CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is a professional on-premise marketplace platform that allows for creating an online marketplace similar to Amazon, eBay, and Etsy. This award-winning marketplace software has an average user rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars according to software review platforms such as SourceForge, Capterra, and G2. Now, over 1,600 online marketplaces worldwide are built on CS-Cart Multi-Vendor marketplace CMS, which is more than any other marketplace builder can offer in terms of live cases.
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor Marketplace Platform (cs-cart.com) has 32 customer reviews on Five Star Index, with an average rating of 3.8 out of 5.
Also known as
cs-cart.com
Website
cs-cart.com
Category
IT & Communication
Location
San Diego
Listed on Five Star Index
2026
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The company replied to 13% of reviews.
Latest
Most recent review: September 2026.
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Has a prices page without prices, just a webmail form you know is going to result in a hard sales call! Can't stand this type of website/company. If you can't be transparent about your pricing to your potential customers, you just know they are charging more than they can justify hence the requirement for hard sales tactics!
Response from CS-Cart Multi-Vendor Marketplace PlatformFeb 28, 2024
Hello!
We have temporarily concealed the prices as part of an ongoing experiment with our pricing structure and offerings. This is a short-term measure, and we plan to conclude our experiment by next week. At that time, we will reinstate the publication of our prices.
DA
Daria
Our first month with CS Cart
Here is a short but not a complete list of issues our team had with CS Cart within the first months of work:
• The server installation manuals are not just not suitable for non-IT – those are outdated. If you want the CS Cart team to fix your issues and help you to install the program onto your server – you either pay or scream at your sales manager
• A huge amount of crucial information is not available neither in the manuals nor in the videos
• It took us 3 weeks (!) to get CS Cart to install us the program on our server – mainly because the employees simply do not check if everything works when they are finished
• Our team spends 90% of the time in communication by explaining “what else” is not working
• 504 Gateway is our companion whenever we work with back-end, at any time and for no reason
• The packs CS Cart offers are not coherent – if they sell you a “lifetime” upgrade of the platform with a unique theme – you get the upgrades for the scheme only for 6 months. Later you either pay or enjoy bugs when your platform gets updates and your themes does not. Moreover, the platform is developed in such a way that any external themes will need a lot of adjustment after any upgrade if you want them to work correctly
• The App which is offered in premium packs is only for the basic infrastructure, any add-ons (which you will need) – you will need to pay additionally
• They delete and move your login data at any point of time without a warning, you understand this when you are kicked out of the platform in the middle of your work. The general problem with access rights is that you need to ask for them each time you discover you lack rights in your own program.
Generally, we wanted to work with a Russian company (CS Cart is a Russian company) to save some of our programmers the language barrier – but we expected something at least close to the American service from a company selling its product globally. From our perspective, CS Cart is not interested in supporting customers and creating a great customer experience even during the trial period – simply said, you get what you pay for.
Response from CS-Cart Multi-Vendor Marketplace PlatformOct 5, 2022
Hello Daria,
It's sad to hear you and your team encountered issues when deploying and setting up CS-Cart. You should have a free period of technical support after the purchase, so we recommend using it to the full—our engineers take the technical routine away, especially with server and installation processes. The installation of CS-Cart takes minutes, not months.
504 usually shows up when a manager opens a page in the admin panel, that he or she doesn't have rights to view. Admin rights and privileges is one of the critically important features for a marketplace or online store with multiple admins and managers. So it should be configured carefully. Please check the administrator privileges for all the managers that have access to the admin panel to avoid them seeing 504s.
Regarding Unitheme updates: Unitheme (premium theme) is developed by our partners and it's basically a separate product. They maintain and update it accordingly. The paid add-ons you mentioned are also developed by third-party companies as separate products to sell. All the add-ons by CS-Cart (built-in) are free.
