Sales Cap?

[Birdsafe]

I was considering upgrading my plan. The pricing page indicates that the Pro Plan includes "unlimited orders" - what does that mean? I ask, because I was told that there is a sales cap of $400k on this plan. So, what, I can have a million orders, only they need to be only 40 cents each?

I have gone through four shopping carts now and moved to 3dCart because it seemed to support us smaller merchants. Now I'm not so sure.

[JoeBTI]

3dCart has sales caps now? That is just ridiculous! I think its crap how they have this info buried at the bottom of the FAQ's.

[Birdsafe]

Guess I'll stay grandfathered into my old plan -- so anyone signing up now for a "PRO" plan can have 15 users, unlimited orders, unlimited bandwidth, unlimitewd storage - and yet can only do $400k of sales? What a way to push everyone into an expensive enterprise plan.

Won't be recommending 3dCart to anyone, that's for sure.

[jimmy3dcart]

Really sorry about any confusion around our new unlimited ecommerce plans. These were introduced last year and were created to meet the needs of small businesses, where the more advanced features are available in the higher plans, allowing us to remove any limits associated to products or bandwidth.

All existing clients are grandfathered and can keep their current plans, so you don't have to worry about your plan changing. If you're an existing client and want to switch to the new plans, the best is to contact our team since we can make special accommodations.

The $400k is not a cap, but the threshold associated to traffic and sales volume that would require you to go to our Enterprise plans. These are still flexible plans based on usage to provide you with the right environment for your store, also unlimited and without any type of overages.

[Birdsafe]

jimmy3dcart I appreciate the response and appreciate that I'm not forced to upgrade. It's just that when I was "enticed" over to 3dCart from another platform, I was told at the time that if I upgraded to the "Power Plan" which at the time was more than I needed, I could have unlimited bandwidth and all features. I think there are some folks here who might remember that, such as GonzaloGil -- and so when 8.1 came out and I couldn't get Pre-Ordered Items to work, I was told by Support that it wasn't covered on my plan, that I needed to upgrade to the "Pro" plan, which is $100 more a month. When I inquired about that plan I was told that I made too much money for that plan. So, hence, the frustration.

And to be honest, and with all due respect, $400k isn't very much across all your plans. You might as well tell new prospects you will move directly from Start-Up to Enterprise. And while it may not affect me, it makes it less attractive to recommend.

[ohc]

I find a $400k sales cap disturbing. If I were a new customer that would turn me away.

[Birdsafe]

The thing that would bother me is if were transferring from another platform - most of them have a limit on bandwidth -- and I saw for $229 I could get unlimited bandwidth, storage, and "sales" - I would jump on it -- only to find out after a year and I made $500k - I'm going to be moved to a plan that probably now costs me double that (or more) - after going through the work and hassle of transferring data to a new cart. Where the Basic store says "Earn up to $10k)" - it should say "Earn up to $400k" under the Pro Plan -- because "unlimited orders" to me means no cap on amount.

Not many folks are going to scroll down and open up all those bullet points and are going to see it as a bait and switch.

[jimmy3dcart]

The $400k is not a cap, but the threshold associated to traffic and sales volume that would require you to go to our Enterprise plans.

I just want to clarify this, a CAP is an upper limit, and a limit actually implies your store wouldn't be able to process orders once that's reach. We don't have any type of CAPS in our plans. The $400k is an indicator, measure on 12 trailing months, so your store is not limited, you can still process sales regardless of the plan you're own.

There is also an assumption about the cost of our Enterprise plan, and this is not a set price but a custom plan based on your unique needs. It's based on users, visitors, transactions and the optimal resources you need for your website to operate properly. Our SLA is higher in Enterprise than in the small business plans, and we also offer priority support as part of this. The cost of the enterprise is priced in increments of $50 - $100 from the cost of the PRO plan.

And as mentioned, if you're an existing 3dcart customer looking to switch to our new plans, which is not required, please contact us and we'll be glad to create a custom plan for your unique business needs.

[Birdsafe]

I just want to clarify this, a CAP is an upper limit, and a limit actually implies your store wouldn't be able to process orders once that's reach. We don't have any type of CAPS in our plans. The $400k is an indicator, measure on 12 trailing months, so your store is not limited, you can still process sales regardless of the plan you're own.

Jimmy -- this leaves me even more confused. Not being "smart" here, but I'm curious if you have a plan t hat has unlmited storage and bandwidth and number of orders, what would cause your store to "be unable to process orders" just because you hit some magical number of dollars? My store has been well over that $400k, yet my bandwidth has only run 25g or so a month. Am I missing something here that I should be thinking of, that my current plan won't be able to handle?

[jimmy3dcart]

Hey Joe, I'm glad to hear about your store's performance, we work hard optimizing our platform to make sure every website on 3dcart can help our users increase conversions, and load speed is part of that.

There are other factors that I don't feel are affecting your store at this time, so nothing to worry about, but if your store were to receive a high number of visitors in a short time period, or process a large number of orders per minute, then your website's performance would be affected if you're not in the right plan to handle that.

There are also cases where a store might have a large product catalog, or hundreds of categories with a nested structure, or has collected orders and customers over the years; which causes the size of your database to increase and requires more resources to maintain the level of service you're used to. But this is something that you would noticed as you process orders, manage inventory, run imports/exports.

If you're not experiencing any of those issues, then you don't have anything to worry about. And hopefully when you get to that point, your store's revenue has grown to the point that moving to 3dcart Enterprise makes sense for your business.

[Birdsafe]

Jimmy -- thank you -- hadn't thought of the server impact issues -- good to know.

[massagestore]

Hi jimmy3dcart , I truly appreciate your responses, and I would like to ask for more pricing clarification on the enterprise plan. I signed up with 3dCart, paid a lot of $$ to develop a store, and after years of design issues and other qualitative things going wrong, I left to pursue another platform. I would like to come back, and was preparing to start the process of doing so, and then I stumbled upon this thread. To say I am concerned about Enterprise pricing would be a mild understatement. I sell some equipment that are $3-5000 each, so I could blow through the $400k limit very quickly. I don't even sell this equipment on Amazon and do $1.2M in business / year. That said, I either need to reach out to someone about my old account due to the nightmare that I went through with 3d, inevitably causing me to leave, or find out more about what this program could mean to me as a potential new customer. I told BigCommerce today that I won't go with them because of their 'crazy' $400k threshold that pushes people into Enterprise. Any / all information and assistance is greatly appreciated. It also needs to be said that I will need to pay $85 / mo for the advanced shipping app, so that is even more $$ just to run the store. Andrew

[jimmy3dcart]

Hi massagestore really glad to hear that you're considering coming back to 3dcart! I'm checking with our server administrators already about the last backup of the store, I'm sure we can get everything restored to your account.

I understand your situation, with high ticket items at $3k - $5k, with just about 100 orders you would be at $400k. That's exactly what I was mentioning before,every business is unique and the $400k is just an indicator, which in your case it doesn't apply since you wouldn't need the same resources as a store with an average order of $20.

In your case, you'll be ok with the PRO plan. You can email me directly at [email protected] to go over the details.

[massagestore]

Thanks jimmy3dcart, I truly appreciate the response, flexibility, and willingness to work with me considering my past experience. I will reach out to you directly as per your directive. Andrew / MassageStore

[Pack Secure]

jimmy3dcart I just sent you an email regarding the 500% increase in the monthly price.