PinnacleCart is one of the few shopping cart software products for which you can choose the type of license: customers are offered to choose from hosted (monthly fee) or distribution package (one-time license fee) which you can install on any compatible hosting space. This ecommerce software is equipped with flexible shipping system, payment configuration and lots of features for product promotion and advertising.

A weakness of this shopping cart solution is that getting authorized assistance with software customizations for it is not easy. While the community forum provides a decent amount of third-party solutions, the software manufacturer only provides design services, but not programming. Also, it is stated that the source code is only available upon request.

Printable version 

General

Catalog & Storefront

Marketing & Promotion

Store operation

Features	PinnacleCart	X-Cart
Support for downloadable egoods
Affiliate system	Not available	X-Affiliate add-on
Real time shipping rates calculation	UPS, USPS, FedEx	UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL/Airborne, Intershipper, Canada Post (see X-Cart Feature Tour: Real-time USPS, FedEx and UPS shipping calculation)
Product export/import feature	Product export/import via CSV/Excel file format	Product export/import via database or CSV/Excel file format
Moderated product reviews and ratings	No available	Yes, (see X-Cart Feature Tour: Moderated product reviews and ratings)
Statistics tools	Top viewed products, categories, orders by product, referrers, consolidated & individual orders by date	General statistics and shop summary, Shop statistics, Top Paths Through Site, Top Pages Views, Shopping Cart Conversion Funnel, Log in history, Visitors environment statistics, Search statistics, Google Analytics integration. Also, dozens of standard and customized reports available with Sales-n-Stats software
Taxes	Ability to set tax by state and country, advanced tax structures (VAT, product and/or category tax).	US states with counties support, EU VAT, UK VAT, Canadian PST/GST, Australian PST (see X-Cart Feature tour: Customizable tax calculation
Orders management	Ability to "status" orders Add / edit / delete orders	Order status system, automated order notifications, automated and manual credit card processing, order search, X-AOM add-on for complete management of all order details and order history
Inventory tracking	"Best Sellers" area Out of stock messages Stock quantity for any item	Reports for number of orders, number of products, product/category views sorted by date period, bestsellers, bulk inventory update, Out of stock messages, number of products in stock for every item (see X-Cart Feature Tour: Sales Analysis & Tracking)
Security	Full support of HTTPS/SSL protocols Password protected administrative area Ability to control administrative access and set access levels	Full HTTPS/SSL support Encrypted customer data (Blowfish encryption) PGP-encrypted e-mail notifications Customer/admin access restriction by IP Anti-Fraud module (see X-Cart Feature Tour: Security)