CS-Cart is based in the United States, San Diego. But we have partner companies worldwide: US, Europe, Australasia. We have a partner company in Russia, too. We created the partner network to offer the best experience for local companies (including eliminating the language barrier and time zone issues).
We'll be happy to help you resolve your current issues with CS-Cart. Just contact our customer care team for assistance.
DN
Derek N.
The best marketplace system that none of other companies can offer to start up from my experiences
Pro: Cs-cart multivendor has many features that ready to use for any new startup business, your business can start run within a month. Cs-cart MVE is simple and easy to use with detail documentation; CS-cart MVE is not too expensive. Customer support are very friendly and useful. None of other marketplace softwares can give your business these features to start up and it will be alot more expensive compare to CS-cart MVE.
Cons: CS-cart MVE is getting more complicated since they released more versions; especially for older users because there are many old addons that are deprecated addons just staying there which im feeling might cause security problem in the long run. The software is already having many features but doesnot modernize template or update to latest technology, so as more features are added that will cause more problems.
However, I still recommend anyone to use CS-cart MVE over others such as Magento, Woocommerce, and even horrible Webkul marketplace software... Because CS-cart MVE is very simple to use, cost effective, and there are many ready features that can help my company run the business within 2 months without adding more cost.
RF
Rafael F.
Our feedback on Cs-Cart and the Multivendor Marketplace
We have been using the CS-Cart powered Multivendor product for about a year. After this period, we can say with confidence that it was an excellent option for us.
The major advantages of Cs-Cart when compared to other services:
- since you acquire the software, you become completely autonomous. In the long term, this is the smart course to take, otherwise your online business will always be dependent on a another company's continuation.
- regarding the price, Cs-Cart is on the top of it's league. There's no other service or software in the market that offers the same features and flexibility for this amount.
- Once you acquire the software, the installation is quick and should present no major trouble.
- Cs-Cart provides an extensive user-guide which you must be prepared to navigate, and it takes a while to understand how the backend and frontend work, and how to navigate the different menus.
-their customer service is excellent, replying quickly and always willing to provide you extra clarification. After a few months the service is not free any more, but still very affordable. You can also acquire extended customer service packages. Unlike other corporative businesses, they are willing to adapt a bit to your needs and listen to your requests in a personal way. This really makes a big difference.
On the other hand:
- please beware that such a powerful software takes a while to master. Even if you're and intermediate IT user, be prepared to spend a few weeks digging into it.
- keep in mind that the installation of Cs-Cart will require you get additional domain and hosting services (which you can acquire from any provider).
Beware that they update the software constantly, which makes it difficult to use externally acquired add-ons. We strongly advise to buy your theme and essential add-ons from CS-Cart only. Otherwise, you might end up with major bug issues.
If you're considering to acquire a Multivendor marketplace, there's an "extra mile" of knowledge you'll need in order to set up the associated features. Nevertheless, the somewhat-steep-learning-curve to master the general features will make the rest quite easy.
Besides the technical information, Cs-Cart also provides a constant flux of information on marketing, how to develop your business and a gallery of other business. This is extremely helpful in order to get inspiration.
If you're considering a Multivendor marketplace, we'd suggest you to check with your potential clients (shop owners) their willingness to be part of it and also their capacity, both technical and logistic. They'll need someone in the company who can operate the seller backend and keep the shop updated - namely the stock numbers. Otherwise, you'll need to do that for them, which might turn difficult if not impossible in the long term.
Depending on the requirements of your project, you might need to do some customization: for instance, to accept certain methods of payment that are specific to your country. The CS-Cart team can provide you with an estimate of costs for such (or other) customizations.
In the overall, we are very happy customers and definitely recommend this company and products.
Good luck!
ZW
Zachary W.
Use this for a ecommerce site/web…
Use this for a ecommerce site/web design. Love the ease of use and modifications I can make very quickly to website. I can even insert my own code to be able to have my own stuff I need and they make it very easy to use. Customer support is great and has always been timely in responses. I've tried a few other carts and love this one the most. The cost can be alittle high at times. But they do have promotions and coupons that can help with that. They provide regular updates that also help and listen to the community for some of there updates. Overall i'm still happy with them and have been using them now for around 8 years.
