Are you interested in building a startup similar to Etsy?
One where third party vendors come to your website and sell their own products through your platform. A startup where all product management is completed by those third party vendors, leaving you to only keep track of maintaining the website.
Etsy-style websites are called multi vendor systems, since each of the vendors receive their own profile, and buyers land on the site with the ability to include products from multiple vendors in their shopping carts.
How do you go about making your own multi vendor ecommerce platform? Well, it turns out Yo!Kart is a pretty solid place to start.
The Yo!Kart multi vendor cart system from Fat Bit Technologies is not only affordable, but it caters to startups in need of powerful tools and helpful support.
Since Yo!Kart isn't that popular, let's take a look at an in-depth review to decide whether it's a viable option for your business.
Yo!Kart Features
I will start by saying, not much unbiased information is out there about the Yo!Kart platform. I haven't found many other reviews or blog posts besides ones listed by the folks from Fat Bit. Unfortunately, the company doesn't have much information listed on how many people use it or what the retention rate is like.
So, all we have to go off is our own hands on testing and the features listed on their website.
As with many multi vendor platforms, Yo!Kart has far more features than your average online store builder. To start, it offers robust reporting, with real-time tracking to see how your sales are going. Periodical reporting is included to help merchants notice market trends and tailor their offerings accordingly.
However, one downside is that the primary script sold by the folks at Fat Bit requires a little technical knowledge. They'll help you install it, but it looks more like a complex opensource program, as opposed to something designed for beginners.
That said, if you have the experience, or the will to learn, the following features are available:
- An intuitive interface
- A highly secure system
- Multi vendor capabilities
- Multiple stores for those vendors
- Real time shipping cost calculator
- All orders are split and consolidated for shopping carts with products from multiple vendors
- Most SEO is completely automated
- Divide customer into groups based on buying behavior
- an Android app
Yo!Kart Ease of Use
Technically you have four interfaces to look at: Frontend, Buyer side, Admin side and Supplier side. As much as I thought they'd all look drastically different, they don't. All backend areas are clean and easy to move around. Although advanced customization is allowed, I would argue it's not that easy to find on the admin backend. In fact, a huge downside is that the backend has tons of tabs to choose from. As you can see, the top has nine tabs, while the left side presents another eleven.
Also, keep in mind that you only get to choose from a single theme. After that, it's completely up to you to figure out how you want to customize the thing. You get some help from FATbit, but it's generally up to you.
Yo!Kart Pricing
The Yo!Kart system has two pricing plans, one for $250 if you run a startup and another for $999, which is a plan where you own the rights to the license.
This is extremely reasonable considering the functionality you receive. Just keep in mind that the $250 price is a yearly thing.
One major advantage with Yo!Kart is that despite the package price, you get the same set of features regardless of the package you select. This makes it a good choice for small scale startups, since they get a multi vendor platform with standard features at a comparatively low price. Additionally, one-year of free technical support is also offered. With low pricing and no maintenance costs, profit can be marginal from the start with Yo!Kart, given that the business execution is well.
Yo!Kart Templates and Design
From the frontend, Yo!Kart looks great. Users easily manage product categories and display settings. In addition, you as an admin can have complementary product cross selling to drive more sales.
As talked about above, the templates are lacking in Yo!Kart. In fact, you only get one. It's worth noting, however, that this is the crown jewel of templates, and every feature you need is included. In addition, heavy customization is an option.
However, that's just the problem. Customization is almost required for you to achieve the type of branding you need. Even if the primary theme were the best in the world, who cares if you can't make it look good for your own company?
Yo!Kart Inventory
Inventory is a mixed bag since we're talking about a multi vendor system. First of all, you as an admin don't need to worry about inventory, since the vendors typically handle this. However, the backend admin interface provides details for each of your vendors, along with the sales and products that people have bought.
The vendor profile is where the magic really happens, however, since vendors manage their inventory in a clean list, with options for changing details, checking in on buyers and fulfilling orders.
Yo!Kart SEO and Marketing
Yo!Kart provides Google friendly hierarchical organization, giving you easy to edit tags and meta tags. Descriptions and page details all show up well on search engine results.
