When it comes to wordpress shopping cart plugins, there are a lot of choices to consider. Often times you also have to choose a separate theme to go along with it or try customizing your own. With so many choices available, it will be interesting to watch which ones develop and improve the most over the next few months and years. I will try to update this page with the most recent information, but bear in mind I might miss a few things that are newly added occasionally.
Here are Our Top Picks for WordPress Ecommerce Solutions for November 2011:
JigoShop
This is a pretty solid FREE shopping cart that works well out of the box. It has been just a few weeks since I last tested this plugin and already I’ve seen it’s added many new features since I last used it.
Price: Free – Can vary between $5-$250 depending on additional extensions, templates, or support package
License: 100% GPL.
Admin Interface: Easy to set up and use, provides customer information with order information and some sales stats. Just right on the options – not too many, not too little.
Product Inventory: Creating products with multiple variations is a little complicated at first to understand attributes and how they work, but it definitely is one of the better plugins for handling multiple product variations for inventory purposes and grouping others together. Amazon s3 extension available for large product downloads.
Shipping and Taxes: A lot of different options to choose from make it very flexible – additional extensions available for others.
Payment Gateways: PayPal Standard and several other payment gateways available built in. Many other popular ones, such as PayPal Pro are available as paid extensions.
Themes and Templating: Relatively easy to theme and it already has several templates compatible with popular theme frameworks such as Genesis and WooThemes as well as many others that look pretty good. There also seems to already be some really nice themes for Jigoshop on ThemeForest as well.
Marketing: Coupons and promotions are simple to configure, they also have a few extensions available for SEO and cross sells and upsells .
Documentation and Support: Community forums, online documentation and videos, and premium priority support available if you need it.
Where to Buy/Learn More: Jigoshop.com
Tips & Tricks HQ WP eStore Plugin:
Especially for digital goods, this is a very flexible ecommerce plugin for wordpress which features encrypted links and Amazon s3 integration, also seamlessly integrates seamlessly with their Affiliate & Membership plugins.
Price: $49.95 or bundle w/membership and affiliate platform for just $89.95
License: Use on Unlimited Sites You Own
Admin Interface: Easy to set up and use, provides customer information with order information and some sales stats
Product Inventory: Can do multiple variations with price differences if necessary, though requires piped custom values. There is not much for inventory control as this plugin primarily focuses on digital content. One of my top choices for digital goods, especially if you are selling big graphics files – Amazon s3 and multiple product links will make your life much easier if you have customers with slow internet connections.
Shipping and Taxes: Shipping and Taxes are limited to flat rates either for all products or for individual products. You can also use PayPal profile based shipping and tax calculation.
Payment Gateways: PayPal Standard, other payment gateways available for additional cost as beta release to existing customers.
Themes and Templating: Currently not many themes support this plugin out of the box, but you can easily design your site using css and a few shortcodes with just about any theme. More complex sites or customization of the default shortcodes may require custom theme templates and strong knowledge of php. I prefer template files vs. shortcodes, but either way it’s not too complicated.
Marketing: You can easily integrate with WP Affiliate Platform plugin, also has coupon codes you can create.
Documentation and Support: Excellent – plenty of online step by step tutorials and videos, plus a strong support forum
Where to Buy/Learn More: TipsandTricks-HQ.com
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free plugin from WooThemes, a trusted brand in WordPress. My first reaction was that it appears to be a “wooified” version of the free GetShopped/Jigoshop plugins, and that’s exactly what it is. The only reason it made it to this list is because WooThemes is a reputable WordPress brand, and I trust them that it will actually work. It still lacks a lot of features, but it’s free, sort of. (You’ll likely want to add some extensions if you need any extra features – and their current ala cart model can add up quickly)
Price: Between Free – $300+ depending on extensions, templates, or support needed
License: 100% GPL, Use on Unlimited Sites
Admin Interface: Easy enough to get setup, very user friendly with custom meta boxes and custom post types and options panels, and detailed order reporting.
Product Inventory: Product variations and inventory control is available, though not perfect. I would not recommend this plugin for digital goods until they can support multiple file downloads or Amazon s3 integration in a shared hosting environment.
Shipping and Taxes: Flat rate built in, Per product shipping and Table Rate Shipping available for additional charge. Taxes are easy to configure.
Payment Gateways: Just about any payment gateway you could want is available, though many require $50 for each additional one.
Themes: One free theme out of the box to use as an example for customization, also many others by WooThemes. Because it uses custom post types, you most likely will be able to integrate with other themes that use custom post types for a shopping cart plugin with some tweaking.
Marketing: Email newsletters available at additional cost, also comes with Flash banners and coupons.
Documentation and Support: Documentation could be a little more detailed, but you’ll get up and running. Support forum threads are generally answered within 24 hours, but there is no “open” support forum – only paid members.
Where to Buy/Learn More: WooCommerce
This is a nice and easy to use plugin that integrates easily with any theme. I think the only reason you don’t hear more about this plugin is because they have no affiliate program, so there’s really no benefit to go out of your way to tell others about it. All in all though, I’m confident this one has potential to work for most people without too many tears.
