B2B Sales for Manufacturers and Distributors
Shopper's Guide to Shopping Cart Programs

This article contains older information. Go here for newer information on shopping carts and transactions.

You're a manufacturer or distributor that's selling primarily to other businesses. You need B2B features such as pricing by customer, quantity discounts, online customer account access, vendor access, etc.

Most of the popular small business carts are designed for retail, but lack the features that distributors and manufacturers need. Here are the exceptions.

Note: * indicates a winner of the E-Commerce Award of Merit 2004. § indicates that the developed answered a detailed questionnaire which is also available.

Interchange* (www.icdevgroup.org). Open source software as basis for medium to enterprise level customized e-commerce applications. Built on open technologies and industry standard systems. Can be used for B2B or B2C sites. Support available via online forum. Previously developed by Akopia. Incorporated in RedHat Linux OS. No charge.

Actinic Developer* § (http://www.actinic.co.uk). Comes in several versions: Catalog for retail e-commerce, Business for B2B suppliers, and Developer with integration into Dreamweaver. Catalog management on PC, upload to standard server. Minimum order, can ask customers questions about specific products, user-definable fields, quantity discounts, extended info pop-up windows, unlimited categories and subcategories, unlimited product attributes, options can affect price and weight. Supports external databases: Excel, Access, dBase, FoxPro, Paradox, and SQL db via ODBC. Inventory, content management, handling charges, free shipping for large value orders, parcel courier shipping calculations, flexible taxes, member pricing, online customer interface, membership only site management, themes and colors, search, HTML customization, order management option, search-engine friendly pages. Catalog £379.00 or US $499, Business £799.00 or US $1,195, Developer £1,500 or US $1499.

MonsterCommerce* § (http://www.monstercommerce.com). Complete storefront plus order buttons for existing pages. OrderMotion integration, cross-selling, featured products, coupons, gift certificates, inventory, options with price surcharges, backorders, partial shipments, quantity discounts, wholesale B2B pricing, up-selling, sales, search query, traffic reports, customer discounts and loyalty programs, e-mail newsletter management, affiliate programs, vendor interface, customer online interface, QuickBooks integration, UPS, FedEx, DHL, and USPS shipping, tax calculations, international shipping, digital delivery, free shipping, Access or MS SQL versions, fully customizable, browse by price, manufacturer, or category, thumbnails. Hosted versions $79.95/month to $99.95/month, depending upon number of products, plus one-time set-up fee. Or purchase licensed version $2,500.

X-Cart Gold Shopping Cart Software* § (http://www.x-cart.com). Shopping cart based on PHP Smarty templates with MySQL database. Comes with full source code. Search-engine friendly static HTML catalog pages. Customizable localization, multi-language, currency symbol, measurement units. Configurable lists of states/provinces. Runs on Windows, MacOS X, various Unix versions. Thumbnail support, mini-cart viewable on all pages, store search. Provides template editor, WYSIWYG text editor, CSS. Customer can chose between account registration and express checkout. Password reminder for customer online interface. Customer tracking, wishlist, e-mail newsletters, member pricing. Unlimited products, categories, category nesting, product options with price modifiers. Allows custom-defined fields. Members-only categories. Featured products, bestsellers, up-selling and cross-selling. Supports two different currencies with automatic currency conversion. Coupons, gift certificates, inventory, quantity discounts, retail and wholesale B2B pricing. Minimum order. Vendor access for editing their products. USPS, FedEx, UPS, and CanadaPost shipping, free shipping coupons, handling charges, restrict shipping by location. Digital delivery, tax calculation. Statistical reporting, order management, export to QuickBooks. Gold version US $185, PRO version enables multiple supplier access. US $495. Add-ons include affiliate program, gift registry, advanced order management.

MFC_commerce* (http://www.mfc-commerce.de). Shop and portal software for B2B and B2C e-commerce. Contains 40 standard modules. Open source. Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.

jetMerchant Store and Catalog Builder (www.netliancecorp.com/jetmerchant.html). Resizes and optimizes product images, multiple tier pricing for B2B. Provided free with e-commerce hosting packages.

Tek9 Pro § (http://line9.com/tek9.asp?pg=products&specific=jnnnjqg8). ASP open-source software. Automated Warehouse, 1-Click Inventory, unlimited products, categories, and subcategories. Prices displayed in any currency, translate files to any language. Newsletter, search engine, multi-tiered pricing, B2B and B2C support, coupons, cross-selling, UPS, USPS, FedEx, Australia Post, Canada Post shipping, order processing. Editor pages to handle all set-up and maintenance functions. Can be used in intranets and extranets. Windows 2000 server or higher. $1,245 (sale $996).

