PinnacleCart is an easy-to-use e-commerce platform designed for large online shops needing multiple administrators. The shopping cart service allows novice and veteran webmasters to choose needed components, such as a third-party web hosting service or point-of-sale (POS) platform. Featuring modern templates, a simple website builder, superb search engine optimization (SEO) tools, and impressive email marketing services, PinnacleCart is an impressive tool for making money online. Still, a few quibbles prevent it from unseating Shopify and Wix Stores as our Editors' Choice winners for e-commerce services.
PinnacleCart Plans and Prices
PinnacleCart offers a 14-day trial, which lets you create a store and test transactions before committing to the platform. Signing up for the trial doesn't require a credit card, so you don’t have to worry about late fees or forgetting to cancel the subscription if PinnacleCart isn’t the right fit. It accepts all major credit cards and charges zero setup fees.
The service now offers a free version. To qualify for it, you must use the PruPay payment system. PruPay is a fully PCI-compliant payment solution that lets you accept credit and debit card payments in the USA. Think of it as a PayPal alternative. PinnacleCart Free users can use PayPal as their secondary payment method.
The e-commerce platform has a single premium tier, starting at $379 per month. PinnacleCart isn't cheap, reflecting its larger, enterprise-level clientele like Amazon and PayPal. However, the package has many features, including unlimited administrators, automatic SSL certificate renewal, split shipping, unlimited catalog products, zero monthly data transfer charges, and priority support. PinnacleCart states that this pricing exists on a sliding scale, so speak with a sales representative to see if the monthly charge can be adjusted to match your needs. On that note, PinnacleCart offers dedicated and VPS hosting, too.
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Shopify Basic has a much more SMB-friendly starting price ($29 per month) that includes the POS Lite system and the ability to sell products via social media or a website. That entry-level plan targets a single-person online seller, though. Shopify’s most expensive enterprise-level tier costs $2,300 per month (with a three-year contract) and has B2B and wholesaler selling options. Wix Stores' e-commerce plans range from Core ($27 per month, with discounts for annual plans) to Enterprise, which requires a custom plan. The plans let you build a website, create gift cards, and receive shipping discounts.
Building a PinnacleCart Web Store
To build a web store, enter your company details, shipping address, and tax information. Then, you're taken to the PinnacleCart dashboard. Your site starts with a boilerplate theme and a PinnacleCart-based custom URL in the form of xxxxx.mypinnaclecart.com.
You can change the theme by clicking Front-End and then Manage Themes. There are 17 themes, which is low if you're accustomed to working with a flexible website builder. BigCommerce has more than 100 free and paid themes, while Shopify has more than 160. You can edit each theme, changing the overall pages, colors, and typography. Wix Stores has more design flexibility but doesn't let you switch themes.
The dashboard lets you see information about existing orders, product inventory, and customers. You can use third-party apps to add enhancements, such as discounts, recurring billing, and loyalty programs. The five-step Quick Start Guide walks you through adding products, setting up payments, and defining shipping options before officially launching the store. You can dig deeper from the Quick Start Guide using the various sections (Orders, Customers, Products, Reports, Marketing, Content, Design, Apps, and Settings) and easily return to where you left off in the wizard.
In a nice touch, PinnacleCart offers sample products to make setting up the store easier and faster. Instead of waiting for me to manually enter products, PinnacleCart automatically populated my database with test data so that I could test the software before using it with real inventory.
You have several options for adding products. You can upload a comma-delimited file of your entire product database or add each product individually. BigCommerce also lets you populate the database by uploading a file, but Shopify doesn't. On the Add a Product page, you enter the product name, price, ID number, category, SKU, weight, description, and shipping. I like that you can enter products and not have them appear live on the site. Finally, PinnacleCart lets you organize products as tangible, virtual, and digital goods. Depending on what you are selling, being able to classify products this way can be useful.
