Shift4Shop Ecommerce Website Builder Review (2024)
Our Research
Shift4Shop, formerly known as 3dcart, offers a robust free plan, but it may not work for everyone. Read Forbes Advisor’s Shift4Shop review to learn more.
You may know Shift4Shop as the original name it had for over 20 years: 3dcart. At first glance at its plans, you might wonder if Shift4Shop offers its most advanced option completely free, and it does—provided you use its credit card processor. Its credit card processing fees are standard at 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. If you’re committed to using PayPal or any other credit card processor, you can, but then you must use a paid plan that starts at $29 per month. Each tier provides built-in search engine optimization (SEO) tools, unlimited products, inventory control and an affiliate program for your customers.
Shift4Shop Pros & Cons
Pros
- Extensive free plan and affordable paid plans
- No product limit
- Unlimited bandwidth
- No revenue caps
- Upsell and cross-sell
- 100-plus templates
- Order management
- Abandoned cart saver
- Built-in CRM and SEO tools
Cons
- Limited customization options
- Must process at least $500 in sales to use the free plan
Shift4Shop at a Glance 8.8 Editor Score
Features & Integrations
9.0
Security Features
9.0
Ease Of Use
9.1
Pricing & Packages
9.1
Customer Service
9.5
8.8 Editor Score
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Overview
What Is Shift4Shop?
- Shift4Shop is a long-standing e-commerce platform that was founded in 1997 out of Tamarac, Florida.
- The experts at Forbes Advisor rank Shift4Shop as one of the best e-commerce platforms for small businesses—particularly for its robust free plan.
- Shift4Shop is a leading competitor of Shopify and with a laundry list of features and tools that e-commerce businesses need, it’s easy to see why.
- In addition to its e-commerce website builder, it also offers an array of tools to help online retailers market their brand and sell more products, such as a built-in email marketing newsletter, a promotions scheduler to automate sales, a built-in blog and numerous integrations for added versatility.
Pros
The main advantages of Shift4Shop are twofold. First, it’s feature-rich, offering the unique tools and functionalities that an e-commerce business needs, such as social wish lists, gift certificates, discounts and coupons, abandoned cart saver, dropshipping integrations, a gift registry and more. Second, it’s competitively priced, making it a good value for price given its long list of quality features. It offers a free plan for businesses that process at least $500 per month in sales and a premium plan for $29 per month.
Cons
It’s worth noting that there are a few disadvantages of Shift4Shop. As appealing as its free plan is, it does require users to process a minimum of $500 per month, which could be prohibitive to new e-commerce businesses that are in the early stages of launching. It also means that the free version is not a means for new users to test-drive the platform and build out their e-commerce infrastructure.
Aside from the limitations of the free plan, it’s not the most user-friendly option on the market. In our experience, it was not very intuitive and felt glitchy. For example, there were a number of instances where buttons we clicked on the site were not responsive. Another thing worth mentioning is that many users report that its customer support needs improvement. However, in our experience with its live chat support, our issue was resolved quickly.
Pricing and Value
Shift4Shop is a low-cost, high-value platform. It offers one of the most comprehensive free e-commerce plans on the market. It includes access to all of the Shift4Shop features, such as its large template library, its drag-and-drop site editor, unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, abandoned cart saver, order management (including order notifications), built-in email marketing CRM systems, the ability to connect to integrations and more. However, there are a few caveats to the free plan. First, it requires that users process a minimum of $500 in sales per month, and users must use the Shift4Shop payment gateway (which charges a transaction fee).
For those who do not yet meet the minimum threshold of $500 in sales per month or want to save money in transaction fees, Shift4Shop’s basic paid plan, which starts at $29 per month, grants full access to all features; plus, they have their choice of payment processors.
An In-Depth Look at Shift4Shop Features
Shift4Shop is a feature-rich e-commerce platform that is best known for its drag-and-drop website builder that rivals the leading e-commerce website builders, such as Shopify. However, it’s a lot more than a site builder. It also offers e-commerce businesses the tools they need to easily sell online, such as a shopping cart, product and inventory management, order management, a variety of marketing and SEO tools, and a library of integrations to further expand the capabilities of an online store.
