I have listed for you here all of WordPress shopping cart solutions: plugins, hybrids, lightweight plugins, and even hosted carts.
Let me first briefly explain what makes each one of these four types different:
Shopping cart plugins — these plugins provide the full functionality of a shopping cart. They turn WordPress into a complete and professional online store. But they do not change the appearance of your store. To customize the appearance of a store, you will need to either modify your theme or use one of the pre-built themes for the plugins.
Shopping cart hybrids — these are plugin/theme hybrids. Essentially, they are themes with the shopping cart functionality embedded. These solutions take care of the presentation as well as the functionality of your store. While they’re generally easier to use and setup, they’re not as flexible and customizable as plain shopping cart plugins.
Lightweight shopping cart plugins — these are simpler shopping cart plugins that are used to sell only a few items on your blog or non-ecommerce site. They usually only integrate with one popular payment processor, e.g. PayPal or Google Checkout, and don’t have many shipping options or inventory control capabilities.
Plugins to integrate WordPress with 3rd-party shopping carts — these don’t bring shopping cart functionality to your WordPress site. Rather, they help you integrate WordPress with a 3rd party shopping cart solutions.
WordPress Shopping Cart Plugins
The top three shopping cart plugins.
Shopp ($55) is full of features and each feature is developed to a great depth and with care. So, it certainly goes beyond the basics. It has a wide array of supported payment gateways and shipping carriers. Download »»
Cart66 ($89) also covers the basics and beyond. While its features are not as extensive as Shopp, it is very reliable and solidly built. It has excellent integration with WordPress API. Perhaps that’s why it powers the official WordPress Swag Store. Download »»
GetShopped (free) is one of the earliest shopping cart plugins for WordPress. It used to be a little shaky, but its more recent versions have seen tremendous improvements. While official support for the plugin is lacking, its community is huge. Download »»
The following is a side-by-side comparison of the top three shopping cart plugins. I’ve rated them based on how well they perform in each comparison criteria.
You can click on the criteria link to read more about it and how different plugins perform in it.
| Shopp | Cart66 | GetShopped | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Download here | Download here | Download here | |
| Installation |   | | |
| Support & docs | | | |
| WordPress integration | |  | |
| Selling product variations | | | |
| Shipping & taxes | | | |
| Admin UI | | | |
| Payment methods | PayPal Express, PayPal Standard, Google Checkout, 2Checkout, Authorize.Net, CyberSource, eWay, Beanstream, First Data, HSBC, iDEAL, Merchant Warrior, PayPal Payflow, PayPal Pro, Payson, Sage Pay | PayPal Pro, PayPal Standard, PayPal Express, Authorize.Net, Quantum Gateway, Eprocessing Network | PayPal Standard, PayPal Pro, PayPal Express, Google Checkout, ChronoPay |
| Downloadable products | | | |
| Managing promotions | | | |
| Sidebar widgets | | | |
| Themes & styles | | | |
| Managing affiliates | | | |
| Multi-language | | | |
| Popularity | | | |
| Refund period |  | 60 days | |
| The money | 1-site: $55 Unlimited: $299 Extra payment gateways: $25/each Extra shipping carriers: $25/each | 1-site: $89 5-sites: $179 Unlimited: $399 | Essential add-ons: $50/each* Basic plugin is free |
| Total stars | 66.5 | 66 | 64 |
| Download here | Download here | Download here |
More Awesome Shopping Cart Plugins
While the three above plugins are definitely great and well rounded, they’re not the only ones available. The plugins below are also unique in their strengths.
eShop (free) has most of the features that put it in direct competition with the top three plugins above. Yet, it is completely free. Download »»
MarketPress ($39) is most impressive because of how well it is integrated with WordPress. While it lacks some features, it’s built on a solid foundation that makes it infinitely extensible. Download »»
Tribulant Shopping Cart ($55) provides plenty of bang for the buck. It is full of advanced features, such as integration with shipping carriers, but only costs $55. Download »»
YAK (free) is minimalist in its appearance, but not any less sophisticated than the other plugins in features. It’s best suited for a small shop that needs advanced payment processing. Download »»
DukaPress (free) handles shopping cart integration with WordPress in a smart and efficient manner. It also has more pre-built themes than the average plugin. Download »»
wpStoreCart (free) has most of the features that you’d need in a shopping cart, but I found its features to fall a little short of meeting customer requirements. Download »»
WordPress Shopping Cart Hybrids
This is a list of WordPress shopping cart theme/plugin hybrids.
