The Best Shopping Cart Plugins to Sell With WordPress

Monday, July 15, 2013

WordPress has always been versatile enough to be used as an ecommerce solution but now there’s more shopping cart plugins than ever it’s even a viable alternative to the many eCommerce CMS tools such as Shopify or Magento. Adding cart functionality to your WordPress install makes it easy to build simple online stores with the familiarity of the WordPress template system. Let’s take a look at the best shopping cart plugins available, with some examples of how they’re currently being put to use on live sites.

WooCommerce from WooThemes has grown to become the number one eCommerce tool for WordPress. It has been comprehensively developed and tested and is backed by a solid collection of developers. The core WooCommerce functionality is free but it can also be built upon with various paid-for extensions.

Live Examples

JOCO Cups

SHULTZILLA

Jigoshop is a feature packed eCommerce plugin built upon WordPress core functionality. One of the enticing features of Jigoshop is its ability to support various product types, including physical goods, downloadable products and variable sizes (S,M,L etc).

Live Examples

Little Lost Land

Antique Clothing

Cart66, formerly known as PHPurchase is a premium WordPress plugin available for $99, although its array of features does include some functionality only available as a paid extension to other alternatives such as WooCommerce. Cart66 covers every base when it comes to selling digital goods and services, allowing you to collect payments as well as recurring subscriptions or membership fees.

Live Examples

Bardsley

Illumiz

GetShopped.org, also known as WP e-Commerce is one of the original WordPress cart plugins by Instinct. While its core functionality is free, some crucial cart features are reserved as premium extensions. Still, some of its boasted features such as 100% customisability keep it competitive against the new school options.

Live Examples

Paper Whistle

City Surf Cardiff

Shopp is another fully loaded premium shopping cart plugin for WordPress. It seamlessly integrates with WordPress to provide unbranded functionality that makes use of WordPress widgets, post types and shortcodes.

Live Examples

Scout Books

Retrobaby

Easy Digital Downloads, as the name suggests, is an easy solution for selling virtual goods via WordPress. While other cart solutions often combine the ability to sell digital goods alongside physical goods, the lack of bloat and specialised features are particularly useful for anyone looking to sell digital goods.

Live Examples

Organic Themes

Mint Themes

I couldn’t find live examples for all the ecommerce solutions available, but some of them looked like they had great potential. Here’s a few more that are definitely worth a look if none of the above cater for your needs. These options might not have as much popularity, but they certainly seem to be getting good ratings from the WordPress community.