Two Impressive Ecommerce Plug-ins For WordPress

I’m asked frequently what ecommerce plug-ins I have used and recommend for WordPress. There are several options, but two stand out.

WP e-Commerce Plug-in For WordPress

wpecommerce WP e-Commerce is a free plug-in and can be installed right from the plug-in section of your hosted WordPress admin tool. There are several modules for this product including drop shipping, digital downloads, members only, and an affiliate option. These modules are reasonably priced, but can add up if your trying to be cost conscious.

Support for this plug-in comes from a forum on their site. Understand that a majority of questions about product issues are answered by community members. The website also encourages you to buy a documentation file for $35. I’ve never seen this before, but I suppose it’s their way of reducing the need to answer support questions. I should also mention the documentation isn’t written by the plug-in developer, but rather a user of the product.

If e-commerce isn’t your WordPress sites sole function, I would use WP e-Commerce. It’s simplicity and feature rich free version should be enough for the casual seller. A list of features can be found here.

Shopp Ecommerce Plug-in For WordPress

shopp The next application I want to share is Shopp plug-in for ecommerce. This plug-in is not free, and you will pay for enhanced features. But the thing I really like about this product is it’s breadth of features. From the WordPress Dashboard integration to the drag and drop functionality of putting products in the shopping cart.

You’ll find advanced features like inventory management, multiple shipping types, data export for Excel and Quickbooks, and various language translations. One of the major features I think sets this product apart is the cross selling option. Like Amazon, you can give your buyers the ability to buy other products that may be related, or up sell them to something of more value. Other products in this space are rushing to implement this feature, it’s that important.

Support comes from a forum on the companies website, which seems to be pretty active. Take a look at the features here. While having to pay for modules may seem costly, these modules make the product a commercial grade ecommerce system that integrates into WordPress.

I’m finding Ecommerce is becoming a natural extension of the WordPress platform. I’ve installed both products, and find them to be the best available at this time. I would like to see these companies extend their products to work with mobile themes. As an example, if you are running the WPtouch plug-in, which gives iPhone users an elegant theme, you can’t use the shopping cart to buy products. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a mobile compliant site.

What ecommerce products have you used the integrate with WordPress? What has been your experience?

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Posted on 27 November 2009

Tags: E-commerce, Plug-In, Shopping, WordPress

Kelvin

We just released DukaPress: http://dukapress.org and I believe it is a new and refreshing option.
Emily

We are using PHPurchase, a fairly new WordPress e-commerce plugin, on our site. Support was great, the plugin was easy to set up and our content contributors find it really easy to use. You can find the plugin at http://www.PHPurchase.com
Dan Milward

Hey thanks for linking to our WordPress e-Commerce Plugin. I appreciate the linkage.

I would like to clarify a few things though. The WP e-Commerce Plugin was the first Plugin to base cross sales system on the Amazon system. We did this before shopp even, and we were also the first Plugin to make a drop shop shopping cart. Take a look at icondock.com to see what you can do :)

WP e-Commerce does integrate with an iPhone theme/Plugin. Just not this one (yet). We could easily do it providing their Plugin is extendible in that way (WP e-Commerce certainly is).
For iPhone goodness checkout: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/xilitheme-select/

The WP e-Commere Plugin dashboard integration was built around real business needs. For instance being able to provide your business quarterly reports and stats per product. And so on. Google e-Commerce analytics is also almost ready to launch.

The WP e-Commerce Plugin was recently chosen by the wordcamp.org organizers to sell tickets online. We built a new ticketing module for the New York WordCamp and over 700 tickets were sold online. Users can now sell digital (ie mp3 files with previews), tangible goods (like merchandise or art) and tickets to their live performances, galleries, shows and gigs. And its all possible because WP e-Commerce is gone canonical!

And speaking of books. That book is sold by a third party (our buddy Shayne) and we're flattered that somebody would write something to compliment our own online documentation. The actual WP e-Commerce Plugin book is to be published and made available in book stores early next years - this is a sign to us that our Plugin has gone main stream.

And finally, more themes and add on modules have been made for the WP e-Commerce Plugin then any other WordPress extension. I know of about 4 more additional themes that are being made by our community right now. You can find them all the existing ones on our blog :)

Thanks :D
Thom Allen

Dan,

Thanks for sharing the additional information. I run PodCampSLC and am intrigued how this plug-in was used to collect ticket information. Since we run the PodCamp blog on WordPress, this may just be the ticket! Thanks.

Is the ticketing module something available to the public?

--Thom

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