SunShop Shopping Cart - *All New 4.0 Version*

Author: Jeff Swope

We have been using sunshop for over a year and are very happy with it. We have had very few problems and have had very good support when we did.

Author:

This is definitely one of, if not the best shopping cart available. With a little bit of html/css knowledge the templates are easily updated to customise your site. I am not php fluent but if like me you are able to make changes to the php code then it is even more customisable for you. Highly recommended for anyone looking to start up an online store. There is a community forum for support as well which is pretty good for basic issues and customisation help.

Author:

I have been with this company for 6 months now and service went from "so-so" to HORRIBLE. I have had nothing but problems with them for the last 3 months. I am a person who designs web sites and I do have good technical knowledge, so its not like I am a beginner to this. I will tell you that I have had nothing but bad issues, such as:

• long hold times for support of the shopping cart
• constant disconnects when someone does finally pick up the phone
• Even their chat is always busy, you can NEVER EVER get through to these people.
• Constant "hiccups" with their web hosting, numerous clients have told me my web site is down. After complaining, the result is "we see no issues". That is by far their favorite line. So, after 3 months of hell, I decided to write and fax them a letter. I sent the letter certified return receipt, detailing everything thats been going on and requesting a manager to call me. That never happened either. Now I have tried to close my account with them for 2 weeks, and I get nothing on that as well. 7 emails, 5 phone calls, and 2 faxes. Not even a reponse. You call them, again they tell you they need it by email. WHO NEEDS THIS? I shut down my credit card and thats that. This is the most horrible company I have EVER worked with, I moved all my clients to other companies. Dont count on any good service from SUN SHOP or Turnkey.

  Publisher Response:

  I would just like to respond on some of these "issues" that the reviewer has brought up. With regards to the hosting, we have never had any downtime on any of our server lasting longer then 15 to 20 minutes and even then nothing within even 8 months of each other. We advertise a 99.9% up time guarantee and that is what we deliver. At any time anyone can easily cancel their account within the billing area with the click of a button. In fact, we responded to all of customers inquiries and cancellation requests with that information and we never received any certified letter. We don't cancel accounts on our own via emailed requests unless billing information is verified first.The claim that we never responded is just untrue and any one of our thousands of happy hosting customers can attest to this. We are in the office daily during office hours answering support requests via phone, email and live support. I will say this though, even after the reviewers account was canceled and even confirmed with them via email, they continued to fax and email requesting cancellation. I think the issue here is with their email provider and spam filtering and not lack of response on our end.

Author:

I am hosting dozens of Sunshop e-Commerce sites for various industries. I have been offering my clients Sunshop and supporting it since version 2.x (they are up to v4 now). Overall, I am very satisfied with Sunshop, as are my clients. We have both standard installs of Sunshop, and some heavily modified installs. Being open source and written in PHP makes it simple to find qualified programmers to make mods. The template system is extremely powerful, allowing you to create almost any look and feel. But with that power comes complexity. A total novice will struggle, an intermediate will get by, and an expert would consider it all a breeze. As for support, the community forum is very active. There's a ticketing system which, as someone stated, has sporadic spurts of excellence. For example, yesterday I opened a ticket for a minor issue and it was resolved within an hour or two. Other times I have had to send a "what's the status of my ticket?" email after waiting a day or two for a response. The best part of Sunshop is that it is updated regularly. Anyone who knows the Internet knows that new vulnerabilities are discovered everyday. The makers of Sunshop are very diligent about issuing patches and updates as these vulnerabilities are discovered. The patch or updates seemingly ALWAYS include one or more really cool new features. It almost makes you look forward to updates. I have evaluated all the free (and some not so free) e-commerce solutions out there. Sunshop's constantly evolving feature-set combined w/the maker's high regard for security is the main reason I continue to use Sunshop.

Author: Peter H

We have been extremely satisfied with SunShop. At the time of writing this review we have been using SunShop for just under 1 year. Our primary business is geared towards Canadian customers, and Sunshop has worked well for us in this regards, allowing us to easily setup Canadian Taxes, Canada Post real time shipping etc. SunShop is updated frequently, the support is very good & reliable. I personally highly recommend SunShop. A+++

Author: Diane Vigil

I've been using Sunshop on client sites for about four years and have to say that it's my favorite in terms of functionality, number of options, search engine optmization and user friendliness. Sunshop 4 is extremely easy to design for (I'm a web designer) due to the fact that the templates can be edited locally and uploaded, or edited within the control panel. I can't speak for anyone else, but it's very rare that I can't get hold of Turnkey when I need them. They've been extremely helpful.