The system also automatically generates a sitemap that updates and contacts search engines whenever content changes on your website. I like this because you don't need an extra plugin to contact the search engines of changes.
Overall, SEO is extremely comprehensive through Yo!Kart, since much of it is automated, and you don't have to install plugins like you would with WordPress. However, if you'd like to customize your own SEO settings, have fun digging through the dozens of tabs in the dashboard.
Yo!Kart Payments
The primary payment solutions for Yo!Kart are Authorize.net and PayPal, but just about any integration is supported, making the payment processing rather flexible. You don't have to worry about only choosing an ecommerce platform because of the payment provider, because someone at the Fatbit company will be able to speak with you and help you integrate with the system.
Yo!Kart Security
Yo!Kart is not an open source program like Magento. This means hacking is much less likely to occur.
Yo!Kart has 3 level security checks implemented on both the frontend and backend. Not to mention, they have secured the system to present SQL Injections which keeps your website and your data more secure compared to many similar systems out there.
Yo!Kart Support
Tech support is offered through all plans, and it goes through the folks at Fatbit Technologies. The company has plenty of support options for you to choose from. For example, you can call in, email or even Skype for certain circumstances.
The company has a knowledge base and several documentation pages, along with social media accounts and a blog. Really, if you have a question at all, you can pretty much choose any medium you'd like to contact the support team.
Conclusion
In terms of pricing, you can't go wrong with Yo!Kart if you're a startup. Sure, you'll have to pay for some other integrations, hosting, domains and payment processing, but a one year license for $250 isn't bad. Other than that, the reports are amazing for predicting trends, and the frontend has plenty of features for buyers to play around with.
On the other hand, two problems arise with Yo!Kart. One, the themes are lacking, and two, it's not a system built for beginners. You can customize this design however you want, but it takes technical experience to truly modify the design to something new.
That said, if you have any questions about the Yo!Kart platform, leave us a comment in the section below.
We found the support to be intolerably slow and clueless. They are not available on weekends and not available out of IST business hours. Maybe that works for old world retailers in India. When asking questions of the support people, if they answer at all, they simply don’t have a clue. The software is buggy and basic things don’t work, so you find a need to contact support too frequently to be able to put up with turnarounds of 24 hours. Either there needs to be fewer bugs or faster turnaround. The thing they don’t seem to have realised is that sellers and buyers trying to join a market need that process to be simple, easy and to actually work. They strike me as an old world IT team that is used to working with old world IT teams, and simply not able to match the needs of a highly competitive market.
Bogdan or anyone else, can you name any companies who are actually using the Yo-kart Multivendor solution? I was considering their solution, but I’m having a hard time finding any live examples of their system being used by any company. It looks and feels promising, but without any customer references or being able to find any other person or company using it, it’s going to be hard to make a significant investment in time and money using or even testing their solution. Some people use customer references as one of the final steps in their decision-making process, but in this case I’m using it as one of the first steps simply because I’ve never heard of their company. None of the existing reviews seem to be based on actual business experience using the system in a production environment.
Obvious bugs in the online demo! Is it open source? Can anyone please recommend a solid and tested open source marketplace platform? Thanks!
Hi Anthony, OpenCart is a popular open source online e-commerce solution.
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Bogdan – Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com
Hey,
So, people can register on the site, open shop and start selling products.
Payments go to my paypal and I need to pay everyone from there?
Is it possible for people to pay through online bank account, or just paypal?
What about add space? Is it possible to add adds or do they add adds on your site, that they profit from?
Hi Chris,
With the Paypal adaptive feature baked right into Yo!Kart, the money is sent to the seller directly while you receive your commission so you don’t have to worry about payments as your business grows. Yo!Kart integrates with other payment processors so you are not limited to PayPal only.
Hope this helps,
–
Bogdan – Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com
good one, i am going to get it
Hello Meyyappa
Yes, you will have to add vendors yourself.
You may check the Admin demo here: http://www.demo.yo-kart.com/manager/admin/login
Thanks
Hey there, first of all thanks for this post. How do I add vendors? Should I have to add vendors or else does Yo!Kart help in adding vendors?
Hey
Thank you so much !
Im sure that it is the best solution for me.
I have just a question, is it possible to translate the entire site to hebrew?
