Sometimes you come across products that surprise you completely. PinnacleCart was for me one of those products. When I started testing PinnacleCart, I certainly did not expect to come to the conclusion that PinnacleCart can, for some users, be maybe the best ecommerce platform of 2021.
From below you can find out what is great about PinnacleCart, what could maybe still be better and for whom PinnacleCart is, in my opinion, the ideal choice.
The best thing about PinnacleCart
Using PinnacleCart is extremely intuitive – when you are using PinnacleCart it should take you very little time to figure out how to build and customize your store. And that stands even if you have never before used an ecommerce platform. PinnacleCart really is that easy to use.
In practice, PinnacleCart’s easiness follows from things such as a very clear admin panel, from not having unnecessary features and from clearly labeled options.
PinnacleCart’s customer service – another good reason to pick PinnacleCart
Based on my experiences PinnacleCart has maybe the best customer service of any ecommerce platform. That is as PinnacleCart’s customer service seems to be very quick to reply to customer concerns and also extremely helpful.
If you are like me, you will likely also appreciate the fact that it is possible to contact PinnacleCart’s customer service via live chat – no need to waste time on crafting emails or on calling anyone.
PinnacleCart themes/templates
At the time of writing this PinnacleCart offers 17 free store themes. In my opinion the themes look really nice and it seems that PinnacleCart’s templates also function well, meaning, for example, that they adjust automatically to different size screens.
PinnacleCart’s templates can be described as traditional ecommerce templates in that they are great for displaying a lot of different products.
Free trial, plans and pricing
PinnacleCart gives new users a 14-day free trial. So, when you open a PinnacleCart account you have plenty of time to test the platform for free before you need to decide if you want to pay for it. What is particularly great about the free trial, is that you can start it easily without giving your payment information.
When it comes to PinnacleCart’s plans there are three options to choose from: Standard, Advanced and Enterprise. And then in addition to those, PinnacleCart is also willing to sell licenses for those users who would like to host PinnacleCart’s ecommerce software on their own hosting environment.
Especially if you are new to PinnacleCart, the odds are that the choice of a plan comes down to picking either the Standard or the Advanced plan. That is likely to be the case especially because both of those plans include a good set of features, allow you to list an unlimited number of products to your store and have a pre-set price.
For the Standard-plan the price is $79.95/month and for the Advanced-plan the price is $199.95/month. Those prices mean that there are certainly ecommerce platforms that are cheaper than PinnacleCart in terms of their monthly price, but then on the plus side PinnacleCart does not charge transaction fees.
And the fact that PinnacleCart, unlike some other ecommerce platforms, does not take a cut of every sale you make, might in practice make using PinnacleCart cheaper than using some ecommerce platform that has a lower monthly price but charges transaction fees.
Here is a simple example to illustrate the importance of transaction fees: Let us say that you pick an ecommerce platform that costs $29/month and charges a 3% transaction fee of every sale that takes place in your store. And now let us assume that you generate $5,000 in sales per month. In that case you would pay per month $179 ($29+$150) to the platform owner.
On the other hand, if you had chosen PinnacleCart and picked the Standard plan you would only pay a subscription fee of $79.95 and no transaction fees. And thus, by picking PinnacleCart you would save around $100/month.
Good to note: PinnacleCart’s Standard plan has a 12-month sales limit of $250,000. The Advanced plan does not have a sales limit, so if you choose that one you can sell however much you want to.
What could maybe be better about PinnacleCart?
No ecommerce platform is perfect. And in the case of PinnacleCart, there are in my experience 4 things that they hopefully improve on in the future.
The first of those things is that while PinnacleCart is usually extremely easy to use, it can be a bit complicated if you need to do more advanced customization for your store. Luckily though, PinnacleCart’s customer service seems to be helpful even for those situations.
Secondly, it would be nice if PinnacleCart made it possible for storeowners to add a blog to their store. Thirdly, there is a small issue with PinnacleCart whereby the logo and “home” links of your store add “/index.php?p=home” to your store’s homepage URL. So, for example, instead of linking to mystore(.)com they link to mystore(.)com/index.php?p=home. That index-link leads to your store’s homepage, so it is not a huge issue, but maybe slightly annoying.
And fourthly, PinnacleCart could maybe add more dropshipping app integrations to their platform. Although, it is already now, for example, possible to connect PinnacleCart with Doba.
Nice features included in every PinnacleCart plan
All PinnacleCart plans include, for example, the option to offer promo codes, the option to offer gift cards and the option to have a free SSL certificate for your store. That last feature can be great for increasing your customer’s trust in shopping in your store.
Payment methods
If you choose PinnacleCart Standard as your PinnacleCart plan you can accept payments via PayPal or PruPay and if you choose Advanced or Enterprise as your plan, there are over 30 payment methods to choose from.
Conclusion
PinnacleCart can be a very good ecommerce platform for those who are looking for a simple, easy-to-use, ecommerce platform. And I especially recommend PinnacleCart for those companies and founders who are confident that they can generate a good number of sales. That is because those companies and founders are likely to benefit the most from PinnacleCart’s “no transaction fees” -policy. Go to PinnacleCart.