Website Builder
Shift4Shop does not entirely function as one would expect. Only certain sections of a web page can be customized from the site editor. While this is commonly the case for product libraries and listings, this is different for aspects, such as the home page hero banner and call-to-action buttons. Instead, users have to customize these elements off-page.
Order Management
Shift4Shop automatically tracks and manages orders that are placed online, by phone or in person. The standard tracking process includes the following stages: new, processing, partial, shipped, cancel, hold, declined and unpaid. It also gives users the ability to add a stage for quotes. Within the order list, it displays the invoice number, order date, name label (if applicable), total price, status (e.g., shipped) and the ability to edit or print the order.
Product and Inventory Management
Shift4Shop offers comprehensive product and inventory management tools to help businesses more effectively manage their stock and keep up with sales. Its interface is a bit dated, particularly when adding a new product. However, it does offer a number of helpful features, such as the ability to search for a product by its name or code, product tags for easy identification as well as the ability to clone a product, access product stats and filter products by category, distributor or manufacturer.
Marketing and SEO Tools
Shift4Shop includes built-in marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) tools to help businesses increase their visibility online and land more sales. For example, it has a promotion manager where users can set up promotional offers, such as two-for-one deals or discounts. It also has SEO tools to help sites get found in organic search, a newsletter builder, shopping engine plugins (i.e., Google Shopping Feed, Google Product Listing Ads, Bing) and Facebook Ads.
However, some of these features do feel a bit light. For example, the newsletter builder is a bit disappointing for anyone who has used an email marketing tool, such as Mailchimp, as it’s text-based and overall very simplistic, unless you want to build newsletters using HTML.
Shift4Shop Setup
What’s nice about Shift4Shop is how easy it is to sign up for its free plan and quickly start building an online store. To register, it’s a simple three-step process. First, users must input their business name and their industry. In the second step, users are prompted to select a theme from a curated collection of themes relevant to their industry. Upon doing so, users will then be asked to provide their basic contact information, such as their name, email address, business address and phone number. Note that you will be required to verify your phone number and email address before gaining access to your new account.
After successfully verifying your phone number and email address, you will then be redirected to your new account dashboard. In our experience, the setup process was a bit glitchy. For example, the registration process does not ask users to input a password, but upon first accessing the dashboard, it asked us to input a current password in order to create a new one. The issue was resolved within a couple of minutes using its live chat support, but it wasn’t the best user experience.
Shift4Shop Ease of Use
In our experience, Shift4Shop’s ease of use is a mixed bag. There are some features, such as product management, that are very user-friendly; meanwhile, there are others that are antiquated (such as its newsletter builder), lacking (such as its SEO tools), or worse, very unintuitive (such as its website builder).
In general, those who expect Shift4Shop to offer a very beginner-friendly way of quickly building out a professional e-commerce website might be disappointed. This is because Shift4Shop involves a learning curve—and because it’s not intuitive, the process of learning it can be something of a headache for new users that is comparable to WordPress.org.
Shift4Shop Security
There are a number of built-in security measures in place to help uphold the safety of your site and integrity of its sensitive data. In terms of the security features that a user has control over, there aren’t as many as we would prefer to see. It has the standard two-factor authentication and the ability to add users, but not a ton beyond that—and even the user roles are limited.
For example, users can add new administrators; however, there are no other role types, such as contributor or author. This can be limiting, if not risky, for businesses that have multiple users involved in their web management.
Pricing and Plans
| Startup | Basic | Plus | Pro | End-to-End | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price per month | $19 | $29 | $79 | $229 | Free |
| Number of users | 1 | 2 | 5 | 15 | Unlimited |
| Transaction fees | None | None | None | None | 2.3%+30c |
Shift4Shop Customer Service and Support
Customer support is available 24/7 via phone, live chat and email. In our experience, its live chat support, which is available from the user dashboard, was quick to assist and helpful in resolving our issue. Old user reviews frequently note that support needed improvement. However, that seems to be an issue Shift4Shop has more recently resolved as newer reviews are more positive.
Conclusion
If your sales exceed the cap on any of the paid plans, you will automatically upgrade to the next plan tier. Shift4Shop doesn’t specify if this is done without notice, so it’s best to pay careful attention once you are near those thresholds. And remember, only U.S.-based users can utilize the free plan.
