Steven Bowen
If you too are desirous to start your own online shop so that you can unleash your products to all those potential customers, then it is the proper time to get started with superior e-commerce plug-ins to reveal your online occurrence. You must be thinking that why to start with e-commerce plug-ins when there are number of ways. Yes, no doubt that there are countless ways to accomplish this, but specifically setting or launching the e-shop, if you have WordPress driven site, e-commerce plug-ins especially made for WordPress has its own significance.
We are dedicating this post with intension to assist you on your way to selling your products explaining the most superior e-commerce plug-ins for WordPress. These plug-in ranges frombasic to complex, from free to commercial each one providing tools that allow you to easily sell your wares on a WordPress-powered website. Jump through the entire list as presented below:
ShopperPress
ShopperPress is a turn-key ready “out of the box” shopping cart solution for WordPress which act as a one-stop solution for ecommerce in WordPress and let you start selling your products, services, and digital downloads online in a few minutes. It serves as the ideal solution for anyone starting their own online store selling their own products or services, affiliate products or even e-books, music or file downloads. With over 20 ready-made themes, it allows you to simply select your desired look, add products and start selling.
Features:
- Sell different products, services & downloads
- Easy on/off content, Free Lifetime Support, Community Forum Access
- Free Lifetime Upgrades, Free Video Tutorials, Theme Manuals
- Shipping, Tax, Coupons Codes, Promotions
- 20+ build in payment gateways
Ecwid
“Ecwid” which stands for “ecommerce widgets”, is a free plug-in for WordPress that is extremely easy to install and even easier to maintain. It is an e-commerce solution that can easily be added to any blog or Facebook profile offering the performance and flexibility needed. One thing you should note that Ecwid uses Ajax for nearly everything, and thus SEO could be affected and users who don’t have idea of JavaScript, they can find it impossible to use in their site.
Features:
- It is free e-shopping WordPress plug-in which can be easily integrated to any existing site or Facebook profile in minutes.
- It has AJAX everywhere and supports drag-and-drop.
- It can be mirrored on many sites at the same time enabling you to add your store to many sites, and manage it from one place.
- It has integration with social networks hence you can run your own store on Facebook, MySpace and many others.
- It is simple to use and maintain for both store owner and customer.
Cart66
The Cart66 is a renowned WordPress e-commerce plugin which makes selling easier than ever before. With this plug-in, you can sell electronics, digital downloads, videos, music, web hosting, legal services, collect membership fees, and more. It includes Amazon S3 integration so you can easily and reliably deliver digital downloads to your customers and PayPal integration allowing for Instant Payment Notification and delivery. It lets you set up your own merchant accounts and gateway services.
Features:
- Easily create multiple variations for a product
- Keep track of inventory for every product variation
- Create coupons codes to run promotions and sales in your store.
- Sell digital and physical products
- Free upgrades for life along with 1 year support
EShop
EShop is another full e-commerce system for WordPress packed with various features whose admin area is extremely simple to use and adding products, reviewing products and checking stats couldn’t be any easier. It is available free and the whole system is customizable so that you can customize it as per your own desire and give it an awesome look. The only downside to eShop is the payment options; you can only accept either PayPal, Payson or use eShop to take in payments for you. When using eShop as a payment method, you will not be able to print an invoice for the customer while with PayPal, you can.
Features:
- It utilizes WordPress pages or posts, and compatible with custom post types, to create products
- Various methods available for listing products, various shipping options, including by weight.
- Admin has access to an Order handling section
- Automatic emails on successful purchase
- User configurable email templates, Merchant gateways such as Authorize.net, PayPal, Payson, eProcessing Network, Webtopay, iDEAL and Cash/Cheque
- Basic Stock Control, Google Base Data creation, WPMU, Multisite compatible etc
WP Secure Downloads
Secure WordPress is a premium WordPress plug-in is designed specifically for managing and selling digital goods online and beefs up the security of WordPress installation by removing error information on login pages, adds index.html to plugin directories, hides the WordPress version and much more. It serves as the perfect shopping cart for selling software, music, artwork, documents, and anything else to be delivered as downloadable content. It boasts of several features such as automatic theme integration, a built-in shopping cart and subscription-based purchases etc.