Price: $55-$150 for Single, $250-$350 for Developer depending on modules needed
License: 100% GPL, single support key or developer support key
Admin Interface: Very clean and logical to use. They have a live admin demo on their site you can play with here before purchasing.
Product Inventory: Not sure how variations work entirely with inventory management, but you can set them up for each item pretty easily. There is an additional module for $25 if you need digital file downloads with Amazon s3 integration. Nice options for customers to sort and find products.
Shipping and Taxes: Plenty of shipping and tax options built in, you can also purchase addition modules for UPS, FedEx, etc.
Payment Gateways: PayPal Standard & Express and 2checkout included, several others available for $25 each (such as PayPal Pro or Authorize.net).
Themes and Templating: Comes with a few plugin/post templates to customize look and feel, seems to work out of the box with a number of themes already without advanced customization.
Marketing: Many coupon/sales promotion options available, SEO friendly URLs,
Documentation and Support: Documentation and theme support forum available to members.
Where to Buy/Learn More: Shopplugin.net
Formerly PHPpurchase, it has a very easy to use and uncluttered admin and is has both a free and paid version. It integrates with tons of applications, such as affiliate programs and Gravity Forms if you wanted to create a custom product based on uploaded images from users.
Price: Free, Premium licenses between $69-$299
License: 100% GPL, single, multi-site, and developer licenses available
Admin Interface: Easy to use and setup, store reporting and user management available also
Product Inventory: Can do product variations, though not perfect for inventory tracking for variations based on skus, integration with Amazon s3 possible for digital files. Membership/Services/and Subscriptions are also available.
Shipping and Taxes: Plenty of shipping and tax options built in for region based ecommerce
Payment Gateways: PayPal Standard & Express in the free version, all major gateways in the premium version.
Themes and Templating: Not many themes to choose from, but can work with just about any theme. Products can be added to posts or pages easily, so you have some flexibility without necessarily needing to be a php developer.
Marketing: Promotions panel available for sales and coupons, tightly integrates with affiliate plugins and marketing plugins
Documentation and Support: Documentation and theme support forum available to members.
Where to Buy/Learn More: Cart66.com
This is one of the original free wordpress ecommerce plugins that has probably influenced many of the others we listed here. I have not yet tried version 3.8.7+, but it’s promising to see with each release cleaner code and minor improvements to the overall user interface. Because it is free and there are so many users, this is a plugin that heavily relies on the community for improvements and support and can be buggy at times, which makes it best suited for people who know php. Because it has so many features for free right out of the box, It can be a very powerful shopping cart solution, but for the average wordpress user it may cause a lot of frustration to get it to work reliably.
Price: Free, Premium upgrades and templates from $40-$300 depending on needs
License: 100% GPL
Admin Interface: Fairly Easy to use and setup with basic reporting and order and product management. A lot of plugin options, so may miss some steps which can cause cart to not function properly.
Product Inventory: Can do detailed product variations, though kind of confusing to configure at first, integration with Amazon s3 possible for digital files.
Shipping and Taxes: Supports all major shipping methods and tax options
Payment Gateways: Supports most major PayPal gateways right out of the box, no upgrade or extensions necessary, which is very nice. Gold Cart upgrade adds several more payment gateways as well.
Themes and Templating: GetShopped.org’s plugin really shines in the theme department, as it has been around for a long time and many theme developers have created shopping cart specific themes for this plugin that add some extra design elements. Specific theme template files make it easy to customize how your products are displayed, though php and html knowledge is recommended. There are also a number of free plugin add-ons by the community.
Marketing: Accepts coupons, integrates with affiliate plugins and marketing plugins
Documentation and Support: Documentation could be a little more detailed, but since things are rapidly changing it could be awhile. I have heard mixed things about support for this plugin, in my course of testing it I did not need it but see that premium/priority support is available.
Where to Buy/Learn More: GetShopped.org
Other WordPress eCommerce Plugins for Consideration:
WPMUDev Marketpress: It’s main unique feature is it allows you to create multiple stores with one global checkout and collect commission on sales, though it does have its limitations and you will definitely need to have some experience with WPMU. I especially like how this plugin handles product variations, though I had to make a LOT of customizations to get products to display the way I wanted (products with variations don’t show a price!). Because it was relatively easy to customize compared to many others I’ve tried to hack at, and it does work, I’d consider this a good clean “starting framework” but it is missing a lot of features for shipping, taxes, coupons, payment gateways and most of the other things you would expect/demand in a shopping cart, even in the paid version. It’s lightweight and easy to use – but it might be too light weight for a lot of people.
Tribulant Cart: I just recently learned about this cart. I can’t speak from experience how well it works. (I am still too exhausted from trying out all of the other plugins and shopping carts that did not make it to this list yet to try it out completely!) But, their screenshots makes it look pretty easy to set up and configure. I have heard a lot of good things about it, and reading their support forums I can see items are updated/checked regularly and the documentation seems pretty straight forward and easy to follow. It’s also affordable compared to some others at only $55. It’s on my “plugins to watch and check out” list.
Are there any solid and reliable, easy to use and feature packed wordpress ecommerce shopping cart plugins we may have missed? Share them in the comments below. We will try to continue to keep this page updated as we try out more and see new improvements for each plugin. Feel free to share or bookmark this page.