X-Cart? Maybe Not.
I’ve been a big fan of the X-Cart shopping cart over the years. However a recent experience has changed my mind. One of my customers has an existing X-Cart installation. We needed to move the cart to a new website host. We also wanted to make some modifications to the cart to make it work better. Both tasks proved to be surprisingly difficult.
As I worked with the software I discovered three problems:
X-Cart doesn’t sell items in fractional quantities. That means people using X-Cart cart can’t sell a pound and a half of of product. Shop owners who sell fabric can’t sell a yard and a half of their wares. X-Cart is able to add this functionality via custom programming. However it’s an expensive tweak and the custom programming makes future software upgrades difficult.
The hosting needed for X-Cart are intense. The list of requirements can be found on this page. Because of this starter hosting packages at BlueHost or Hosting.com won’t work for this application. A beefier, and more expensive plan is needed.
The time lag for technical support is troublesome. The good news about X-Cart is that it’s well-documented and there is technical support. The bad news is that because the company is located Russia there is a huge communication time lag. Basically you can have one complete email exchange in a 24 hour period. For example, one day I asked for the specifications for an older version of the software. That night X-Cart sent a link to the information. The link was bad. On the second day I told them the link was bad and asked for the information again. They answered overnight. On the third day I had the needed information.
So will I recommend X-Cart to any customers? Probably not. At this point Zen Cart is my favorite shopping cart software.
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