ShopperPress ($79) has plenty of shopping cart options and features and plenty of appearance customization features. Yet, it is very easy to use thanks to the setup wizard and the extensive online documentation. It also includes more than 20 child themes. For its features, it is fairly priced at $79 only. Download »»
Market Theme ($55) is a very user-friendly shopping cart solution for WordPress. While its features are limited, it is very reliable and easy to use. It’s very affordable at $55 only and it is backed by a solid satisfaction guarantee. Download »»
Templatic Ecommerce ($65) is a shopping cart solution by Templatic. It’s a collection of different themes that are all powered by the same shopping cart code. Each ecommerce theme from Templatic costs $65. Buy one of these if you’ve fallen in love with the designs — as there’s nothing special in the functionality. Download »»
Here’s a more detailed comparison of these three hybrid solutions:
| ShopperPress | Market Theme | Templatic Ecommerce | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Download here | Download here | Download here | |
| Installation | | | |
| Support & docs | | | |
| WordPress integration | | | |
| Selling product variations | | | |
| Shipping & taxes | | | |
| Payment methods | PayPal (Pro & Standard), Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, WorldPay Protx, CC Avenue, AlertPay, eWay, 2Checkout, PayFast, PayWeb, NoChex ePay, Realex, MoneyBookers, MonsterPay, Setcom, PayTrace | PayPal Standard, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net | PayPal Standard, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, WorldPay, 2Checkout |
| Downloadable products | | * | |
| Managing promotions | | | |
| Themes & styles | | | |
| Managing affiliates | | | |
| Multi-language | | | |
| Popularity | | | |
| Refund period | | 60 days | |
| The money | Unrestricted license: $79 | Standard license: $55 Developer license: $150 | Standard license: $65/theme Developer license: $99/theme All themes unlimited: $299 |
| Download here | Download here | Download here |
Lightweight Shopping Cart Plugins for WordPress
These lightweight shopping cart plugins are all free. They can be downloaded from WordPress.org plugin directory.
WordPress lightweight shopping cart plugins include:
Simple PayPal Shopping Cart by Tips and Tricks HQ is the most downloaded and highest rated lightweight shopping cart plugin on WordPress.org. I like the way it works. It outsources location-based shipping and tax calculations to PayPal. It is simple to use, yet highly customizable. Download »»
FatFreeCart works with PayPal and Google Checkout. I think it’s very underrated. It supports product variations, taxes, and shipping & handling fees. It also has a nice ajax-powered shopping cart view. While the plugin is made by e-junkie, it works completely independently of the e-junkie service. Download »»
Quick Shop is a popular lightweight cart plugin. It only works with PayPal, but it provides more flexibility than usually expected from a plugin in its category. It allows the merchant to set the currency and even provide free shipping for orders exceeding a certain amount. Download »»
LBak Google Checkout, as the name implies, only works with Google Checkout. It is very simple, yet very usable. It is for merchants who deal in U.S. dollars and charge a fixed shipping rate per product. The plugin also supports product variations. Download »»
3rd-Party Shopping Cart Integration Plugins
By the strictest definition, the following aren’t really shopping cart plugins for WordPress. They are plugins that merely integrate WordPress with a 3rd party shopping cart. I haven’t reviewed these because the quality and usefulness of each plugin is highly reliant on the 3rd party solution, whose details are beyond the scope of this page.
However, I have listed for you here some 3rd party shopping carts with the plugin(s) that facilitate their WordPress integration.
Ecwid is a hosted shopping cart that aims to be compatible with any website, hassle-free, and lightening-fast. Its integration plugin is, by far, the most popular among its competitors. It has an official WordPress integration plugin.