Features:
- Removes error-information on login-page, Removes Windows Live Writer
- Adds index.php plugin-directory (virtual), Hides wp-version in backend-dashboard for non-admins
- Removes the wp-version, except in admin-area, Removes Really Simple Discovery
- Removes core update information for non-admins, Removes plugin-update information for non-admins
- Removes version on URLs from scripts and style sheets only on frontend
- Blocks any bad queries that could be harmful to your WordPress website
WP e-Commerce
WP e-Commerce is a free and one of the most used out WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin that lets customers buy your products, services and digital downloads online. It is the perfect e-commerce solution and is used by many complex and robust sites. With the help of this WP e-commerce plug-in you can accept manual payment, i.e. checks/money orders, PayPal Payments Standard, PayPal Payments Pro, PayPal Express Checkout, Google Checkout and Chronopay. The only shortcoming with this plug-in is with printing invoices, i.e. it offers no option to customize an invoice. But still, one can view the invoice and print it via the web browser.
WP e-Commerce is one of the most popular ecommerce plug-ins for WordPress. The plug-in comes with a variety of ready-made themes, but still fully supports the creation of your own custom themes. You can also customize your order forms, share products via social networking integration, organize products into multiple categories, and provide product variations (e.g. size, color) and much more. For all its features, WP e-Commerce installation keeps it simple, requiring no more effort than other WordPress plug-ins; only there is a need to upload to the plug-ins directory and install from within WP Admin. It is a fast and free, yet feature-rich e-commerce solution for you.
Features:
- It is available free.
- It accepts various payment gateway including PayPal Payments Standard, PayPal Payments Pro, PayPal Express Checkout, Google Checkout and Chronopay etc.
- Suitable for many complex as well as robust sites.
MarketPress
MarketPress is the best designed and most powerful ecommerce/shopping cart plugin available for WordPress today. It keeps your database tables clean by using custom post types and fields for product data. It is populated with several features such as multiple product images, coupon codes, custom email templates, multiple currency support and customizable widgets, powerful API for extending functionality and so on and so forth. It also enables you to create your own custom payment modules or collect a percentage of sales from network stores.
Features:
- Multiple payment gateways including PayPal, Authorize.net, Google checkout, 2checkout, Money bookers and more.
- Works great with any WordPress theme and looks great with AJAX goodness
- Fully internationalized by the WPML crew
- Sell real objects, or digital downloads (with limits and tracking!), with ease
- Shipping, coupons, Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking, sale pricing, unlimited product variations, and much more
Shopp ($55)
Shopp is an excellent e-commerce plugin for WordPress that adds a feature-rich online store to your WordPress-powered website or blog. This plug-ins let’s you to get your store up and running in minutes. It is extremely easy to install and use, and provides a cleaner interface. It seamlessly integrates into WordPress website and looks and works like it was meant to be part of WordPress all along. It is packed with several promising features as mentioned below:
Features:
- Shortcode support for placing products and categories in blog posts or pages
- Allows to add multiple hierarchical categories without leaving the product editor
- Handles multiple product images with easy drag-and-drop sorting, and offers innovative product variation management
- Basic inventory management and low-stock e-mail alerts
- Support for selling digital & physical products and donations
- Order history with customizable labels for order processing status
PHPurchase ($49)
PHPurchase is a paid e-commerce plug-in for WordPress costing $49 for the Standard edition and $99 for the Pro version. It is a very good e-commerce solution and likewise Shopp, it seems to be of better quality as well as slightly easier to use than the free versions. It accepts payment gateways including PayPal Website Payments Standard, PayPal Website Payments Professional, and PayPal Express Checkout, eProcessing Network, Chase Paymentech, Quantum Gateway and Authorize.net. It comes with a very rich set of features that lets you easily and powerfully manage your online store with WordPress.
Features:
- Sell digital and physical products
- Collect recurring payments for subscriptions, memberships, and payment plans.
- Set up coupon codes for promotions.
- Build a complete membership site with PHPurchase
- Sell subscriptions, memberships, and payment plans
- Set up promotions, coupons, and shipping sales
Jigoshop
Jigoshop is another great, free e-commerce plugin for WordPress developed by professionals with years of experience delivering online shops for global brands. It boasts of a lengthy set of features giving you complete control over managing your inventory, coupon codes and shipping rates. It includes a couple of handy sidebar widgets for product search and filtering and also supports multiple currencies, tax collection and various localization options.
Features:
- Elegant, lightweight code built upon core WordPress functionality.
- Detailed order and stock reporting via graphs and dashboard widgets.
- One-step-checkout, filterable products, bundles of short codes & widgets.
- Allows creating a unique store using built in widgets and short codes.
Conclusion
Whatever the e-commerce solution, we have mentioned above are perfect for small- and medium-sized projects; picking It an e-commerce solution depends upon your necessity and requirement of the project. It also depends upon your skills and knowledge you posses for running, developing, and customizing the e-stores.Anyway, all the above mentioned e-commerce solution are perfect to use in your forthcoming project.