CyberOffice Shopping Cart § (http://www.smartwin.com.au). All in one shopping cart. Windows NT/2000/XP server, IIS 4.0+, MySQL or MS Access. Customizable to any non-English language, including Chinese. UPS and USPS shipping (add ons), PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN) enabled. Dynamic product and search pages, affiliate program, multi-level discount, wish list, dual currency presentation and conversion, custom fields, coupons, digital delivery, real-time inventory, loyalty points, service schedule for local delivery/booking/appointment. Abandoned shopping order capturing, follow-up, and recovery. Quote-first-pay-later ordering process. Integrated with QuickBooks and MYOB. Coupons, tax on/off, inventory, live VoIP customer support. US $99. Other modules include: warehouse builder (catalog builder), club (membership), CyberOffice Trading Mall (B2B, B2C). Can scale to millions of products.

Evocative Commerce (http://www.evocative.com). Dynamically-generated catalog pages, shopping cart, customer addresses, gift registry, wish list, order management, shipment confirmations, combine channels for call center. Shipping and fulfillment management, inventory management, product management, merchandising and promotions, customer management, B2B and B2C features, reporting flexibility. Former name was ProCart. Pricing: $1500 set-up and license fee, $350/month plus 2% to 0.5% diminishing transaction fee.

Commerce Exchange (http://www.interworld.com). B2B and B2C e-commerce applications. Process-centric architecture with J2EE application server.

Vmerchant (http://www.systemsaxis.co.uk/vmerchant/). B2B and B2C. Can be linked directly to accounting and stock systems, multiple login accounts per trade customer, trade pricing, multiple currency support. Import orders direction into AXIS Diplomat 2000 Sales Order Processing system. Standard HTML catalog pages, large product capacity.

WebClerk (http://www.webclerk.com/). Database driven eCommerce solution, web server and prefabricated (but fully customizable) web site which implements catalogs, order entry, service, libraries and secure credit card transactions. Clone recent orders, multiple choice of shippers, freight cost estimating, inventory, EDI options, data import. Single user license for Mac and Windows version was $849, now free. Can work with either CommerceExpert for SME or enterprise level B2B or RetailClerk for point of sale solution.

ACCPAC eTransact (http://www.accpac.com). Complete Web store solution that integrates closely and easily with ACCPAC End-to-End Business Management Applications and accounting systems for both B2B and B2C e-commerce. Authorize transactions from ACCPAC customers automatically; register new Web customers instantly. Customizable Web store templates and themes.

Cauposhop Classic (http://www.caupo.com/). A multi-client-ready online shopping system based on PHP and MySQL. Open Source, no fees. Modular design, B2B, B2C. CaupoShop Classis is suited to a maximum of 500 products. Customizable, searching features, order statistics, up to 5 prices per product, local and non-local currencies, offline product administration with MS Access.

Nexternal Solutions § (http://www.nexternal.com). Search-engine optimized HTML catalog builder, automated submission to Froogle and Yahoo! Product Submit, e-mail to customers, affiliate program, coupons, product reviews and ratings, up-selling, cross-selling, shopping cart shows on all pages, ship to multiple locations, gift certificates, customer comments, gift card text, gift wrapping, live chat, integrated help desk, many reports, HitBox Professional integration, order management, UPS and USPS shipping, inventory, unlimited attributes, categories, assign product to multiple categories, personalization field, quantity discounts, flexible discounting rules, B2B customer online interface, member pricing. Pricing based on sales volume. $250/month minimum plus 3% over $8,333/month, 2% over $50,000, 1% over $100,000, 0.5% over $500,000.

1 A Cart § (http://www.1acart.com). Self-contained ordering system and catalog-building system that produces product webpages and also includes order buttons to paste into other sites. WYSIWYG editor, dynamically-generated, "on-the-fly" webpages. Categories 4 deep. Unlimited products. Cross-selling, up-selling, customer fields, specials, discounts, coupons, member pricing, customer online interface, B2B features, ship to multiple address from the same order, multiple containers, multiple warehouses, UPS shipping. Display multiple currencies, affiliate program, QuickBooks export, order management. No set-up fee, $15/month.

ProductCart § (http://www.earlyimpact.com). Self-contained ordering system and product catalog, but it does have a "Generate Links" feature that allows the store administrator to easily place store links on other pages. WYSIWYG editor, can be customized. Product can be assigned to unlimited categories. Unlimited products with MS SQL database. Product options can affect price or weight. Cross-selling, UPS, FedEx, USPS, and CanadaPost shipping. Thumbnail images. Featured products, specials, quantity discounts, coupons, wishlist, customer online interface, some B2B features, digital delivery and licensing. Sophisticated tax calculation. Language customization of ordering system files. Affiliate program, interfaces with MyAffiliateProgram.com. E-mail newsletters, order management, inventory. $495.

XSE.NET (Xtreme Shop .NET Ecommerce) § (http://www.iqservices.com). Installs on Windows 2000/2003 server with MS Access database. Customizable template-driven on-the-fly pages. Unlimited categories, products, options can affect price. MS Access database updated offline, then FTP to the server. Cross-selling. Promotions, close-outs, quantity discounts, coupons, wishlist. Some B2B features. Handling charge, free shipping threshold, shipping, minimum order. Plug-in for posting products to Amazon shops. Affiliate program, e-mail to customers, order management. $479.