I set up variations, such as size, materials, and colors, and changed product pricing based on the customer's selected variations. Additionally, I automated creating variations in the cart using Product Families, which lets you create one variation and apply it to as many products as you'd like. The drag-and-drop design page was easy to use, and I was satisfied with the resulting storefront. You can also create photo galleries to display goods.
PinnacleCart has better tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword searches than Shift4Shop or Shopify. BigCommerce surpasses PinnacleCart in SEO tools, so if this is a big part of your online strategy, keep that in mind.
An online store isn't just inventory pages and order forms. PinnacleCart lets you create a blog to engage with customers and static pages (such as an About Us page). You can also capture customer data via user accounts, which customers create to track order status or enroll in a loyalty program. PinnacleCart offers an extensive array of email marketing tools, which makes it easy to keep in touch with customers. In that regard, it's similar to BigCommerce and Volusion.
You can use an existing domain or register a new one through PinnacleCart and let the company act as your registrar and web host. Prices begin at $9 per year for common domains like .com and .net. I used an existing URL and followed the instructions to modify Domain Name System records. If you don't want to deal with modifying DNS records, register the domain through PinnacleCart and let the company handle it. You can use the auto-generated URL if you don't care much about having a custom one. Note that Shift4Shop offers free domains.
Customer Experience
An easy-to-setup shopping cart doesn't mean it's easy to shop if you're a customer. Fortunately, PinnacleCart doesn't fall into that trap. Overall, I found the platform easy to use on both sides of the e-commerce fence. PinnacleCart's cool marketing features include live chat, automatic email reminders to customers who have abandoned carts (drift marketing), QR code generators, widget creation for online advertising, and an in-house newsletter wizard.
If your customers love your shop, you can let them create testimonials and add that praise to your page. Another PinnacleCart feature customers will enjoy is the ability to create promotional and global discounts. Testimonials and discounts are found in your admin page's Marketing tab.
The main page also features a brief overview of daily sales totals, new orders, orders to fulfill, and a monthly statistics graph. Each PinnacleCart storefront is fully equipped for mobile commerce on Android, iPad, and iPhone devices. PinnacleCart also lets you easily integrate your storefront into your Facebook page so customers can purchase and share your products there.
Payments, Customer Service, and Uptime
Unlike Shopify, PinnacleCart doesn't support physical POS systems, so you can't use it to process online and physical transactions. That said, PinnacleCart integrates with 30 other payment gateways offering that functionality, such as Amazon and NetBilling. That's a relatively low number compared with BigCommerce (65) and Shopify (more than 100). For this review, I set up PayPal Express Checkout. Remember that PayPal has credit card transaction fees.
The service's manual is easy to use, but PinnacleCart offers 24/7 phone support when email is insufficient. It was easy to get someone on the phone even at 1 a.m., and the representative helped answer questions about the different options available in each package (as well as walk us through the process of setting up the DNS for our custom domain).
Website uptime is one of the most important aspects of a hosting service. If your site is down, clients or customers cannot find your products or services, and you do not want that. PinnacleCart promises a 99% uptime rate, so your store should be available to customers at all hours. It has an uptime monitor, too.
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Verdict: PinnacleCart Is a Top E-Commerce Platform
PinnacleCart doesn't have as many payment gateways or themes as BigCommerce, Shopify, or Wix Stores, but it offers numerous reports, provides useful SEO tools, and lacks an inventory limit. Instead of presenting many choices that might confuse you, PinnacleCart focuses on giving a handful of easy-to-use options that should satisfy most sellers. As a result, PinnacleCart is a good e-commerce choice, especially for businesses that want to quickly open up shop online. That said, Shopify and Wix Stores, our Editors' Choice winners, are the ones to choose if you need more options.
Mike Williams and Jeffrey L. Wilson contributed to this review.
PinnacleCart is an e-commerce platform that delivers a comprehensive set of easy-to-use features, including inventory, email marketing, and SEO tools.
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