TO
Tonya
It works for what I need.
The software has changed a lot since I got it. It has definitely gotten better and easier to use and more flexible. I have never used any other platform, so I can't compare it to others. It works for what I need. I like the fact that I can install the software on my own server. There are a lot of add-ons and those developers are very helpful and easy to work with. I keep finding new things that I can add to help improve my business.
Customer support has always been very fast and friendly. They are doing a better job at explaining how to fix the issue instead of just solving it, which makes it easier to understand if I were to have the same or similar issue again.
Since this is my first and only shopping cart, it was not very user-friendly and easy to set up and use. At times it became quite complicated to use. The documentation is sometimes outdated and hard to understand. They need to do a better job of showing instead of just telling. The how-to videos are really outdated and need to be refreshed.
SN
Sayarun N.
CS-CART Multi-Vendor platform
I am using CS-CART one year until now all technical work went well with the Support Team.
1. reason for purchase to create high quality marketplace
2. CS-CART feature well enough to test your idea
3. If you love drag and drop, CS-CART definitely valuable
4. Value for money: lifetime licenses, or monthly subscription. Life-time licenses required upgrade subscription fees to keep your license update, troubleshooting that is positive features, additional cost tech support after a year is minimal if you keep your license upgraded, Quality of framework CS-CART has rich coding. It a quite a learning curve, documentation is also very useful. They don't give documentation for Seller separately, all in one master guide.
I love their technical support responses are weekdays, they solve the issue fantastically, that is another reason I like using CS-CART.
I recommend cs-cart multivendor for professional and commercial level. their framework intends to serve a large scale of the customer without switching 3rd party to expand your user base.
Support Technically available subscription-based also credit pay as you go. CS-CART is a commercial level framework can load faster, variety of payment system, easy to integrate, but getting a PayPal commerce approved is harder from PayPal not CS-CART, STRIPE is a breeze!
CS-CART offers global multi-vendor solutions.
Recently they updated 4.12.2 lot of features and more improved platform .
Is it value for money? (YES) Cost can be increase but less than what you paying to a competitor for a platform, basic marketplace cost way too much with a subscription plan with other parties, with CS-CART I was able to launch my dream platform without much coding experience and it's scalable!
MA
Martin
Very good solution to quickly and easily build an online marketplace
CS Cart Multivendor provides the complete marketplace environment and structure by default, so you can start to build and run your own online marketplace. It provides for example a vendor onboarding system where vendors can apply for a vendor account, easy way to upload products, options for different product categories, filter options, a lot of different payment methods and the possibility to distribute payments from customers between vendors and the marketplace owner.
Pros:
- fair price for a marketplace system
- it offers all the features you need to build and run an online marketplace
- large network of (third party) companies that provide add ons for multivendor and offer them for a fair price
- great support from CS Cart support team
- high flexibility
Cons:
- the entry into the complex system is a bit complicated at the beginning, so it will take time to understand the logic behind the backend and the interplay with the frontend. CS Cart offers a lot of good tutorials to get into it, but what would had helped us at the beginning would be a starting tutorial which provides a general overview before getting into details.
- more payment methods for stripe connect by default would be good (e.g. Klarna etc.).
What is still to be mentioned from our point of view and we would have liked to know in advance:
- The less add ons, especially from third parties, the better. Otherwise bugs can occur during the upgrade if the add ons are not (yet) compatible with the newer versions of Multivendor.
- We regretted a little bit to have chosen a third party theme. Not in terms of design, but there were always bugs in the design of the frontend after we upgraded because the third party themes are not always adapted to newer versions of Multivendor.
Conclusion:
All in all, if we had to choose an online marketplace software again with today's knowledge, we would choose Multivendor again.