FoxyCart is a hosted cart with highly customizable CSS and HTML. It should easily integrate with WordPress using XML and JSON. And its checkout flow is highly optimized to increase conversions. There are two plugins that help you integrate FoxyCart with WordPress. The more popular one is FoxyShop. The other is FoxyPress.
BigCommerce is a popular hosted shopping cart solution because of its ease of use, good support, and affordability. Its integration plugin can be downloaded here.
Wazala is kind of similar to Ecwid in that it can be installed and integrated into any website easily. While it’s capable of selling physical goods, Wazala also puts a lot of emphasis on its ability to sell digital products. The Wazala team has developed an integration plugin for WordPress.
Volusion is another very popular hosted shopping cart solution. It has a rich feature set, including the ability to manage affiliates, ready-to-use templates, mobile shopping sites, and more. Its WordPress integration plugin doesn’t seem to be widely utilized. Anyway, it can be downloaded here.
Magento, I understand, is to ecommerce what WordPress is to blogging…or something like that. Anyway, it’s a very popular open-source ecommerce platform and now it can be tightly integrated with WordPress using plugins like Magento WordPress Integration.
And more shopping cart plugins for WordPress…
I update this page periodically. During the most recent update, some plugins were either not ready yet or didn’t show on my radar on time. I’ll review these when I do the next update. In the meantime, here’s a little bit about each one of those plugins:
Jigoshop is the new kid on the shopping cart scene, but it quickly gained popularity. I’m not sure why, but it must be because it’s doing something well. It’s a full shopping cart plugin and it is free. But support, premium themes, and premium extensions are paid.
WooCommerce is a free ecommerce solution by the popular WordPress theme development shop, WooThemes. Its code is based on Jigoshop but it puts additional emphasis on UI. Like Jigoshop, premium themes and extensions and support are only offered to paying subscribers.
Zingiri Web Shop is a free ecommerce plugin that’s available from WordPress.org. It has a pretty good rating on the plugin directory. There’s also the Zingiri ecommerce web service, I’m not sure what the relationship between the service and the plugin is. They seem independent of each other.
StorePress is a premium WordPress theme with embedded ecommerce functionality. It is capable of creating online stores that promote affiliate products.
TheCartPress is another free ecommerce plugin that’s available from WordPress.org. It also has a decent rating on the official plugin directory. There’s a dedicated website and community for the plugin.
WP Online Store is available from WordPress.org for free. The plugin is an integration between osCommerce and WordPress. Looking at the plugin’s website, though, it doesn’t feel as clean as the stuff I’m used to with WordPress. But the plugin does have a fairly good rating on WordPress.org. Premium add-ons and services are offered on the plugin’s website.
If you know a shopping cart plugin that is missing from this list, please let us know in the comments!
Is there a integration plugin for Zen cart and wordpress? Also the wordgento plugin I could not find, any thoughts?
Jason
Hi Jason, I’m not aware of a plugin that integrates Zen Cart with WordPress.
Yeah, Wordgento seems to have been removed from the plugin directory. Though other plugins that integrate Magento with WordPress still exist. Search the directory or Google to find a few of them.
My Question is which cart is easiest for a client to upload product.
Take a look at lightweight shopping carts. They’re easiest to use.
M.K. Do you have any thoughts on JigoShop?
I’ve heard good things about it. I have not tried it myself, but my impression of it is that it’s got the basics right, and it’s still being expanded and developed. Some commenters below, who’ve actually used it, have given their opinion, which is mostly positive.
Thank you for such a quick reply! And THANK YOU for your all of the work you put into this summary of options. Very helpful.
My pleasure, and I’m glad you found page helpful!!
I have a question for the author / anyone else who wants to chime in. Ive looked everywhere online and cant seem to find an ecommerce solution that works for my situation.
