X-Cart:Licensing

This page is a 'plain words' explanation of X-Cart's licensing policy, not a legal document.

Evaluation license

You may download and use the X-Cart software for the evaluation purposes. Under the terms of Evaluation License you may:

• use X-Cart for the evaluation purposes on any number of web servers
• copy the X-Cart files for a reasonable number of backup copies
• copy and distribute the X-Cart distribution pack in its original form including all files and documentation and without any modifications

For the details please refer to license agreement.

Paid license

To use X-Cart shopping cart software for the production purposes, you are required to have a paid license. A license can be obtained using one of the following ways:

• by purchasing X-Cart shopping cart software from our company (license is granted to you directly);
• by purchasing X-Cart shopping cart software from one of X-Cart users (license is transferred).

No matter which of the above ways you choose, at the time of purchase you will be supposed to:

1. supply to us your personal and contact information;
2. specify the type and quantity of X-Cart software products you want to use;
3. provide to us a License URL - a valid URL where the software will be run;
4. confirm your acceptance of the terms and conditions of X-Cart Software License Agreement.

As soon as the necessary information is submitted to us, our company will issue a license to you that will allow you to use X-Cart shopping cart software in a manner provided by the terms and conditions of X-Cart Software License Agreement. An online version of X-Cart Software License Agreement is available at http://www.x-cart.com/software_license_agreement.html.

License URL

To install an X-Cart based online store, you need to have a domain name: your ‘address’ on the Internet, what people will type into their browser to find you.

If you do not have a domain name, you can obtain one from a web hosting provider: most web hosting providers offer domain name registration services. Here is a list of web hosting providers 100% compatible with X-Cart systems: http://marketplace.x-cart.com/hosting

When you purchase an X-Cart license, you are supposed to specify the domain name that will be used for your online store as your License URL.

For example, if your domain name is example.com, and you are going to install your X-Cart based store at the URL address http://example.com, you can specify either example.com (your domain name) or http://example.com (the exact URL of your store) as your License URL. Note that if your X-Cart store site is going to work over HTTPS, we recommend specifying the "https" version of the site URL (like "https://example.com") as your License URL.

Please note that any single license allows you to have no more than one live online store at any given moment. That is to say, you cannot have two separate online stores running on the same license, no matter whether they are installed at the same domain or at different domains.

For example, if you have one license in which example.com is designated as your License URL, you cannot have stores at http://example.com and at http://example.com/mystore simultaneously.

Tip: Even with one license you can use different web locations to sell things over the Internet: 1) Organize redirection of visitors to your store site from other websites or 2) Install your store at multiple URL addresses in such a way that all of the resulting websites will use the same database (in other words, will operate on the same product set and have the same set of customers and orders).

Registering installed X-Cart

X-Cart 4.3or above

A fresh installation of X-Cart is licensed for evaluation purposes only. Since X-Cart shopping cart is provided to you with open source code, you can customize its design and functionality in the way you need it. However, you must keep the evaluation notice visible on all storefront pages without having to scroll the pages down until you purchase a paid license.

To upgrade your license please purchase X-Cart paid license and register your copy as follows:

1. Make sure that no HTTP-authorization and firewall restrictions are set on incoming HTTP-connections to your X-Cart installation.

2. Login to your X-Cart Account with your username and password.

3. Go to "My licenses" section.

4. Check whether the license URL is correct. If it is not, follow the "Change URL" link to the right from the license URL and replace the license URL with the correct X-Cart installation URL.

5. Follow the "Register X-Cart installation" link to the right from the license URL.

6. Open the "Summary page" in your X-Cart installation in order to ensure that registration was successful.

7. In case any problems arise during purchase or registration please contact us.

Keeping your license info up-to-date

It is your obligation to inform us about any changes in your license data so we can keep our records up-to-date.

For example, if you wish to transfer (sell) your license to a third party or move your X-Cart based store to a different URL, you must inform our company about that, so we can update the license. Usage of the software outside the domain specified in your License URL violates X-Cart Software License Agreement and can be prosecuted.

You can view your current license information at any time via your X-Cart Account.

License verification

If necessary, you can check the validity of an X-Cart license at the following URL: http://www.x-cart.com/verify_license.html.

Troubleshooting

Unable to register X-Cart (connection error: unexpected response code "404")

Please make sure you use the correct license URL. You can obtain the correct license URL from the license warning message in X-Cart admin back end. There should be a message stating:

Check whether the license URL is http://example.com. If it is not, follow the "Change URL" link to the right from the license URL and replace the license URL with http://example.com.

In case the issue persists (for http://example.com license URL) you should add '/' symbol to the end of the license URL as follows: http://example.com/

If opening http://example.com/ URL in your browser redirects you to the same domain name, but with www subdomain in the URL, you should specify the license URL including the subdomain e.g. as follows - http://www.example.com/

Unable to register X-Cart copy configured at non-standard port (i.e. example.com:8081)

If your X-Cart is configured to be accessed at non-standard port, you may be receiving the following error when trying to register:

This X-Cart Gold installation is registered for HTTP://EXAMPLE.COM, not for HTTP://EXAMPLE.COM:8081 where it is installed right now (as set in the configuration file "config.php").

To resolve this issue open include/func/func.core.php file for editing, find the following code:

$aliases = array(
$http_location,
$https_location
);

and replace it with:

$aliases = array(
preg_replace("/([^:]*):[\d]+(\/.)*/", "$1$2", $http_location),
preg_replace("/([^:]*):[\d]+(\/.)*/", "$1$2", $https_location)
);

My site / X-Cart was switched off. How is this possible?

In general, the X-Cart licensing mechanizm does not influence store functioning.

According to the licensing policy, X-Cart distributed for evaluation purposes is fully functional, though it doesn't allow accepting payments, while a paid X-Cart license grants the right to run a fully functional shopping cart online. Neither evaluation nor paid X-Cart installation can be switched off by the X-Cart company, this can be done only by the hosting provider.

Hence, you should contact your hosting technical support to find out if they've had any temporary issues on their side which could cause store down state.

FAQ

Do I need a license for using X-Cart on an internal network that is not open to the internet?

If you are deploying an intranet store, you will need a license, regardless the store is not accessible from the Internet.