WordPress is quickly becoming a fully-featured, powerful and dynamic content management system and not just a blogging tool. The geniuses over at WordPress.org are continually improving and expanding the codex while miraculously protecting the speed, simplicity and ease of WordPress.
In tandem with the developers, theme creators are continually pushing the limits of WordPress to new heights. As we move into this new era of WordPress uses, the idea of creating e-commerce applications in WordPress is expanding rapidly. We looked at the current options and selected our top choices when selecting a WordPress shopping cart.
WordPress Shopping Cart
Key Features:
- A full shopping cart (not just a payment processor), allowing users to add and remove products from their cart and then “checkout”.
- Integrates with WordPress Affiliate Software
- Integrates with Paypal and 2Checkout
- Integrates with Nexgen gallery
Check out the forum for some insight into user experiences with this plugin.
ShopperPress Theme/Plugin
Key Features
- Affiliate support
- Support for drop shipping products
- Software or product download support
- Free trial version
Check out the forum for some insight into user experiences with this plugin.
Zack Design WordPress Shopping Cart
There hasn’t been an update on this page since 2007 but we thought we’d let you make your own decision.
WordPress E-Commerce Plugin
Key Features
- Boasting 500,000 downloads
- Integrates with Social Networking services
- In addition to Paypal, offers Google Checkout, Payment Express and Authorize.net as payment gateway options
- Single page checkout designed to help distractable customers
Check out the forum for some insight into user experiences with this plugin.
eShop Shopping Cart Plugin
Key Features
- Uses the existing WordPress framework (products are posts or pages)
- Downloadable products and download statistics
- Stock control
- Works with WPMU
- Supports Authorize.net, Paypal, Payson, eProcessingNetwork, Webtopay, iDEAL and Cash/Cheque
Check out the forum for some insight into user experiences with this plugin.
YAK for WordPress
Key Features
- Also turns posts into products
- Product categories (using post categories)
- Order sorting
- Promotion support
- SSL Support
Check out the forum for some insight into user experiences with this plugin.
Keith from Find Blog Ideas
good to know for future reference, E-junkie seems to be a good choice for selling electronic products like e-books, 5 dollars a month.
Jason from Edmonton Movers
These are some great options that are fairly easy to implement. I personally prefer Zen Cart. Though it’s not exactly made for WordPress, it is still possible to integrate it with WordPress because they’re both written in PHP. Here’s a good guide I found for integrating Zen Cart into WP:
http://www.joshdavisblog.com/2009/03/integrating-wordpress-zen-cart
Jeff from freelance blogger
This is good to know. I was looking for an ecommerce plugin for WordPress and found 6! What a bonus. WordPress Shopping Cart should do the trick.
Valleri from Cleveland Insurance
Which of these shopping carts offers the ability to keep users on your site with your own SSL? Paypal always kind of turned me off. But 2CO is not bad considering they are a fellow Ohio company.
Still, I think it is important to be professional and accept payments on your site vs a third party.
Teena from V8 Supercars
This is a good guide for our future use. Thank you for sharing this information.
R Kumar from earn money online
A good list of options for shopping carts. There are a few free options as well that are available for integration with WordPress. A mention about a few such carts would have been helpful.
lazygirl
Believe it or not, I had no idea that WordPress has shopping cart plugins. Very, very cool. While I don’t sell anything on my blog, this is still awesome to know. Thanks!
George from iPad
Good informations on this blog. This shopping thing was a “long term fact” on my todolist. Nice I was able to fix it now
sted
wordpress is a tough nut for me…blogger is much easier for my simple postings….
Samantha from Drop Shipping for Dummies
Wow I had no idea you could have a shopping cart in wordpress!
Richard from Broadband Plans
I’ve used WP Ecommerce quite a few times now and while not perfect it does a pretty good job for store with a reasonable number of items. I love WordPress but for a totally dedicated online store I would go with WordPress
Sharon from Edmonton Plumber
The shopping cart is a great idea, however one must wonder how helpful it really is in the long run. Will it be secure? Is it the best way to upgrade? I love wordpress, but I’m always wary when things move out of their “norm”
readbud
I didn’t know wordpress supported shopping carts, I always thought Joomla was for that. Thanks for the interesting fact and read – great blog!
Josh from Real Estate Corporation
I’ve spent the past days testing many of these, and I’m sad to say that the support, install instructions, and other assistance that should exist for all the free WP shopping cart platforms are weak, at best. Time to dig deeper and play with some of the paid ones . . . they better raise the bar or I’m sticking with ejunkie (does a great job, BTW!)
Jill from Providence Shopping
Wordpress seems pretty cool, but I haven’t dabbled enough with it I think. My shopping site has been coming along nicely, but I do need to make a blog for it though, so I need to start “shopping” around for blog creation sites. I’ve heard wordpress and blogspot are best. I may also need a shopping cart down the road as well. Thanks.
Robert from wordpress themes
If you handle a small inventory I think the plugin could handle it, but for large quantities I think the wordpress database wont be scalable enough.
sam
I tried a lot of WP shopping plugins in order to replace xt commerce with wordpress. But I haven´t found the right one yet. I hope someday somebody programs ONE plugin that suits to all my needs.
Bob Jenson from Wellington Web Design
I’ll be doing a lot of e-commerce sites but currently using Joomla with VirtueMart. I’m very happy with it, apart from there’s not much support on the VM site of things (although that may improve soon).
Do you have any opinions on WP with this plugin vs Joomla and VM?
Cheers,
Bob.
Cyrus
Hi Bob,
I have used VM quite a bit in my Joomla! days. It did the trick, but usually offered way more than I needed. And you’re right a robust support community is the difference between a good and bad piece of code.
I have used WP eShop on a live site and was very happy with it.
Regards,
Cyrus
Bob from Wellington Web Design
Thanks for the reply Cyrus. I’ll check WP and eShop out!
Cheers,
Bob.
Angela from Freelance webdesign
I simply can’t believe the WP E-Commerce plugin has been downloaded more than half a MILLION times! That is just huge! Unbelievable.
Thanks for this extensive list, but which one would you recommend, Cyrus? The e-shop then?
Cyrus
Hi Angela,
I have used eShop the most and would recommend that one.
Regards,
Cyrus
Matt Vincik
We have been working with wordpress for a few years now. We recently started using a plugin from Tribulant Software. It has by far been the most impressive software out of anything we have tested. I have even contacted their support team with recommendations for their next software releases and they get back pretty quick with a friendly response. I highly recommend that you check it out.
David
Great information on WP, I had no idea about its ecommece potential,thanks!
Kathleen from Kids Tables and Chairs
Your suggestions are great! But you may also want to inlude the osCommerce tool too. Aside from the features that you have mentioned on the other shopping cart plug in, it has the unlimited products and categories, newsletter subscription, and payment processing which I find essential specially if you want to keep regular customers on your web site.
emily from label
I agree for OsCommerce, lot of people forget it but it has a very good shopping cart plugin as well. Anyway, we can all agree that shopping cart is definitly a key component.
Thomas Eilander
For now I’d rather use WordPress for Blogsites and not for E-commerce sites. I’ll check these out and maybe I change my mind.