I run a silk screen shop and want to setup an online store for users to place orders online. We have a wide variety of apparel that users can chose from to have their logo or brand printed on. My main concern is on the product page itself where users will ultimately fill out all of the information for their desired order. Users will click on their desired T-shirt model. On this page there will be various options for the user to choose from, the first is a dropdown menu for available colors with that model shirt. From there they will be given two fields: 1) Quantity (12, 24, 36, etc), 2) Size (S, M, L, XL, etc). These quantities will effect the price by offering discounts for increased quantity, and smaller variances for larger size T-shirts. However, I would like to see these dropdowns need to be dynamic data that changes the price as the user is changing information. Below those fields there should be the option to add more fields. This way a user can create their whole order on the one page by allowing them to include a different quantity for the various sizes that they want. Below those forms I want an area dedicated to the printing portion of the business with different prices associated for various options (i.e. 1-color, 2-color, oversized, etc). They should also be able to add extra options such as Images on the back of the shirt, sleeve, or other areas outside the standard printing area. Users will also have to be able to upload a file, or multiple files for different images. When its added to the cart, all of the different options are calculated and combined in a user friendly and easy to read manner for the users. Hopefully that wasn’t too terribly confusing.
Currently I am working with WordPress, but am open to other options. I have been looking into Cart66, WooCommerce, and a few others. Does anyone know of an ecommerce solution that might fit my needs?
It sounds to me that your biggest challenge is handling product variations. Shopp does this best. But then you also have some very particular requirements, like “area dedicated to the printing portion”.
You may wanna check out Gravity Forms. I’m not sure, but I think it can be integrated with Shopp (and even Cart66) to extend the order forms in those plugins. You can ask about that in Gravity Forms forum for pre-purchase questions.
Shopp is certainly very flexible but I’d also have a very hard look at WPOnlineStore. It offers infinite product variation and I’m fairly certain will do all that you are asking. It’s free so try it for yourself.
I just installed wpStoreCart.
I only spent a half an hour testing out stuff, and it is very promising.
Sofar the only thing i’m unsure of is how to enable another/custom payment gateway.
I installed wp ecommerce then purchased gold ecommerce plugin and wish I hadnt. Several issues since having updated wp. Designers say that their version 4 will work ok with updated wp. I paid for premium which says that they will go into the site and repair any issues – I have not found this to be the case and thats why I am here looking for an alternative. Very disappointed
I have two sites and downloaded a xml product file expecting I could upload it into another site, but oh no. To upload it has to be a csv file.
Ok thought I , lets convert it. Tried without success, contacted the support dept of a free xml to csv site who told me that he has had many instances like mine and he is at this moment looking at the file to see why it will not convert.
I placed several calls for help to the support at getshopped, expecting them to keep to their claims of their willing to look into a site to see what has happened. I gave them all the information and the response was zero. Great after all I had paid for their gold plugin !!
I will not use ecommerce plug in even if it was the last ecommerce plugin on the market.
I am now possibly facing three weeks of work to upload each product manually and do the on page seo etc.
This has left a nasty taste in my mouth, but what can I do ? Surely a designer would design a plugin thatdownloads as well as uploads in csv format or am I talking rubbish ?
You may wanna take a look at eShop. It’s a free ecommerce plugin and somebody has created a CSV importer for it.
This seems to be a common problem. ShopperPress will import without a problem. But there is no export function. We’ve exported directly from the db but we’ve now got hundreds of products in the wrong categories that all have to be manually checked and corrected.
And, like you, it looks like all our SEO has been lost.
I assume the logic goes along the lines of: “Why would you want to export your data… that would mean you are not satisfied with our solution and how could that be????”
David Wilks
They should as I cannot be the only one who wishes to have 2 shops with the same product on ? What is the saying about making assumptions
It seems stupid to think download in one format and upload in a different format or does it
I’m posting again to report a few getshopped / wp ecommerce issues:
1. It’s not clear that it’s compatible with WordPress 3.3. Some forum users at the getshopped.org site are reporting functionality issues.
2. You can’t offer free downloads. This feature used to work but is now broken. People are posting hacks in the user support forums but they don’t work for everybody. And you would need to reapply any hack when you update the plugin files.
