I am always looking at new shopping carts that will fit the needs of myself and customers and finallyyellow-logo got the chance to review the Lemonstand Shopping Cart. Lemonstand is a SAAS platform where you create your store and Lemonstand handles the patching, servers, etc.

While I appreciate the carts I use now which include Shopify, BigCommerce, 3DCart, Americommerce, Corecommerce and others, I am always searching for the next new thing.

I was curious about Lemonstand as they touted how much easier it is than other carts and as I looked further I noticed some other functionality I was looking for in an easier package.

Below is a video walk through and review of the platform.

What I Like

It looks like a full functional platform and one that is well laid out. If you do a lot of client work, the ability to easily change look and feel right from specific pages would be a godsend compared to some cart companies like Volusion or even BigCommerce. They also provide subscription type business which is one thing a lot of carts fall down on. I do not believe Lemonstand stores the card numbers so shouldn’t be a PCI compliance issue.

All the themes I looked at are Mobile Responsive, a must in todays world with anywhere between 50% or more of traffic coming from mobile devices. You also never leave your URL when you check out which means they have a multi-URL SSL certificate installed which is a nice thing. It would be nice if the other cart providers did the same thing. What I can’t speak to, is how some browsers react to these types of SSL certificates.

What I Didn’t Like

Its a nice cart but I do not think it is for an e-commerce newbie or do it yourself. It requires quite a bit of customization that has to be done in the code to make it reflect your brand. I also don’t see any PCI compliance certification. While this is obviously not a deal killer (look at the number of people that use WooCommerce), one advantage of a SAAS is PCI Compliance and Security that they take care of for you.

I see they host everything through Amazon AWS which is a pretty beefy but has been known to have some down time (just ask Netflix). While they don’t have a lot of third party pre-built integrations, they do have a beefy API that I am sure a talented developer could use.

Who is this for?

This is for developers that are doing a lot of client work and more sophisticated customers. I don’t think this will be as good a platform for Do it Yourselfers unless they are willing to take the time to learn both HTML and Code. I think this would be a strong competitor to a Prestashop or Opencart if they can get their third party market beefed up.

Screenshots2
Thoughts

I have been pretty impressed by Lemonstand. They seem to be adding features all the time and are pretty open about their roadmap for the platform. I would like to see a roadmap for a PCI Compliance audit to ensure you are getting all the benefits of a hosted solution. I would also like to see them reach out to developers to port existing applications to Lemonstand to make it even more desirable.

14 Day Trial

Click the link below to try out a 14 day trial on the system.

Get Our Free Mini Ecommerce Course

Get Our Free Mini Ecommerce Course

Jumpstart building an ecommerce business.

Check your email!