Which Should You Choose For Your Marketplace - CS-Cart vs Onport

When choosing which solution is best for your business and its particular needs - it's important to go through each point of comparison carefully. With some solutions, it will soon become clear that they are not a suitable fit while others may work for now, but trouble could arise later down the line when it comes to things like expansion or reactiveness. In the article, we will take a look at marketplace solution CS-Cart and how it comes to Onport.

Features

CS-Cart had a wider feature to reflect its wider overall focus - product, services, and rental marketplaces. Another key difference between Onport and CS-Cart is that Onport is purely designed to automate back-office operations, while CS-Cart offers frontend features too.

Onport is designed to remove the common pain points that can plague an online product marketplace - our feature set allows users to automate some of the most troublesome aspects of running a busy marketplace.

Order routing is a vital component of any marketplace. The ability to relay the orders placed on your store back to the appropriate vendors for fulfillment - it is important to get this right as any possible mistakes may lead to a customer never returning. Thankfully, Onport uses an intelligent order routing system to ensure that orders are sent on time and in such a manner as to reduce any possible confusion or mistakes.

Tied into this, of course, is our inventory management technology which allows you to import bulk product catalogs from your vendors, ensuring that you both have an up-to-date sync between your two systems. Learn about new products or product changes quickly as well as availability, always letting you know in real-time if a product is available or not.

The financial relationship between you and your vendors can be a make or break element, that is why it is important to come to an agreement in which both parties are happy. With Onport, you can set commission rates for your vendors, always ensuring that payments are made on time and that things keep moving smoothly. Find out more about our features here.

Integrations

CS-Cart uses an app system for adding on integrations, some of which can be expensive. However, Onport allows users to pick and choose what integrations they want without extra cost.

This is because Onport understands thoroughly that no component is an island - with the marketplace environment growing ever more complex, it is vital that your solution connects with multiple 3rd party systems to help a business owner run their day-to-day operations.

Although Onport is focused purely on the backend, it does integrate with numerous front-end platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Prestashop, WooCommerce, Magento, and many more. Use a custom front end? Don’t worry, Onport is designed to be as flexible and compatible as possible.

Shipping is a core element of any eCommerce business - thank Onport, you can use great integrations such as Shippo, Shippypro, and many more to automate your shipping workflows. You can even offer your vendors discounted shipping labels to make shipping as simple as possible for both you and them.

Payments and invoicing are integral aspects of running any business, whether it be a brick-and-mortar store or an online marketplace. With Onport, you can make use of powerful integration such as PayPal, Stripe, and Wise. Need help when it comes to calculating the taxes on each sale? You can use tax integrations like Taxjar to help you stay on top of your tax obligations. Interested in learning more about our integrations? Check out the full list here.

Headless

From our investigation, it appears that CS-Cart does not offer headless capabilities. With Onport, you can make use of the MACH principles of decoupled commerce - allowing users to pick and choose best-of-breed solutions to sculpt their stack - their way.

Headless Commerce empowers users to make unique customer experiences and gives them true flexibility to bring their brand and touchpoints to life. Interested in learning more and finding out what headless commerce can do for you? Check out our Headless section here.

Verdict

Cs-Cart has a wider focus than Onport, allowing users to make service, booking, and product marketplaces as well as offering frontend features. If you wish to create a service or booking marketplace, then we would advise you to look at their offering and solution in some depth.

However, we do believe if you wish to create a product marketplace, then Onport would be a great option to consider. Whether you want a more straightforward out-of-the-box solution or need a headless, flexible implementation, Onport can accommodate your needs.

Your Partner For Growth - Onport

Onport is a multi-vendor marketplace and dropshipping platform. Onport enables product marketplaces to streamline and automate their inventory, orders, payments, and shipping operations. Designed to be flexible, Onport can accommodate both those seeking an out-the-box solution and through our API, those who require a more bespoke implementation. From growing SMEs to well-established Enterprises, Onport’s infrastructure is designed to be a reliable partner for growth.

With Onport, our customers can scale with confidence, streamline their daily operations as well as create truly unique marketplaces. Onport is trusted by brands such as Bombinate, Ad Hoc Atelier, and Naduvi as well as over 200+ other companies.