Funny thing is, although I had given up on this plugin for new client projects, I had to update an existing client’s WPEC cart. I was open-minded about giving getshopped another chance, especially since they claim to be making an effort to improve the product. For example you can use short tags, and they say they are making the templating process easier. However the ambiguity over 3.3 compatability is stopping me from upgrading, and now I am stuck with the free download issue.
I suppose I could just try the update, and if it’s broken under WP 3.3, that would motivate me to transfer my last WPEC store to something like Jigoshop.
I’m also using shopp for another client’s store. It’s ok but I’m not totally loving it.
Hi Barry!
I’m one of the three lead developers for WP E-Commerce. If you have any questions about compatibility, feel free email me personally at justinsainton at gmail dot com, I’d be more than happy to address any bugs you’re encountering. But if it provides any level of comfort, all of the lead devs are running WP 3.3 (or trunk) as we develop – and I’m personally using the latest 3.8 build with WP 3.3 on several client sites, no problems. The bugs we have heard about are minimal and cosmetic and will be addressed in the next release. I hope that wasn’t ambiguous at all.
As far as free downloads go, I’m not sure exactly what you’re going for. If you’re wanting to give your visitors something for free, I suppose I’d argue the best way to do that would be something other than an e-commerce plugin. If you’re wanting to include a free download link when someone purchases a certain product, we have all the actions and filters in place to do that through a plugin already.
Hope that helps clear up any issues!
Hey Justin, good to hear you’re running 3.3. I’ll set it up on the client’s dev site with your latest stable build of wpec.
The client currently sells digital downloads and CDs and wants to be able to occasionally change the price of an existing downloadable item to $0.
Our workaround involved putting the download on a simple hyperlink in a blog post and disabling the product in WPEC.
I respect that you consider this an inappropriate use of ecommerce but it is nonetheless useful. It would be great if you could incorporate the user hacks into WPEC core to let customers bypass paypal in such situations.
A little birdy told me that the marketing page in the impending 3.9 version of WP e-Commerce Plugin is going to get an overhaul. One of the new promotional options will be the ability to offer “buy 1 and get 1 free” type functionality to your customers.
One of the people we work with in the music industry is in the process of building a WP e-Commerce Plugin Theme business. The entire focus will be around band related themes. We are also helping them develop a new Ticketing Plugin based on their experience in the industry – which is years of selling tickets, merch, and digital downloads, so its going to be nice.
Anyway after reading what Justin says I believe that the specific functionality you require (free downloads) should be made into a new add-on Plugin for WP e-Commerce. I’m going to see if I can find somebody to make this – I’ll try but given the closeness to xmas not sure if it’ll get done pre NY. I will try though
For people that are interested read more / try out the WP e-Commerce Plugin 3.8.8 beta and leave a comment on the GetShopped website.
http://getshopped.org/getshopped-news/wp-e-commerce-plugin-3-8-8-beta-ready-for-consumption/
I am having several issues which is what has me looking into other cart systems…
1. Related products are not working
2. Googlecheckout does not function properly, yet no one on the support forums seem to offer any assistance. Posts regarding this are ignored.
3. Since the latest update, the “add as thumbnail” button is no longer on the admin product pages.
the ability for a customer to view their order history is non existent.
Great artice…thank you
I am really at a loss on what to do about a cart for my shop. Cart66 did not have some of the features I needed.(Google Checkout being one of them).
GetShopped /wp-ecommerce is a complete disaster with support for something that is very clearly not functioning properly (oddly, with google checkout) No one there seems to care about fixing the problems with it.I refuse to purchase their Gold Cart plugin, when their free version doesn’t even work right.
I am looking at Shopp, but I am hearing mixed reviews about it. I’m leary of spending countless hours in getting something exactly the way I want it, when reviews are so mixed.
JigoShop looks very interesting and promising, but they seem to be very vague about what the specific features are that they offer.
I would love a cart that has:
Google checkout, paypal express, wish list, product options, wish list, the ability for an affiliate program and most of all….a support staff that backs up their cart software with…..a forum they actually bother to respond on.
