Reviewed by: Jenny
"I can’t find much that is good to say about Avactis. I could say it has some great features but even that is an illusion. Once you start using the cart you find most features don’t actually work properly. For example Avactis has an impressive list of accepted payment gateways. The one I happen to use, what a surprise, doesn’t work properly. I had to pay an extra $100 to actually get it working. And the cost of support, tweaks and even being charged for Avactis bugs (yes, appalling) is never ending. I have only been using Avactis for 4 months and in that time I have spent over $1,000 on support tickets trying to get the cart working correctly. You start to see that the cart is cheap but support is where they are actually making their money. And each week just when you hope you finally have found every bug it is possible to have, Avactis throws another at you. I seriously wonder how many people can be using Avactis for these issues to go unnoticed? How are people coping with and using this cart? The few people I did chat to on the forum were either unhappy or were already moving over to another cart. I also looked for new Avactis users online to see how they were getting on and was not surprised to see none of the ones I happened to look up are still using Avactis. I held out a little longer but the last straw was when I found out that Avactis is not compatible with all browsers. Not only that but I was charged for letting them know that. So I am leaving. This cart claims a lot but it is full of bugs and half functioning features. Support is very expensive, rude and to top it all, often clueless. I am moving to a new cart already. Yes, Avactis really is that bad. Even after all the effort I have put in and all the money I have spent, I figure I have to give it up as a bad job. The new cart I have chosen has helpful, friendly support include in the price and loads of features that actually work. That’s all we want isn’t it."
Review date: January, 2012 Version reviewed: 2.1
Reviewed by: Bred
"I'm a webdeveloper. I am really satisfied with Avactis because I can keep the clients website with its design and structure and use tags to display products, basket, checkout, create new pages and so on. The tag system is a really great thing! once you understand it, you're able to create cool sites really fast and easily."
Review date: November, 2011 Version reviewed: 2.1
Reviewed by: John
"Great software for non-programmer users. Can be a little hard to understand at the beginning, but really easy to use when you spend a couple of days on studying the system.
Support team is very responsive and can help to resolve any issues.
"
Review date: October, 2011 Version reviewed: 2.1
Reviewed by: Rodger
"Avactis Shopping Cart is excellent for non-programmer users. I have very poor knowledge of PHP, but still I can modify my store the way I need. I like the way I can move blocks, change colors and fonts. It's really easy to set up products, menus and everything you need there. When I have troubles I contact Avactis support. Support is not free, but they provided 200 support credits with the license, which is a big plus for me. Support team is very friendly and responsive. Their live chat is very supportive.
I wish they had some more default templates and log in with social networks accounts feature. I love integration with Facebook, but I miss log in with Facebook account feature.
I definitely recommend this software to everyone who wants to open an online store."
Review date: October, 2011 Version reviewed: 2.1
Reviewed by: Eric
"This cart is horrible, and here's how I justify my rating: This is a basic, BASIC, BASIC!!! cart. I can't stress that enough. If you're looking for a quick an easy cart. This may be alright for you. However, for any real modifications, this cart is NOT the best choice. Very VERY limited community-forum support, and if you need to modify the cart to fit your needs you'll need to pay support each time you make a change.
Furthermore, if you have a developer that is able to make changes or neesd to make core adjustments, there's no override system. The system is touted as "extendable" and "modular" and both are flat out false. You cannot build modules, there is ZERO developer documentation, and the core code follows no framework or structure. It's very messy, and if you're patient enough to get tangled deep into the code to make necessary functionality adjustments, you will never be able to upgrade.
Above and beyond all of that, this cart is the slowest cart I've ever used. We found that by removing the require('init.php') code (the code that initializes the cart software on each page), we were able to reduce page load speed time by 3-4 seconds. In today's standards that is completely unacceptable. The cart software is very slow and unfortunately I attribute that to being poorly coded. This has not only affected our google pagerank, but has led to several calls from customers who have had problems getting orders placed. 3/4 times we log into the admin backend, the page crashes with a dump of errors displayed on the screen. Avactis support was contacted and was never able to resolve the issue.
If this cart satisfies your every need, it will work out of the box. If you want more functionality or plan for future growth, I would highly recommend looking elsewhere."
