding skills. Additionally, OpenCart does not support individual URLs. To address these issues, you can explore extensions available on the OpenCart marketplace or implement the following SEO tips.
Also, this platform exclusively provides a blogging module called OpenCartDaily. This tool comes with additional modules that will be integrated with OpenCart products and categories to allow you to sell your products via blog posts.
The link of this blog with the OpenCart system makes it different from WordPress or any separate blog you use with OpenCart in subdirectory or subdomain. Not only that, but this module will also help your OpenCart SEO become friendlier by using the analytics.
#7. Extensions & Plugins
Moving to the next part of this OpenCart review, let’s take a closer look at OpenCart’s extensions. With over 13,000+ available options to download, OpenCart offers a vast range of features right out of the box.
You can find service integrations, payment providers, shipping methods, social media, marketing, accounting, reporting, sales as well as language packs.
And of course, these things in the OpenCart marketplace include both paid and free versions. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about a limited budget to build your store.
I am building my new website with opencart and i am very satisfied with it, it is free and opensource with tons of modules and extensions to start with, paid extensions are professional and very useful. Overall i found opencart a feature rich ecommerce application.
hanady K., Capterra Review
If you have a small store and want to improve its performance, you can choose from a variety of free modules that can help you run your store faster and increase sales without any additional cost.
However, as your store grows in size, it is advisable to consider investing in paid extensions. These extensions can give you an edge over your competitors by providing advanced product management, marketing campaigns, and tactics and improving the overall customer experience.
#8. Support
Users can choose from 4 types of support:
- Open a support ticket
- Help documentation
- Community support
- Dedicated support (paid option).
OpenCart has a thriving Community Forum with 125,000+ active users and a wide range of topics, including support for bugs, installation, configuration, themes, and extensions. The forum also has a dedicated section for users who speak 30+ languages, making it a welcoming environment for all.
If you’re looking for worry-free technical support for your website, Dedicated Support from $50 – $300 is the solution. Get assistance from OpenCart’s developer to solve your problems without modifying your store’s source code.
Is OpenCart Your Perfect Match?
OpenCart is brilliant. It’s free to download and install. This eCommerce solution also offers its users a wide range of themes and plugins as well as a great degree of flexibility and customizability.
The only drawback is you’ll need some technical skills and coding knowledge to fully take advantage of this powerful eCommerce solution.
All things considered, OpenCart is a good fit for you if you’re tech-savvy and you prefer a robust eCommerce platform with advanced features and a great degree of customizability.
Some OpenCart Alternatives Worth Considering!
But if you’re not a tech guru yet, still in love with open-source software, WooCommerce can be one of the best alternatives to OpenCart – it’s way easier to set up and manage on a daily basis.
Or else, if you prefer hosted solutions over self-hosted ones, we recommend you go with Shopify or BigCommerce.
Looking for the best eCommerce platform to take your business to the next level? Our comprehensive list of top eCommerce platforms is here to help you make an informed decision and take your business to new heights.
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OpenCart Review – FAQs
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Final Words
Hopefully, this OpenCart review can serve as a helpful resource for your journey with eCommerce. Should you have any questions related to OpenCart and other eCommerce platforms, please don’t hesitate to contact our 24/7 support team. LitExtension is always willing to give all eCommerce merchants a helping hand!
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Best luck!