Choosing Your eCommerce Platform: SunShop or Shift4Shop?
Which online shopping cart software is the best choice for your online store?
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Building an online store gives you a fantastic opportunity to build your brand. But to do that, you need to be able to customize your store, preferably without needing to learn too many technical details. It’s also vital that the eCommerce platform you choose works smoothly and without bugs, and you’re going to want to start selling as soon as possible so it’s important that it be quick to set up. Unfortunately, if you use SunShop, you’re going to find all these things more difficult than they should be.
Where SunShop is buggy, Shift4Shop works flawlessly. Where SunShop is difficult to customize, Shift4Shop lets you do it with no knowledge of code. Plus, Shift4Shop is vastly more expandable and comes with tons of vital integrations with other eCommerce software that SunShop simply can’t work with. In everything needed for a successful online store, Shift4Shop leaves SunShop in the dust.
Ease of UseIf you want to get serious about selling online, you probably want to get started quickly and with a minimum of hassle. But to get the most out of SunShop, you’ll need knowledge of PHP, and most customizations will require editing the code. Shift4Shop, however, gets you right into the action with an intuitive interface and WYSIWYG editing.
FeaturesSunShop has the basics of eCommerce, of course — a shopping cart, product pages, and other general functions, but if you want to expand your horizons with integrations and plugins, you’re out of luck as there are so few available. But Shift4Shop has hundreds of integrations with all types of software, including popular marketing and shipping tools, and a robust app selection to help you further customize your store.
“SunShop is just plain hard to use. I didn’t realize I needed to know PHP and it’s difficult to get my store looking how I want it. I feel like they expect everyone to be a programmer. I was also disappointed to discover that I can’t use some of my existing shipping and marketing software because there’s no integration in place.”
– Former SunShop User
PricingYou have few options with SunShop when it comes to plans. The licensed version of the software is between $199.99 – $499.99 and you’ll need to pay for support along with it. The cloud-hosted version only has one pricing tier, at $34.99/mo. or $299.99 annually. Clearly, the idea is that one size fits all. Shift4Shop, on the other hand, is built to be fully scalable for any size business. We even offer an enterprise-grade plan completely free: the End-to-End eCommerce plan includes all our features and no limits, and can be accessed simply by choosing Shift4 Payments as your payment processor. Shift4 Payments sets up in minutes and lets you accept credit cards as well as several alternate payment types.
Shift4Shop is meant to be easy to use, no matter the size of your business and regardless of your eCommerce experience. Plus, over 200 integrations ensure you’ll always be able to use it seamlessly with your favorite software for marketing, accounting, reporting, shipping, and more.
SunShop requires knowledge of PHP to do anything but the simplest edits, and before long you’ll find yourself running into tasks that are harder than they need to be. The limited feature set and integrations mean you’ll have problems using the tools your business relies on.
With Shift4Shop, you can build a successful eCommerce website and grow your business from startup to enterprise. The platform grows with you and works with everything your business will need.
SunShop may work for some smaller businesses, but as you grow, you’ll discover some much-needed tools to be lacking due to the platform’s limited integrations, hampering your success.
