After 5 years heavily influenced by the COVID-19 epidemic, more and more merchants have been entering the eCommerce market to quickly gain a delicious piece of cake in the digital world. Unfortunately, it’s quite tricky to choose the best B2B eCommerce platform to build a site on among a plethora of options such as Magento, 3dcart (Shift4Shop), Oracle, Volusion, Shopify, and more. For those wondering between two big players – Magento vs 3dcart, you can’t miss this material!
Overall, early adopters are often drawn into 3dcart, which was acquired by Shift4Shop – a leader in payment technology in November 2020, thanks to its ease of use and hosted solution. However, once you want to scale your business and generate higher customization demands, 3dcart fails to accommodate that. This time, Magento takes the throne.
We compare Magento 2 vs 3dcart (Shift4Shop) with the following main criteria: key features, B2B capabilities, server hosting, and pricing plans.
*Note: 3dcart has been acquired by Shift4Shop, so sometimes these 2 brand names will be used interchangeably in this article.
Magento vs 3dcart Overview
Table of Contents
Before breaking down into smaller parts in the 3dcart vs Magento comparison, it’s crucial for you to answer starting questions like what is 3dcart, what is Magento, and their strengths and weaknesses. The table below will give you the best overview of these two famous platforms.
For more interests, let’s take a look at some Magento eCommerce competitors to broaden your choices:
- Magento vs Shopify
- Magento vs Salesforce Commerce Cloud
- Oracle Commerce vs Magento
- Magento vs Oro Commerce
Main Criteria to Compare 3dcart vs Magento
Magento vs 3dcart: Highlighted Features
Glancing through the feature table, we see that Magento goes far beyond 3dcart regarding comprehensive business management, analytics, and integration. In contrast, 3dcart seems to be superior at the payment and transaction completion stage.
Due to a myriad of features, these big players are processing, we only mention the top ones that might affect your purchasing decision in this 3dcart vs Magento comparison table.
Magento vs 3dcart: B2B Functionality
Magento
To serve different business sizes from small to large, Magento releases 3 editions: Open Source (free), Commerce & Commerce Cloud (paid). Among them, 2 paid licenses include must-have B2B features.
Even when you’re finding should-have features to serve your advanced business needs, there is still a jungle of third-party extensions waiting for you on the Magento marketplace.
For those using the Magento Open Source 2 that doesn’t include B2B features, don’t worry. There are tons of Magento 2 B2B extension providers out there for you to choose from at affordable prices.
The B2B Solution flow at different providers may vary slightly, but it mainly follows the main circuit that adheres to the B2B customer journey.
Top Magento 2 B2B Features:
- Customer Identity Validation: Requiring guests to log in is the first gate that leads customers to the right place on your Magento B2B website and verifies their identity. Magento offers features for you to restrict access to some pages/ categories per customer group to ensure effective customer segmentation.
- Corporation Management: The main subject of Magento B2B is the Company. So Magento includes functions like creating unique B2B registration forms, providing shared accounts for multi-users, and assigning sales reps to specific customers. These features are the prominent strengths of Magento that have never been defeated by any other platforms. It helps show the professionalism and consistency of a B2B eCommerce business.
- B2B Pricing Setup: Hide price and Custom pricing features will simplify your pricing setup process for different customers/ customer groups.
- Streamlined Negotiation Process: A typical B2B company often goes through the dealing stage before placing any order. That’s why the Request for Quote feature is a must for any online business to support the communication between buyers and sellers.
- Fast Bulk Ordering: Corporate customers can search and order all products under a single Quick Order form without visiting each product page one by one. Also, completed orders lie in the history of the customer dashboard for reordering in the blink of an eye.
- Future Purchasing Plan Support: Requisition lists/ Multiple Wishlists serve the interval purchasing plans of customers. They can save and categorize their favorite products into lists.
- Shipping & Payment Optimization: Merchants can assign shipping & payment methods to specific customers or locations. Also, customers can utilize purchase orders (PO) as a payment method at the checkout stage.
- Customer Retention: Grant store credits to the customer balance to encourage them to do more transactions with you.
JUMP INTO Magento 2 B2B Suite RIGHT NOW to understand how it can cover the B2B purchasing flow from Login to Checkout.
3dcart (Shift4Shop)
To activate 3dcart B2B features, you need to purchase a Shift4Shop B2B eCommerce plan priced at $379/ month. Basically, the 3dcart B2B plan’s operational flow is similar to Magento’s, with a bit more limited in terms of extensibility and stability.
- Personalized Pricing: Like Magento, 3dcart allows you to set up custom prices for specific customers. Hide price is included too.
- Restricted Site Access: Configure some places on your site to password-required.