Review date: September, 2011 Version reviewed: 2.1
Reviewed by: p
"This cart has been a headache. It has been extremely difficult to understand and to get working satifactory (3 months) mainly due to poor tech support and inadequate documentation. Other people on the forum are also frustrated with it. The cart has lots of useful features which are good when you can get them working although the carts design is at times not logical. The abilty to produce CMS designs easily is very useful but again documentation is fairly poor and they charge you for asking! Unless you have experience in customising carts, plenty of time to spare and some knowledge of CMS & php to correct any bugs then I would reconsider.
To be fair they are working to improve the situation and it is getting gradually better but if I had to choose again I personally would not use it."
Review date: July, 2011 Version reviewed: 2.1
Reviewed by: Brian
"I have looked at many carts and this one is perfect for what we were after. I needed a cart that allowed customisation so you can fit it to your own design rather than vice versa.
I have also found the support excellent.
"
Review date: July, 2011 Version reviewed: 2.1
Reviewed by: Don
"The cart is quite feature rich. Out of the box, the novice designer can quickly choose one of the included themes and easily make quite a number of changes to both layout and styling. With a bit more effort, the novice can discover more ways to easily customize the cart. For the designer or developer who is more familiar with php, css, and mySql, the degree of customization is incredible. All can be done without touching any of the core files. The biggest plus is the tech support. Like most support teams, the quality of the response depends upon the detail you can give. I had an intermittent problem that was frustrating everyone. It would be fixed and tested ok only to happen again. It took time and perseverance, but a very obscure single line of code that was causing the problem was found and fixed. Not only did support not refuse to spend more time on the problem, they returned the few support credits that I had used. This was an exception. Most issues have been solved surprisingly fast."
Review date: May, 2011 Version reviewed: 2.1
Reviewed by: Fred
"It's easy to modify.
It has most basic features need it for shopping cart but needs more. Have to pay extra for extensions.
Only a few templates that look very similar. If using another language you have to translate manually. Very slow if using a shared server. It has bugs. If you have a problem you have to pay for support even if it's a problem caused by the software. When updating versions expect problems. If you have version 2.0 and have no problems don't upgrade."
Review date: March, 2011 Version reviewed: 1.9,1
Reviewed by: Dan Fuller
"As far as carts go, Avactis isn't as feature rich as other carts and at times, you'll be left wondering how very basic features were left out. What you do get, however, is the ability to customize the cart and with time, effort and perseverance, you can knock out a stunning web shop. At times, its frustratingly basic but the tags do work well with HTML designs. Templates are logical making it easier to customize than XCart/CS Cart. I've always found ASP carts to be more advanced [apart from Magento/Interspire etc.] but for a rock solid PHP alternative, I would recommend Avactis for smaller shops. However, after some time, you'll find yourself wanting to upgrade to an alternative product. Paid support from Avactis is very good but forums are pretty much dead [with really 1 or 2 knowledgeable guys who know what they're talking about]. I would say it ranks up there amongst the best carts if integrating into an existing site simply because of how easy it is to do so [productcart [ASP] is better but ridiculously priced]. Believe it or not, RomanCart is awesome too but your redirected to their domain which makes it unacceptable. All things considered, Avactis is a bit like marmite: you'll either love it or hate it. "
Review date: March, 2011 Version reviewed: 1.9,1
Reviewed by: Patricia
"Great shopping cart for web designers + excellent product support
After trying other shopping cart solutions I found Avactis and decided to give it a try.
The first thing I noticed is that I could actually modify the template the way I wanted.
Once you understand the tag system, you can design and then implement it without modifying core files.
The other thing was the support. I had a cart that needed some custom features and used a particular payment module
that was not integrated. My experience with the other carts support was just through forums, or by trying to find a
programmer that was familiar with it. That works sometimes, but it's not very reliable. And if you are pressed in time, it's not the best solution.
I contacted Avactis support and they developed the custom features and the module, very quickly,
I later had some problems with the payment integration because of a server configuration, but I had them check on it to make sure that it was not the
script. They were alway answering within the day, and I had the peace of mind that I had someone working on my side to resolve the problem.
They were very helpful and made and extra effort to help me determine what was wrong.
For me as a designer with limited php knowledge it is great that I can offer modifications to my clients and have Avactis programmers do it in a way that I know it's going to work without problems.
They really know their product and the solutions are well integrated.
