GetShopped is one of the first ever WordPress shopping cart plugins, so having gone through all of these years of operation, the plugin is refined and full of practical ecommerce features, not to mention it’s WordPress’ most popular shopping cart plugin!
The plugin was renamed recently from WP e-Commerce to GetShopped.
This is a well-rounded shopping cart application, but lack of newb-friendly support makes it best suitable for experienced developers who’ll know their way around technical difficulties.
Installation
Installation of the free GetShopped plugin is as simple as any other WordPress plugin. But then you’ll probably have to install the premium add-ons to get an actually functioning store. You have to FTP your upgrades to the designated directory. Once that’s done, enter your API key to activate the premium add-ons.
The installation process of GetShopped could use some more polishing.
Technical Support & Documentation
The support material for GetShopped is fragmented. Half of it is on getshopped.org, while the other half is on instinct.co.nz (the older site for the plugin). As you’re browsing either one of those sites, you’ll randomly find yourself directed to another one and vice versa. It’s kinda confusing.
Getting one-on-one technical support with GetShopped is not easy. You’re only entitled to a single support instance. So, use your support credit wisely. You can also try your luck at the community forums, but most questions there go unanswered. Remember that the base plugin of GetShopped is free.
The self-help material for GetShopped is quite useful, though. You got a few free videos and comprehensive FAQs and documentation pages.
If none of the above works, you can try contacting one of the GetShopped consultants listed on the website.
How It Integrates with WordPress
GetShopped properly uses WordPress custom post types to manage products, product tags, product categories, variations, and coupons.
The plugin creates some WordPress pages to facilitate the buying process. All in all, GetShopped uses WordPress API pretty well.
Ability to Specify Product Variations
To add product variations in GetShopped, you first go to the dedicated variations screen and create variation sets.
GetShopped handles variations in a very practical manner. After you’ve added your variation sets, you can then go to the product and add them. If you have two variation sets, one with 3 options and another one with 2 options, GetShopped will calculate that you have 6 variations of the same product. You can then specify a weight, stock count, price, and SKU for each one.
Shipping and Tax Management
GetShopped gives you several useful options for shipping. You can calculate shipping by a flat rate for each continent, or by the price of the order, or by weight of the items. You can also integrate GetShopped with Australia Post, UPS or USPS to get live rates based on weight and customer location. Integration with FedEx is also available as a $25 add-on.
GetShopped also has full support for tax management. You can set a separate tax rate for each region you ship to and specify per-product tax rates.
Admin User-Interface Design
GetShopped admin UI is well organized and easy to navigate. You have one top level menu for adding products, and a second menu item under WordPress settings to configure the plugin.
I’ve noticed some glitches in a few screens but other than that, the plugin takes advantage of WordPress admin UI standards and works pretty well.
Accepted Payment Methods
GetShopped supports ChronoPay, Google Checkout, PayPal Express, PayPal Website Payments Standard, and PayPal Pro.
Selling Digital Downloads
GetShopped handles the selling of downloadable products pretty well. While you’re creating a product, you can add multiple files to it. The files will be uploaded to a special directory in your wp-content, and they will be protected from unauthorized access.
You can limit the number of downloads for the products and you can lock them to the IP of the person who made the purchase, but you cannot set an expiration date for the link.
Offering Discount Coupon Codes
You can create three types of discount coupons with GetShopped — a percentage discount, a fixed amount discount, or a free shipping. Each one of these can have a start and end date.
You can deactivate a coupon once it’s been used, but you cannot set a specific limit to the number of uses.
GetShopped also allows you to create conditions for accepting coupons. For example, you may wanna accept coupons for specific items, cart quantities, or cart totals.
Sidebar Widgets
GetShopped comes with a few different widgets for achieving various things in your online store.
Shopping Cart widget displays the cart contents as well as checkout links in the sidebar.
Price Range widget allows customers to narrow down their product search using price as a criteria.
Product Tags widget allows customers to filter your store’s product based on tags.
Product Categories is like Product Tags, but for categories.
Specials widget displays products on sale.
Latest Products displays your store’s latest products.
Donations widget displays products in your store that are donation products.
Themes and Styles
GetShopped is the most designed-for shopping cart plugin. You can find plenty of themes for it on the plugin’s site and outside.
If you can’t find a theme that you like, GetShopped allows you to design your own theme. There are some pages on GetShopped.org explaining how you can go about creating your own theme, but they’re far from comprehensive.
Affiliates Management
The developers of GetShopped have created an affiliates management add-on that can be integrated with the cart. The add-on plugin costs $100!!!
Multi-Language Support
Another benefit of GetShopped’s popularity is that it’s already available in several different languages, including Czech, Danish, German, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Croatian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Turkish. (This is the longest list of translations available for any plugin I’ve reviewed.)
If you don’t see your language here, you can make your own translation.
Who’s Using It
Many online stores are using GetShopped as you can see in the showcase. The list there includes some stores that seem to be actually getting some traffic and sales, like City Surf, Chippi and Chilli, Pedal Play, and, the site that GetShopped is most proud of, IconDock.com.
Money Matters
The base GetShopped plugin can be downloaded from WordPress.org and it is completely free. However, most serious online store owners will probably need one or more premium add-ons. The add-ons are available at various rates, averaging at around $50 each. So, expect to spend $50 or more if you’re planning to use this plugin.
Your purchase of any premium add-ons entitles you to one instance of support only. And you get free updates for life.
Everything is GPL licensed, so you’re free to do with it whatever you want, but there are no refunds.
Lack of support, and a poorly designed forum, have been a problem for me. What cart did you choose as an alternative? I find there is NO GetShopped support from Dec 22 to Jan 9! If you have premium support, they may help if they have a chance over the holiday. Really? They expect peeps to pay for a two week+ turnaround? I chose it because I need digital download capability, but it doesn’t work. They apparently had the same problem on their own site a few months back, so I’m in good company, but where do I go now?
This product is great if you can get support. When I bought their product (i bought the gold cart) I got 1 support token, which gives you one opportunity to get direct support. I used it, and the support was ok. I then I had another issue arise. So I went back to their site to find out I needed to purchase more support tokens in order to get more direct support. Well I tried for over 30 minutes looking on the site to find out where you can buy these so called support tokens….couldn’t find them anywhere. So I tried asking on the forums…a week passes and no reply. I created another post….3 weeks pass and no reply. I finally created a third post…guess…no reply. I have since switched to another shopping cart due to losing one of my clients because I could not help them from the lack of support at Get Shopped. So be warned, if you buy this product the support is terrible and could cost you clients in the end.