Any suggestions would be great.
Hi Lynne,
We dont like to toot our own horn, but we felt we must in this case. What you’re asking for is not much, and Wazala offers all the features you’re asking for. Great support staff that are willing to go the extra mile to get it all done for you. Check us out www.wazala.com and if you have any questions email support@wazala.com
Thanks. Very interesting, but not quite what I am looking for.
I am planning on buying a genesis theme, but i want to integrate it into a e-commerce website, selling t-shirt, shoes, etc. What do you think is the best shopping cart in this case?
thanks
Check out the latest WP e-Commerce Plugin blog post regarding a new e-Commerce Genesis Child Theme called myTunes. It is a free Genesis Child Theme designed to help people sell music and merchandise online – so it might just work for you.
I was chatting to Denise the developer and she is also working on a vanilla Genesis + WP e-Commerce Theme framework. Something easy for people to take and customize if they want to start a new theme from scratch.
Denise is a genius Genesis developer. You can read more about her and her accolades on her site here: http://thewebprincess.com/
And you can grab the myTunes Geneis Chile Theme from here: http://getshopped.org/getshopped-news/new-child-theme-for-genesis-and-your-wp-e-commerce-music-store/
I’ve been reading and digesting all of this. I somehow got to Tips and Tricks WordPress eStore Plugin: www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/products. It look really amazing for the price. You list their free version but not this version (from what I can see). Any thoughts about it from you or your other readers would be appreciated. I will be launching two sites – mine and a client site. For the client I need a user friendly product management function. Her products are classes; mine will be ebooks and ecourses.
Thanks!
I did review eStore a long time ago. The review is not included here because it’s really old. I have not tried eStore recently, so I cannot say how good or bad it is. But I know it’s just for creating a digital store, not a fully functioning ecommerce site. Most of the products of T&T HQ tend to be simple to use and effective. They also have great support.
Thanks M.K. Since posting that post I looked at WPMU DEV and am testing MarketPress. So far I like it and am intrigued by a number of their plugins for other additions to my sites (membership, e-newsletter, popup and more). Love the membership concept – install all the plugins you want while a member (plugins are yours forever). I did a quickie site, added two products and put up a store page and it worked easily. Lots more to learn – got distracted getting my PayPal sandbox setup…..
Great post. Thank you! I’m using ShopperPress (now running 6.4) and it is definitely easy to use. However, for anyone kicking off with it now, the documentation is OLD and dates back to V5, often having little relevance to the current version.
Like all options, ShopperPress has it’s limitations and I am now faced with the dilemma of further customisation or (shock, horror) CHANGE!
I need to be able to offer a hierarchy of differently priced options for a single base product (kitchen cabinets). There are three different decisions that need to be made by the customer and each decision impacts price. ShopperPress has only two dynamic custom fields capable of doing this. BUT that’s not the big challenge ‘coz we can code that. The real headache is that the field labels we apply here become global across all products in all categories. That IS a serious challenge.
It appears that Shopp has unlimited capacity to solve this issue but, as always, you have to go through the testing pain to find out. And you can only do that buy buying the product since documentation is not available until you commit. The $55.00 is neither here nor there. The time factor is!
After endless searching, I’ve committed to Shopp and can only hope that the negative feedback relates to historical challenges
As a backup, I have also purchased Gravity Forms which, if Shopp falls over, I can hopefully use to enhance the functionality of ShopperPress.
I’ll report back in a week or so.
Hi David, That’s an interesting challenge you have. From what I’ve seen, Shopp is pretty flexible at managing product variations. I hope it works for you—and thanks for the useful updates on your progress…
Initial impressions:
Given that V1.2 is supposed to be released in ‘early December’, I’ve ignored 1.1.x and just headed straight for the latest beta of Shopp.
Yep – by far the most flexible and powerful WP cart I’ve seen. The backend leaves all the other alternatives I considered out in the cold.
The negative – at this stage – is all that power and no documentation. This is acknowledged in the beta release notes and promised ‘real soon now’. Obviously, If I had started with an earlier version, I assume the learning curve would be much easier.
