ShopperPress is very impressive shopping cart plugin/theme hybrid. Even though the software is very customizable and feature-rich, it is still easy to use thanks to plenty of inline documentation and wizards. ShopperPress even has an initial configurations and setup wizard that takes you through the process step-by-step.
This shopping cart solution is also very affordable at $79 for a completely unrestricted license that entitles you to lifetime upgrades and support.
Installation
ShopperPress is packaged as a theme, so you install it as you would install any other theme. Once activated, it takes over WordPress. You’ll see a bunch new menu items and screens. Enter your license key and you’ll gain full access to the software.
It is amazing how well ShopperPress takes care of initial setup and configurations. There is a step-by-step wizard that takes you through the configurations of your site and makes sure that all of your settings are done correctly. And there’s even a “reset to factory settings” option that reverts the pages, categories, and settings of your site back to what ShopperPress requires.
Technical Support & Documentation
When you buy ShopperPress, you gain access to the VIP Members Area where you can receive support from multiple channels, such as: members club chat room, community forum, live chat with the developer, or by submitting a support ticket.
The forum is moderated by Mark Fail, the developer, and his team of friendly support staff. But it’s a community support forum — meaning: if you have an urgent technical issue (not related to customization), you better submit a support ticket.
The documentation for this shopping cart solution also comes in multiple forms:
- a 20-page PDF file that’s downloadable from the VIP Members Area
- In-dashboard help pop-ups
- Videos & tutorials also available from the VIP Members Area
Each one of these documentation forms is done with high quality.
How It Integrates with WordPress
As stated earlier, ShopperPress takes over WordPress. After activation, you’ll no longer have WordPress’ “Add Post” or “Manage Posts”. They’ll be replaced with “Add Product” and “Manage Products”. Your WordPress categories and tags will be used for organizing products now — not posts.
ShopperPress creates only one new table in WordPress’ database. ShopperPress uses WordPress custom post types and settings API extensively to manage all the other types of data that it creates, which is the proper way of doing things.
Themes and Styles
You can customize the appearance of your ShopperPress-powered store by downloading one of the child themes. There are more than 20 of them — catering to: summer fashion, wine, cars, clothes, furniture, herbals, pets, t-shirts, software, romantic items, photos, mobile phones, kitchens, hockey, lights, golf, flower, wedding, ebooks, digital goods, cameras, babies, and others.
You can see screenshots of all of these themes here.
The layout and widgets and other aspects of appearance of each theme can further be customized from the display settings page of ShopperPress.
Product Variation Management
While ShopperPress is able to handle product variations, the process of adding a lot of variations can be tedious. All variations are added as comma-separated list of items. You can set the price for each variation, but you don’t have inventory control over quantity, and you cannot have a specific shipping rate per variation.
Shipping and Tax Management
Shipping management in ShopperPress is flexible and practical. First you specify general options regarding how you’d like to manage shipping in your store. For example, do you want to enable shipping at all (maybe you only sell digital goods)? Do you want to enable live shipping calculation with FedEx and UPS? Do you want to calculate shipping based on weight or price? Etc.
Then for each one of these general settings, you have specific settings, like setting your FedEx integration, price-based shipping, and so forth. You can also set a specific shipping rate for each country.
As for tax management, it is very flexible, but some merchants may find it tedious to configure. You can specify a tax rate for each country, and for some countries (such as Canada, United States, and United Kingdom), you can even specify a tax rate per State or Province.
ShopperPress tax management is tedious because it doesn’t allow you to group countries, states or provinces by zones for which you can specify rates.
Screenshot: shipping configurations in ShopperPress
Screenshot: taxes and checkout configurations in ShopperPress
Admin User-Interface Design
The admin UI of ShopperPress takes nothing from WordPress. It is completely custom-built. Using ShopperPress doesn’t even feel like you’re within WordPress.
Accepted Payment Methods
ShopperPress provides merchants with a long list of accepted payment methods: PayPal Standard, PayPal Pro, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, WorldPay, Protx/SegPay, CC Avenue, AlertPay, eWay (UK, NZ, API), 2Checkout, PayFast, PayWeb, NoChex, ePay, Realex, MoneyBookers, MonsterPay, Setcom, PayTrace, and manual bank transfer.
