PinnacleCart vs. LiteCommerce

Revision date: Jul 30, 2007

PinnacleCart is one of the few ecommerce products offering two kinds of licenses for your choice: hosted (monthly fee) or distribution package (one-time fee) for which you can choose some third-party company. The store builders highlights include flexible shipping system, payment configuration and wide range of promotion tools.

The weak point for this ecommerce software is that for quite a high price you get a solution with totally fixed range of features. The store builder is not extendable since theres no plug-in system, customizations or even various packages varying in price and set of functions. The template editing system is also quite limited giving only the ability to work on a source code level.

General

Features

PinnacleCart

LiteCommerce

Cost & licensing

USD 597.00 one-time fee or USD 54.95/mo.

109.00

Installation and maintenance

Quite expensive authorized hosting solution from the company
Installation service on company host
No partner hosting companies

Authorized installation service
Wide range of recommended hosting companies offering affordable hosting plans

Technical support

30 days of free e-mail and phone support after purchase
Knowledgebase
Ticket system (no pricing information available)

Authorized technical support service, Forums
Knowledge base in the Private Members Area

Store operation

Features

PinnacleCart

LiteCommerce

Custom look & feel

Custom header and footer
Custom site colors
Custom buttons
Several pre-defined templates

100% template-based storefront
100% CSS-compatible design
4 predesigned skin sets
Category & product thumbnail images
Build-in template editor: preview, edit
and restore templates
Built-in image and CSS editors
Support for WYSIWYG web editors (MS Frontpage, Dreamweaver and others)

Product presentation

No product / category limits
Cross category product listing

Unlimited number of products and categories
Optimized for smooth performance with up to 7000 - 10000 products and 10000 categories
Unlimited category nesting
Unlimited number of product images
Member-only categories
One-click changes for products and categories presentation (lists, icons, tables, multi-column), menus and navigation bars layout, quick selection of product options to be shown to a customer (Showcase Organizer free add-on)
Unique WYSIWYG-editable layout for any product and category (Layout Organizer add-on)

Security

Full support of HTTPS/SSL protocols
Password protected administrative area
Ability to control administrative access and set access levels

Full HTTPS/SSL support
Secure HTTPS/SSL administrative access
Password-protected administrative access
Real-time security notifications of all failed login attempts
List of recently logged admins
Backup sub-system
Storing images in DB or on the file system

Payment options

Accept Credit Cards via several payment gateways
Accept Paypal and Paypal Payments Pro
Ability to accept payments via telephone, mail, fax

Accept payments in any currency
Real-time credit card processing
(Payment gateway support add-on),
dozens of payment gateways supported)
Manual (offline) credit card processing
PayPal payments
(Payment gateway support add-on)
Checks, purchase orders and phone orders

Shipping

Real-time shipping quotes from UPS, USPS and FEDEX
Set custom handling fees
Create custom shipping methods
Calculate shipping costs by weight, quantity and more
Offer free shipping
Offer product specific shipping pricing
Supports international shipping

Real-time USPS, UPS, Intershipper, Australia Post and Canada Post shipping calculation (Real-Time Shipping Quotes add-on) Unlimited number of custom-defined delivery methods
Flate rate, weight, order total
and range based shipping
Different weight limits for different delivery methods
Handle international, domestic and local shipping
Allow your customers to choose delivery methods

Taxes

Ability to set tax by state and / or country

Customizable tax calculation
Import/export predefined tax schemas
Product-specific taxes
Taxes & shipping fees depending on client's location
"Tax exempt" feature
GST/PST (Canadian tax system)
VAT (European tax system)

Custom functionality

Not open sourced solution, no plugins or custom modifications

Authorized custom development service
Authorized web design service
Dozens of available free and commercial open source add-ons for extended functionality
Open source code you can modify by yourself

Marketing & Promotion

Features

PinnacleCart

LiteCommerce

Promotion & Advertising

Dynamic Pricing
Product upsell opportunities
Discounts
"Best Sellers" area
Search features
Wholesale pricing

Advanced multi-parameter product search engine (Advanced Search free add-on)
New arrivals, related & featured products, price changes and availability notifications
(Product Adviser add-on)
Powerful news management system
(Newsletters add-on)
Wish list for every customer
which can be opened to others (Wish List add-on)
Configurable gift certificates
(Gift Certificates add-on)
Special offers, bonus points, discounts, coupons (Promotion tools add-on)
Product options system, wholesale prices for various conditions and membership levels
(Wholesale Trading add-on)
Flexible multi-tier affiliate system
(Affiliate System add-on

SEO

Meta tag control
Flat URL Generation

Autogenerated static HTML catalog
(HTML Catalog free add-on)
Autoupdate static HTML catalog feature
(Auto Update Catalog add-on)
Configurable context dependent meta tags

PinnacleCart is a Trademark of Desert Dog Software, LLC.
This comparison is produced and hosted by Qualiteam Software Ltd. The information on this page was believed to be correct as of Jul 30, 2007. To report an error or discrepancy, please email webmaster@qualiteam.biz