I’d definitely recommend every developer look at this cart as a development milestone.
More in a week.
David Wilks
Latest update – support:
The ‘lack of support’ comments made here by others almost turned me away from this plugin. BUT, it had the functionality I needed so I decided to ‘take the plunge’. Maybe my experience is different but here it is:
Saturday morning. A minor but annoying issue. Submitted support request at 10:59am. Message said support hours are 9:00am to 5:00pm Monday to Friday with up to a 48 hour response time. Fair enough.
At 11:23am ‘Chris’ responded with a solution. That’s 24 minutes, not 24 hours!
For my money, I vote 10/10.
David Wilks
More good news on Shopp…
Firstly, V1.2 is close to final which is great because it really is an extraordinarily powerful cart. Nice to also see that the video tutorials have also been integrated into the beta version now.
Secondly, I approached Shopp to try to get a new gateway coded and am very pleased to say it’s a happening thing! The payment service is called PoliPayments (http://www.polipayments.com) and is gaining massive traction here in Australia at least due to it’s very low cost structure.
The bottom line is that I remain convinced that Shopp is head and shoulders above any other option for functionality while support continues to impress.
Hope it helps.
HI David
I am considering using shopp as well. I am pleased with their support so far, where as getshopped ignores emails.
What are you using for a theme for your shopp site?
Hi Lynne,
I’m using a custom theme but I tried 1.1.9 with a couple of other themes with no obvious issues. However, 1.2 beta has numerous display type bugs to I would tread carefully there.
I’m clinging on to the edge of a cliff waiting for the pre-release of 1.2 which was due in mid-December
My challenge is that I can’t see the point of moving all our product to 1.1.9 this late in the game, especially when 1.2 is a true generational upgrade with potential backward compatibility issues.
David Wilks
Another update…
Shopp 1.2RC (Release Candidate) was issued a couple of weeks back but the bug count has been high enough to push back the final release even further. We are also having issues getting it to run properly on our WPMU site. Advice from Shopp is that it is either our install or a conflict with another plugin. Neither appear to be the case.
Enter WPOnlineStore…
This is a new kid on the block but it’s determined to be the neighbourhood champion. If you haven’t looked at it yet, I suggest you do. It is an amazingly full featured cart. It’s free if you only need simple payment gateways and shipping. To upgrade both is only $40 anyway and both the add-ons are super comprehensive.
Tech support is as good as it gets – not only in terms of time but also quality of response. The developers will also get you set up for a very reasonable $45 but I don’t know the delay factor for that service. A day or a week???
The site states (and credits confirm) that this is a WP implementation of the mega popular osCommerce cart. The developers even offer a migration service from osCommerce to WP so I have to assume it matches the original feature for feature. In fact, I had to question the developer to be certain that this really was a WP plugin. The functionailty is so high I suspected it simply used hacks to access an external cart. Not so – it writes to the WP db as we have confirmed for ourselves.
If you’re just looking to sell T-Shirts, this plugin is an over-kill. But if you want to sell an entire range of clothing in every size and colour from multiple suppliers, this plugin can do it.
We are doing our testing at present and I’ll report back on my final thoughts later this week.
David Wilks
Thank you for compiling all of this info. It looks amazing (although I don’t understand alot of it
I am a dance instructor who is creating content to sell from my site. I will be offering videos, books, an ebook, a DVD home study course, retreats and local classes. I also want to be able to capture people’s name and email when they come to my site in exchange for a free ebook download. Do all shopping carts have this capability? I am brand new to this stuff. I was looking at 1shoppingcart.com. Is that a good one or are the ones you recommended better?
Thank you for your help!
I am a singer-songwriter and I’m rewriting my website in wordpress (theme twenty-ten). I would like to offer the following features:
- hear excerpts of my songs (I have about 50 at the moment)
- download the songs as mp3 on a “pay what you like” basis (possibly with small minimum)
- download the text with chords on a “pay what you like” basis (possibly with small minimum)
- order CDs (I have 2 but do not intend to produce (m)any in the future)
- shipping charge to add
- payment methods: Downloads – paypal; CDs – prepayment or against invoice, (no credit cards) plus ability to record who has paid what
I’d be very grateful if you could suggest plug-ins which might be suitable for this.