Selling Digital Downloads
It is possible to sell digital product via ShopperPress, but the software doesn’t provide enough tools for managing downloadable products. You have to upload your products manually in the designated downloads folder and then specify the name of the uploaded file when you’re creating a product. You cannot limit the number of downloads or provide an expiration period for the download. On top of that, there is not enough documentation on how to setup your ShopperPress site to handle downloadable products.
Offering Discount Coupon Codes
ShopperPress doesn’t have any means of creating or managing coupon codes.
Affiliates Management
ShopperPress has no built-in capability of managing affiliates and there is no mention on how to integrate it with any.
Multi-Language Support
ShopperPress ships with English, French and German. It is also possible to translate it to any other language by editing the text in a single PHP file.
Who’s Using It
I managed to find a couple of sites that are using ShopperPress, such as Lady Rider, The Super Mega Store, Deal Hippy, and Art Stop Shop.
Money Matters
For $79 only, you can get a unrestricted copy of ShopperPress. Your license entitles you to unlimited, lifetime upgrades and support. And you can install the software on as many websites as you wish. But keep in mind that there are no refund!
It feels wierd using Shopperpress – I use it for one of my sites but the business model keeps evolving and I keep guessing. I like things simple. When I install a free plugin, its done and I am set. I do not need to keep guessing about what constitutes new pricing and all the new things going on at premiumpress. As long as you are a single site owner and don’t mind being controlled by a license and feel like you are being watched, then it is OK. I have several sites, and although I paid for and purchased shopperpress, for some reason I am not comfortable using it for more than that 1 site because I feel that things keep happening – new pricing models, then something about child themes. I did try one update and the results looked nothing like my original site so I quickly reverted – thank god I had a backup. I just like stability. I realize people have to make money – but it would be good have a grandfathered structure so customers don’t get caught in a net of confusion.
This is probably the biggest load of crap I’ve read on-line in a long time.
ShopperPress is a piece of junk. Period.
Bragging about the “Membership” is also junk. From an email I sent to a client who’s running ShopperPress:
“In the main “Community Forum”, where everybody leaves their general questions and comments, I did a search on Google Analytics. The premise here is to get rid of the WP Google Analytics plug-in because it’s obviously not working within ShopperPress. Conducting a search on the keywords “Google Analytics” gives me a long list of conversations with a handful of titles specifically containing those exact keywords. None of them, Tim, not one single message thread had anything to do with the topic of “Google Analytics”.
Example: Conducting a search on “Google Analytics”, the second topic-thread title is: “Google Analytics Setting up Funnels” (see attached). Clicking brings me half-way down the message thread and the words “google”, “analytics” or “funnels” do not appear anywhere on the page.”
Google Analytics, the plug-in for WordPress – doesn’t work in ShopperPress.
Check out the plugin to let your website be more viewable/friendly to mobile devices?! Forget it. They won’t work either.
Want to do some customizing of your own the ShopperPress skin itself – find a shamrock, kiss the Blarney Stone and hang a horseshoe over your front door…You’ll need it.
The client has agreed – he’s dumping ShopperPress and we’re going with something else.
You should do some research before your start bragging it up on products, Buddy. Makes your website more credible!
…just sayin’.
So you’re calling my content a load of crap because of a few issues that could’ve been avoided if you or your client just invested a bit of time on doing some research?
ShopperPress has built-in integration with Google Analytics. As for why the Google Analytics for WordPress by Yoast doesn’t work with ShopperPress, that is a very broad question. Just because this issue hasn’t been raised before in the support forum of ShopperPress is no reason to throw a fit publicly.
I also mention on the main shopping cart comparison page that plugins of this type, i.e. plugin/theme hybrids, aren’t very flexible when it comes to appearance customization.
I’m running shopperpress on a clients site right now, and I have to say I am impressed.
Analytics works IN the theme, its built in.
A beautiful mobile theme is built in too. Better than any plug in.
I did have a few issues, but after emailing support (who emailed back within the hour) the small niggles were worked out quickly and turns out it was because I had made an error.
The above posters IMO have not actually spent the time to learn a new theme before giving up and posting complaints on other blogs.
I am having problems with a shopperpress site. If you have sometime maybe you could help out?
When people go to check out they get this
”
UPS Rates – Version 1.0
You did not specify a UPS Access Key
”
and they are not able to place the order.
Is there a way to disable this?
Hi James, This is not a support channel for ShopperPress. I’m just a user, like you. Best you contact the developer directly.