I dont care to do it myself but it is very important for me. Can i change the money symbol to ILS (the curent Israeli money) ?
Thanks !
You’ll have to go for the Go Quick or Go Custom plans in order to have access to customization. Then you can hire their team (starting $15/hr) to make the desired changes.
Hope this helps,
Cheers.
Yokart lets the admin choose and set one default language but changing it into Hebrew will require some changes in design because this language goes from right to left unlike most of the languages. This case is an exception, so you will have to update the design.
I was a winner in the Yo!Kart 100 program, so I downloaded and installed it. There were some issues; the license.txt file was corrupt, so they sent me another one. After that, everything went well. It comes with some things pre-populated, to give you an idea how it works. Unfortunately, this program does not meet our needs. The 3 huge drawbacks for me were the fact that there are no live shipping quotes, printing of shipping labels, etc. UPS and USPS are not included in the shippers offered, and there is no way to add your own shippers. The 2nd drawback is that each store is totally separate, and if 3 different sellers offer the same product, they will not appear on the same page for comparison. They offered to solve both of these problems for a fee, but did not offer a quote. Also, all sales go into the system under one PayPal or merchant account, and then payments have to be sent to the sellers. Their communication is very timely, but they ask that all communications be done through their online system, rather than by emails.
Hello Elecpus,
Your drawbacks are disappointing as YoKart looked like a very promising marketplace website. I have a few questions since you have experience with the platform. How much did they charge you for the additional service? What are some of the few pro’s that you saw out of YoKart and are there any more cons with YoKart? Were there any red flags when you were using YoKart are talking with their customer service team? Did you stick with YoKart after you discovered these drawbacks? What Marketplace service are you using now instead? Would you recommend YoKart for someone who wants a reliable marketplace website?
Thank you
How are the methods for computing admin markups figured?
Dear Gary,
YoKart does not do the markup automatically, sellers are pre-informed that x Portal fee will be
charged from every order generated via the portal. Sellers should setup the selling price
accordingly and portal fee is deducted out of the selling-price/order- value.
YoKart offers the portal owners to setup the portal fee at:
– Site Level
– Category Level
– Vendor Level
– Product Level
– Category+Vendor
Hey there Catalin!
First, my friend had linked me to your site about the multi-vendor platforms out there now.
THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. I’ve been desperately looking for this.
Second, you say that the vendors receive their own profile and they manage how it looks, etc. Is it possible for me to manage all of the vendors profiles?
All I would need from them is for them to come to the website and setup their shipping and payment. I would handle everything else i.e., the pictures, copy writing, etc.
Yes Gigi, usually vendors manage their own profile but being the admin of website, you will
have power to handle images, copy writing and everything else. If that’s the way you want your
store to be managed, you can.
Sellers and Admin Team of the Portal can manage following variables of the stores/vendors
profile:
– Profile Picture
– Store Promotion Image
– Store Name
– Store Address/Location Info
– Meta Tags
– Profile Info
– Payment Policies
– Delivery/Shipping Policies
– Refund Policies
– Seller Info
Check admin area of YoKart to know more.
Hi there. Can people create their own accounts and sell on the ebay clone (bids or fixed price) at their own discretion?
Sincerely,
Jade
Dear Jade,
I consulted the business analysts and technical team for your question. As per their advice, I’m
revising information for you. Please check below what they have to say about your query.
On YoKart powered systems, sellers can post the products with fixed selling price.
As the bidding module is not in demand these days and is apparently an outdated business
model, this is not in the priority list of YoKart but if required by many clients, it will be queued
up in the priority list of our technical team and will be launched in the future versions as soon
as possible.
I hope you got the answer; if you still have a query, please feel free to ask, I will be glad to help.
Regards
Good day, When you say you need some technical experience to make edits. How much technical experience would you say?
Would you be able to give me an idea on how the back end looks like, to edit?
Thank you!
Hi Nicholas, ‘some technical experience’ means that you should have just a little knowledge of web in general to be able to manage admin area. Yo!Kart is especially designed for those who are not so tech savvy…
The backend areas are clean and easy to use.
If you face any difficulties then you can discuss them on live chat, live call or drop an email to their support team.
You may check the Admin demo here: http://www.demo.yo-kart.com/manager/admin/login