Author: Ben

Sunshop has been the worst customer service experience for me. I spent 45 minutes on hold just to get to someone, that was obviously not happy to get another call and tell me that I had to upgrade it. That's it. This is the second time the database craps out on me. I never write reviews. But this time I felt compelled to tell others to stay away from this shopping cart. There are superior options out there for the same money.

Author: qwerty

I have been using sunshop since 3.2 and I have been very happy with the software up to this point. But now that 4.0 is out I am extremely happy that I made the decision to go with this cart. The new version compared to the old is night and day. Everything I ever asked them for and more was put into this new version. They really do listen to their customers request.

Author: Sarah Feistritzer

We purchased Sunshop for our new online portal. Within the testing period we realized that it didn't fit our needs, since we are looking for something more specific. We claimed the money back guarantee, faxed all necessary information in time. We never got a reply. We filed a claim at paypal to get our money back, just to find out TurnkeyWebtools doesn't give you your money back. They just advertise with it. Don't buy this shop! We've got very bad experience with Sunshop.

Author: Tony

This program definately has more wows then woes. Like any shopping cart system, users do need to put some effort into the design and features that are needed specific to theirs business. Sunshop has this. Setup does require you to know how to use FTP and how to edit a text file but most PHP applications require this as well. As far as templates for the look and feel, the advanced editor is quite nice, with the capability to use your own HTML code to implement Sunshop into almost any site design. Also if you are knowledgable in PHP, this system is expandible to any needs that any users has.

Author: Chris Mathews

After looking high and low for the perfect cart for my site I finally stumbled onto this one. It is by far the best solution I have seen yet and that includes the free solutions that are out there. On top of the great software, their phone support was ALWAYS avaiable when I needed them and I have yet to have a problem getting a fast reponce during non business hours. If you havent already tried it out, I would recommend at least trying out their demo and you will see why this cart rocks for yourself.

Author:

I tried their software for a brief time, but like other reviewers found that their customer service was pretty bad for both email and phone. I am not a php guru so i needed to find another cart that provided good phone support.

Author: Tina

I have found this software easy to set up & use. I don't find online support available during standard business hours. Out of 10 phone calls (during their stated hours) & 3 messages, my calls have not been returned. If you plan to use this software w/real time credit card processing, make sure to ask for the add-on, that is not clearly stated on their web site and it does not get sent in a timely manner. People not familiar w/HTML & PHP might have a hard time customizing themselves.

Author: Frank Montgomery

I was a little skeptical at first because compared to other applications it is just very low in price. I also dont have much experience with PHP or MySQL but I took a chance. I must say that it is GREAT! All around easy to use and manage and I had a great experience with getting support. They even took the time to setup my templates to look like my site for free. I would recommend it to anyone who wants great functionality and ease of use.

Author:

While the cart is a fairly easy to manage the tech support is lacking. It is slow and sporatic. Telephone contact is vertually impossible...on continual answering machine. Take any where from 24hrs to never to answer I find this a very poor customer support system. One minor little annoyance is the "unsecured" icon that resides in the admin section of the cart. Though it is advised by Turnkey that one use the https url to access customer cc information this little icon is an unsecured item. Now why put this in an area to which it is recommend you enter in secure mode. hmmmmm Having just purchased this cart and not having the answers when I need them caused me to move on to another cart and kiss the $139 goodbye. Lesson learned....

Author:

This piece of software is quite a favourite of mine. Lots of great features, incredibly easy to administrate, but best of all, its cheap. However, to get the most out of sunshop, it's important you understand and are able to write php/html code, so you can tailor the system to your liking.

Author:

Wow, this cart blew my socks off! I looked at all of the other $250+ carts and none came close to sunshop! Its simple user interface is easy to use for anybody, and the Administration area is what really kicked me into buying this cart, it has all of the features anybody would ever need, and if they don't have it in there, they will include it in the next version. All future upgrades are free. As for the customer support, they are always there to help you.

Author:

It took only a few minutes to get my shopping cart up and running. This shopping cart offers a lot more than you would expect for the price. I would definitely recommend this one.