I would recommend this cart not only from the designers point of view, but also from the final user once the cart is done.
My clients have told me how happy they are with the administration. It is very powerful but easy to use."
Review date: September, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.9,1
Reviewed by: Pat
"Great shopping cart to customize! With html and css skills you can design your store the way you want it. It's full of features that make it a very powerful yet easy to use shopping cart solution. And if you want to go beyond the standard functionality, Avactis support is one of the best I've seen. "
Review date: September, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.9,1
Reviewed by: Sean
"This is a great shopping cart. What makes it a spectacular shopping cart is the outstanding tech service they provide. Everything I needed was handled very fast and they are super polite. I would recommend this product and the people who support it to anyone interested in a shopping cart."
Review date: September, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.9,1
Reviewed by: Dan
"I was looking for a new ecommerce cart provider so I decided to try Avactis. Very impressed, not only with the cart functionality but also the service I recieved from the Avactis team with setup and configuration. If you are looking for a cart that you can customise to make your own I heavily recommend Avactis. If you are a html developer it is so easy to create a template and make use of the Avactis tags. Also the backend infomration is great for seeing when customers are online looking at your store and getting a feel for popular items in your store. Fantastic, very impressed."
Review date: May, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.9,1
Reviewed by: Saltydog
"What I love about the Avactis cart is that it's fully customisable. You can work in into any website template. Its best characteristic is it's ease of use. As a web designer I love the fact that I can build the site and never have to worry about modifications or updates again because the backend of the shop is idiot proof and allows even the tech-averse to keep their website dynamic and intriguing."
Review date: May, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.9,1
Reviewed by: Chris
"I purchased Avactis to create an online ecommerce system for my new website www.themusicianszone.com.
I read all the details regarding the shopping cart and thought it sounded like a good cart to try and maybe buy.
Little did I know that upon installing it there were a ton of other features that I didn't know about.
One of the main features I use on a daily basis is the reports section that allows me to see who is on the site, what they're looking at, any carts abandoned and the top referrers without leaving the site.
It also allows you to fully customise search urls which was another big bonus.
All in all the system is excellent and does more than what it says on the tin.
Chris"
Review date: April, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.8,1
Reviewed by: Craig
"awesome services and software!"
Review date: April, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.8,1
Reviewed by: Chris
"I've found the system unique compared to other cart systems out there. Being a established designer, I've found tag system they use is brilliant way of incorporating a full cart system into each of my custom designed sites everytime. I would have no regret in recommending Avactis to anybody who is wanting a great shopping cart experience."
Review date: March, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.8,1
Reviewed by: Phil Adams
"This is the first shopping cart software packge that I've had to use and I can whole heartedly recommend it!
I tested a few before embarking on a recent project and it was the promised ease of integration with an existing website design that really sold it to me and it didn't let me down.
I was able to completely design a website independently of the shopping cart and then plugn the Avactis templates in as the final phase.
I'm sure there are other great shopping cart products available but I certainly won't look anywhere else for my next project."
Review date: March, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.8,1
Reviewed by: Jeff Wolsky
"This being my first e-commerce site, I found Avactis Tag system easy to understand and customize. Avactis is allowing me to help my clients
compete on the web in real time without having to pay thousands of dollars for just the development work."
Review date: February, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.8,1
Reviewed by: Mike D.
"This system is rather convenient for web designers. I use dreamweaver for design mods.. Besides they have ecommerce hosting for Avactis."
Review date: January, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.8,1
Reviewed by: mohammad
"I have been web developing for quite a long while and would like to give Avactis 5 stars. In my many years of web development I have used almost every shopping cart on the market from Agora to ZenCart, and by far Avactis is the best and easiest for clients to use. It saves me quite a bit of valuable time explaining every aspect of the cart to the client, integrating into a custom skin is beyond easy. Overall its is extremely simple to use and work with. "
Review date: January, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.8,1
Reviewed by: Travis
"They just released version 1.9.0. Its nice and easy to use software, I can modify it with Dreamweaver."
Review date: January, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.8,1
Reviewed by: Zava
"This is good ecommerce solution to my mind."
Review date: January, 2010 Version reviewed: 1.8,1
Reviewed by: Marc.K.
"It is really easy to use program. This shopping cart is perfect for my store. Thank you."
Review date: December, 2009 Version reviewed: 1.8,1
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