- Tiered Bulk Price Discounts: This B2B feature of 3dcart (Shift4Shop) enables admin users to set discounts based on several variables such as minimum/ maximum order quantity, duplicate product requirements, and more.
- Quick Ordering: B2B buyers can order through the Quick Order Pad, and quickly reorder from order history.
- Advanced Shipping: 3dcart (Shift4Shop) includes B2B Cost Center Location to define the locations you can deliver to rather than accepting customers’ own addresses. Besides, sellers can utilize the native ReTrans Freight Integration for heavy freight management and LTL shipping rates. With this 3dcart pricing plan for B2B, you are able to print shipping labels, calculate shipping rates in real-time, and tailor shipping rates to specific customer groups.
Magento vs 3dcart: Self-Hosted and Hosted
Hosting is one of the biggest differences between 3dcart and Magento. For instance, Magento is a self-hosted platform that requires you – users – to run and download the software on your own hosting server. This way, you can savor the convenience of customized functions, and you have total ownership and control over your store.
On the contrary, 3dcart (Shift4Shop) is a hosted solution platform. It means the server is totally managed by 3dcart. Although this solution offers quick and easy ways to start publishing content, your customization ability is limited. Another downside is that there are fewer free 3dcart themes to use and many of those are less attractive and less adaptable than the premium templates. Yet, utilizing 3dcart, you don’t need a lot of technical knowledge and skills to master it.
3dcart vs Magento: Pricing
When it comes to pricing, 3dcart seems more competitive compared to Magento. 3dcart charges around $29/ month (minimum), while it costs over $1000/ month (minimum) for paid Magento editions.
3dcart offers pricing plans for retailers of all sizes. Smaller online sellers can take advantage of a site-builder and straightforward management dashboard. Larger retailers, on the other hand, can choose from a comprehensive premium plan or several enterprise options (for stores turning over millions of dollars).
Regarding Magento, it’s completely free for the Open Source edition. You just have to pay fees when installing extensions from Magento or other Magento solution providers. The fee varies depending on the product price of each provider. When you switch to Magento Commerce or Commerce Cloud, you will be charged as shown in the following table.
VISIT Magento B2B pricing to know details of Magento site building cost and estimate the total cost of ownership.
Costs Of Each Magento Edition (Per Year)
| Av Gross Sale Revenue per year | Open Source | Commerce | Commerce Cloud |
| <$1,000,000 | $0 | $22,000 | $40,000 |
| $1,000,000 – $5,000,000 | $0 | $32,000 | $55,000 |
| $5,000,000 – $10,000,000 | $0 | $49,000 | $80,000 |
| $10,000,000 – $25,000,000 | $0 | $75,000 | $125,000 |
| >$25,000,000 | $0 | $125,000 | $190,000 |
Why Choose Magento for Sustainable Website Development?
Well, if you’re still considering 3dcart vs Magento, we will help you answer it. Let’s think about your long-term goals. Do you plan to build a small website with basic features serving a small number of users? Pick 3dcart. However, do you want to ensure great site performance when expanding your eCommerce store to wide markets, both B2B and B2C, in the long run? Magento would work better.
Magento is an extremely trusted eCommerce platform that is used by more than 240,000 merchants worldwide, suitable for all types of small-to-large businesses. Along with that, no matter which models you are running, B2C, B2B to B2M, Magento always stands at the top.
Below are the reasons why Magento should be chosen:
Extensibility: Magento allows the construction and application of extensions to enhance the shopping experience. You can fully expand the features with Magento 2 modules to suit your specific business purposes. Meanwhile, this task is hard to accomplish when you build your site on 3dcart.
Mobile Experience: This platform utilizes HTML5 to enhance the UX on mobile devices. Magento-built websites cover all features related to customizable photo and video sizes and drag & drop functionality.
Easy Integration: Using Magento, you will be able to integrate a forest of third-party services such as electronic payment gateways and database applications. Also, Magento has built-in features like Google Base, Google Analytics, Google Checkout, and so on. Comparing Magento vs Shift4Shop (3dcart), we realize that Magento attracts many more solution providers than 3dcart does.
Multitasking Capabilities: The industry-leading platform allows store owners to create multiple online stores that can be managed on a single admin page.
Ability to Support Effective SEO: Last but not least, it offers various SEO-friendly features including URL Rewrite, Search URL, Layer Positioning, Sitemaps,…
Conclusion
Magento and 3d Cart are popular e-commerce platforms for store owners to build a website and operate their business. Each platform obtains particular pros and cons that benefit specific business types and business sizes. I hope this article helps you to select the best one between Magento vs 3dcart based on your business requirements, and also your budget.
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