Thanks
James
Hi James
You should check out Wazala. Has everything you mentioned, and have gone the extra mile to adapt to music sales. The entire process is secure and nothing gets delivered until you get paid, either via PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net and COD/invoicing/wire transfer. You can even do digital sales with invoicing, and once you state your received the money the download takes place. Very customizable in those ways, and allows for ala carte or full album sales.
Works with any WP theme, as well as awesome support and the subscription is a low flat rate monthly fee.
www.wazala.com
Hi James,
If I were you, I would check out the Genesis theme for WP E-Commerce Dan mentions in this comment thread. Using that, with the donation model in WP E-Commerce, you’d be able to have a great music website that would allow people to pay whatever they like.
Hi,
I really enjoyed the article. I was just looking a bit of advice of which plugin to use for my specific requirements (I’m thinking Shopp),
I will be a bed company selling approx 100 products. I need widgets like Most Popular, Items on sale, Categories like different size beds etc etc,
Which one do you think I should go with, I prefer one with a one off payment for the license and has good online support and documentation.
Thanks for any help..
Hi Barry, Shopp is pretty good for what you described. It has plenty of useful widgets, doesn’t require a subscription to use, and has good support and documentation.
currently evaluating options for a tee shirt shop
can i ask why you guys went for wordpress and what shop you would recommend for retailing?
This article was amazing– I’m wondering if anyone can help me with these specific needs:
1) I use quickbooks as my credit card processor. So I’m looking for a shopping cart that is compatible with both wordpress and intuit merchant services. If that’s not possible, I’d appreciate any suggestions of other merchant accounts/gateways that are cost effective and integrate well with wordpress and quickbooks.
2) I sell live and online screenwriting classes, so shipping isn’t a concern. But payment plans are. So I’m looking for a cart that allows students to easily choose between payment plans and pay full options, and which is good for delivering digital goods.
3) I’m currently using woo themes “Bueno” theme and don’t really want to change my website’s theme. So I’m looking for a solution that will integrate well with my existing theme.
4) I’m computer savvy, but have limited technical knowledge and am doing all my own programming. So I need something that I can figure out.
I greatly appreciate any guidance you can give me.
jake
Hi Jacob, Thanks for your kind words. Why don’t you check out Cart66? It is good for handling digital downloads as well as seamless integration with any theme. It does not work Intuit merchant solutions, as far as I know, but it integrates with many payment processors that allow you to export transaction data in QuickBooks format.
Thank you M.K. for the great info. Are you familiar with WP Online Store? I was thinking about it but hesitant because it seems quite new.
Hi Terry, Thanks for your comment. I wasn’t aware of WP Online Store, but now it’s included in the list above.
Thanks, I look forward to a future review.
Great article! am using cart66 for our online store. However, I would have wished that Jigoshop came earlier
cart66, while being good, still lacks some things we users want, especially paying users =(
Hi Leo, Can you be more specific as to what exactly Cart66 lacks?
It seems to me that Cart66 lacks photo icons in the cart. You also cannot link back to the item from the cart.
are jigoshop or woo-comerce working with wpml ?
I’m the author of TurboCart.
TurboCart is a robust hosted, light weight shopping cart solution designed for simple integration within your website. It runs in the Heroku cloud application platform for speed, scalability and reliability. The downloadable content is delivered via Amazon S3.
At the moment i have a 60 day risk free trial to let people try it out
Hey MK
Just wanted to thank you for including us in this great list! Yes we do offer great support on digital product sales and offer some cool sampling capabilities for musicians selling music & merch in a single store. We also offer the pop up as an option, great coupon, shipping options and a mobile optimized store to name a few.
Again thanks for the mention, much appreciated!
Wazala Team
My pleasure. Thanks for your comment!