Shift4Shop Top Alternatives
| Shift4Shop | Shopify | Ecwid | Squarespace | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ratings | ||||
| Starting Price | Free with $500 processed per month or $29 per month with no minimum | $29 per month (billed annually) | Free; $14.08 per month (billed annually) | $23 per month (billed annually) |
| Free Trial Length | 15 days | Three days | Not available | 14 days |
| Transaction Fees | None | Varies by plan, starts at 2.4% for in-person transactions (Advanced plan) | None | 3% |
| Drag-and-Drop Site Editor | Yes, though very limited | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Product Limit | Unlimited | Unlimited | Starts at 100 | Unlimited |
| Themes and Templates | 100-plus | 12 free themes and 100-plus premium themes | 40-plus | 100-plus |
| Free Domain Name | Yes | No | No | Yes, with annual plans |
| Multichannel Selling | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Accept Recurring Payments | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, via Subbly plugin |
| Dropshipping Integrations | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sell Online Courses | Yes | Yes, via an app | Yes | Yes |
| Sell Digital Downloads | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Abandoned Cart Recovery | Yes | Yes | Yes, with the Business plan ($29.08 per month if billed annually) | Yes |
| Coupons, Discounts and Gift Cards | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Email Marketing Tools | Yes, though limited | Yes, via Shopify Email | Yes | Yes |
| Site Migration Service | Yes | No | No | No |
| Customer Support | 24/7 via phone, email and live chat | 24/7 via phone, email and live chat | 24 hours Monday through Friday via chat | 24/7 via live chat email |
Shift4Shop vs. Shopify
Shopify is a leading competitor of Shift4Shop and that’s because the two e-commerce website builders offer very similar feature sets at similar price points. The main difference between the two is that Shopify is easier to learn than Shift4Shop, as it’s generally more intuitively designed.
Granted, unlike Shopify, Shift4Shop offers a free website migration service, so businesses with an existing e-commerce site can take advantage of this service and have their site transferred to Shift4Shop for free. It’s also worth noting that Shopify has a fairly small selection of free themes, whereas Shift4Shop has over 100 free themes. Another factor that can make a difference is that Shift4Shop does not charge transaction fees, whereas most of Shopify’s plans do.
Shift4Shop vs. Ecwid
When comparing Shift4Shop to Ecwid, a major difference is ease of use. Ecwid is a very user-friendly website builder, making it a good choice for web design beginners looking for an easy way to build an online store. Along with Shift4Shop, Ecwid offers a free forever plan; however, it differs from Shift4Shop’s free plan in that it does not allow users to connect a custom domain. Instead, they must use an Ecwid subdomain (e.g., yourbusinessname.ecwid.com). This free plan provides a good opportunity for new users to test-drive the platform; however, it is not suitable for business use, as it does not appear professional (or credible) to use a third-party subdomain.
Shift4Shop vs. Squarespace
Squarespace may be best known as being one of the best overall website builders; however, with its list of ecommerce features and functionalities, it’s also a leading e-commerce platform. In comparison to Shift4Shop, it is far easier to build an online store with. On the other hand, Squarespace does not offer as robust e-commerce management features, such as product management and inventory tracking. For this reason, Squarespace is likely the better choice for small businesses setting up a new online store, whereas Shift4Shop is better for existing businesses looking for an online e-commerce platform to build and manage inventory, sales and contacts.
Bottom Line
Shift4Shop is an excellent option if you are looking to start your own business, or sell and promote your current one online. The free end-to-end solution makes a compelling argument for business owners, and the fact that plans include a parade of useful features just makes it that much sweeter. The number of features is almost as impressive as the quality of them. Shift4Shop includes all the important features you could ask for, and then goes deeper into each category for an incredibly diverse and powerful suite of ecommerce tools. Responsive, reliable, and helpful, Shift4Shop also has top of the line customer support.
About the Company
Shift4Shop used to be 3dCart, a popular ecommerce software platform that began in 1997. The company recently changed its name to Shift4Shop after a smart acquisition in 2020. Today the company uses its massive technology and experience to deliver feature-rich ecommerce solutions to businesses of all sizes. The turnkey solutions allow any business owner to create a beautifully-designed website that is loaded with functionality. And over 22K customers agree that Shift4Shop is reliable, results-oriented, and helpful.
