Customer Quote Requests in Magento – Cart2Quote and Not2Order Review

What is Cart2Quote? Cart2Quote is a Magento extension that adds “Request for Quote” functionality into your store.   This is great for B2B stores that need to price based on a customer’s requested quantity, and for other similar applications. Cart2Quote is great if you’re looking for exactly that. The latest version, 5.0.1, is the most robust […]

By Alyssa Schaad

Cart2Quote and Not2Order

What is Cart2Quote?

Cart2Quote is a Magento extension that adds “Request for Quote” functionality into your store.   This is great for B2B stores that need to price based on a customer’s requested quantity, and for other similar applications.

Cart2Quote is great if you’re looking for exactly that. The latest version, 5.0.1, is the most robust version yet, including more customization for the module in a user-friendly format in the backend.

It works similarly to a second cart, where customers add items to a quote, which is great for keeping your quotes and carts separated, but can really be hindering when your customer is looking to get a quote and purchase something.  They’d essentially have to go through a checkout-like process twice — once to submit a quote, and the other to purchase product.  There isn’t much of a cross stream between the two, though version 5 allows you to move items between both the cart and the quote and features buttons to flip back and forth between the cart and the quote.

There are a few problems we had with this extension.  First and foremost, you need to have ionCube installed on your server. This can be an inconvenience if you’re host doesn’t allow you to install it or if you need to contact them for installation.  Next, many of C2Q’s files are encrypted, meaning you won’t be able to develop or edit many of the files unless you buy the Open Source version, which can get costly.

When we were integrating it, we needed to consult often with C2Q’s support.  Time difference aside (they’re based in the Netherlands), they were very prompt with answering our questions and helping us where we needed it.

If you have a Multi-Store installation of Magento, setting separate e-mails for each store can be incredibly difficult.  We found that we had to put in a lot of work to differentiate e-mails between each store in regards to this, and ultimately ended up creating a CRON job to get this working the way we wanted.

Shipping methods are currently considered a beta feature, so there isn’t a lot of support in that regard — for us, it worked beautifully, and a lot of the issues we had with it were related to incompatibility with other extensions. That being said, if you’ve got a lot of extensions in your store or some heavy customizations, you’re in for a lot of work, and asking for help from the developers can also get costly, as they charge extra for more complex integrations.

If you need help with your Magento store, call 845-656-3000 or Contact us here »

The developers for Cart2Quote have also made Not2Order, an extension that works best with Cart2Quote, that hides prices and disables adding to cart.  It’s functionality is pretty simple, and it’s perfect if you don’t want to deal with editting Cart2Quote’s files, but if you’re not using Cart2Quote, I find it easier to just develop it on your own using attributes.
I noticed that Not2Order doesn’t give you the ability to hide price and show custom text instead, so I ended up having to add that functionality in myself.

Customer Quote Requests in Magento - Cart2Quote and Not2Order Review

So, down to the skinny:

  • Cart2Quote is perfect if you’re not looking for much customization or development.  If you were looking for a Request for Quote functionality for your Magento store, nothing more, nothing less, this is great for you.
  • However, if you’re planning on adding custom functionality, have developed custom themes for your site, etc, this extension can get hairy pretty quickly.  I can’t even begin to tell you about the very lengthy e-mail chain I have between their support.  The plus side is that support can be incredibly helpful, if you don’t mind the time difference and keep in mind that complex development help might cost more money.
  • Not2Order works great with Cart2Quote, it’s a very simple extension overall and saves you the trouble of dealing with Cart2Quote’s template files.
  • …On it’s own, however, you might be better off developing it yourself.

Overall, I recommend getting the Cart2Quote enterprise and open source version if you’re planning on doing heavy customization.   The price is a little steep at that point, but it’s best thought of as a preemptive measure for custom development.
While it’s tough to work with, it’s not impossible, as we were able to create an “Auto Quote” extension based on its files.
If you’re not doing much customization, then the standard version should be fine. I also recommend Not2Order along with it, so hiding prices and the “Add to Cart” button can be used alongside your quotes.

Cart2Quote does exactly what’s expected. Any issues outside of customization will be fixed by their support team pretty quickly.   It’s user friendly and creating quotes honestly can’t get much easier.   There is a free trial available for this extension, so before you make any purchases, I highly recommend you try it first before you decide to buy it.

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