If you want to use WordPress to sell your products on-line, there are e-commerce plugins that will turn your website into an on-line store.
WordPress is by far the most popular blog publishing platform available. However because it is so versatile WordPress can also be used by small businesses to power a Content Management System (CMS) or with the help of e-commerce plugins, even a fully featured e-commerce Website accepting credit cards on-line.
Below is my list of the top 5 e-commerce plugins for WordPress. I judged their popularity based on the times the plugin has been downloaded. Also the e-commerce plugins listed below are all compatible with the latest version of WordPress (v 3.0.4), and all have been updated in the past month, showing that they are still actively maintained by the developer.
eShop Ecommerce Plugins
- FREE e-commerce plugins for WordPress
- Uses WordPress pages or posts, and custom post types, to create products.
- Products can have multiple attributes (options)
- Allows you to sell downloadable digital products
- Various shipping options
- Automatic email notification after successful purchase
- Configurable email templates
- Basic Stock Control
- Configurable Out of Stock message
- Supports various discount options
- WPMU, Multi-site compatible
- Supports Authorize.net, PayPal merchant gateways
- Product pages and checkout templates are editable.
WP e-Commerce
- FREE WordPress e-commerce plugin (charges for premium add-ons)
- Easy to use fully featured shopping cart
- Single-page product data entry
- Suitable for selling products, or services
- Import your products into the Facebook Marketplace and Google Base
- Store front templates are easy to customize using template tags, WordPress short codes and Widgets.
- One Page Checkout
- New Products widget
- Suitable to set up members only and subscription sites
- Flexible coupon/discount pricing rules
- Supports Authorize.net, PayPal, Google Checkout, and ChronoPay merchant gateways
- Integrates with UPS, USPS for real-time shipping rates
- Free shipping options
- Email notifications of orders
- Print invoices and packing slips
- Multi-lingual and support for multiple currencies
- WordPress e-commerce plugins for WordPress are extendable with Premium Themes, Upgrades and free Community Plugins
Shopp E-commerce Plugins
- Cost – $55 for a single license and $299 for a developers license (extra charge for premium add-ons)
- Works out-of-the-box with any theme
- Single-page product data entry
- Handles multiple product images
- Support for selling digital & physical products and donations
- Basic inventory management and low-stock e-mail alerts
- Discount options using promo/coupon codes
- Customizable shopping templates for seamless integration with your website’s theme.
- Supports PayPal, 2CO, and Google Checkout
- Flexible built-in shipping rate calculations.
- Add-on available to Integrate real-time shipping rates with FedEx, UPS, Canada Post, and US Postal Service.
Ecwid Shopping Cart
- Cost is FREE – (charges for premium plans)
- Does not require software installation
- Easy to set up and Integrate with your site
- AJAX interface with drag and drop support
- Supports the sale of digitally downloadable products
- Real-time shipping estimates based on customer IP
- Configurable to allow customer can to checkout without creating profile
- Supports product attributes (options)
- Support for PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net, 2Checkout, and Beanstream
- Customizable e-mail notifications
- Invoice printing
- Extendable features with Premium Plans
WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart
- Cost is FREE
- Not just e-commerce plugins for WordPress, the WordPress Simple shopping cart can be easily integrated to any existing site or Facebook profile in minutes
- Very easy to use
- Allows you to sell products or services
- Allows you to add an ‘Add to Cart’ button on any posts or pages
- Supports product attributes (options)
- Customers can attach files to orders
- Integrates nicely with NextGen Gallery
- Multiple languages and multiple currency support
- Uses a return URL to redirect customers to a specified page after PayPal has processed the payment
Best E-commerce Plugins
E-commerce plugins for WordPress are probably best suited for small businesses with only a few products to sell. I have not tried all these e-commerce plugins, but I did setup a WordPress shop using the free version of WP e-Commerce I choose this one because, of the 5 e-commerce plugins that I researched, WP e-Commerce seemed to be the most professional. It had the most features, and the support forums were very helpful. I didn’t even have to ask a question, all my questions and answers were already there.
In my opinion, WP e-Commerce is very simple to set up and get started. It is destined to be one of the very best e-commerce plugins For WordPress.
Really amazing list Larry, you know I’m thinking here but a really great post to follow this up would be to five wordpress themes to use when using wordpress as an e-commence site. Man I just love wordpress they really make everything and put so much work into the quality of what they do. The plugin ability on wordpress is a real winner.
That is a great idea Brian. Although these eCommerce plugins are designed to work with almost any WordPress theme, some of them do have specific themes that they work well with.
These are intense instructions. I have something to come back to once I decide to sell my own products. Thanks Larry.
Thanks Jena. You are welcome back anytime !
It’s one thing I’ve never really considered for my blog, but now I know that if I do consider selling via my blog, I know exactly what options are open to me, thanks for the advice Larry ;)
Hi Karen. I used to build eCommerce websites using osCommerce, that was a real pain. It is very easy to accept credit card payments on your WordPress blog, with the help of these plugins. They make it very simple.
Thanks for posting this. I’m looking for such a plugin for a new site, and I’ve looked at five so far which haven’t done the trick. I’ll take a look at these ones now
Well I hope that one of these will work for you RIchard, and good luck with your new website.
Nice list Larry. I use Wp-ECommerce in most of my websites. It is very simple to setup and is power packed with lot of features. Some plugins in the list were new to me, thanks for sharing it Larry.
Hi Rojish, I agree with you about WP-eCommerce, it is surprisingly simple to setup an eCommerce store using WP-eCommerce and WordPress, compared to the complexity of other eCommerce platforms like osCommerce . Thanks for visiting, and for commenting on my post.
I agree with you Pranjal, you are right about WooCommerce. WooCommerce is making a big splash in help WordPress websites become eCommerce sites. I now work almost exclusively with StudioPress and Genesis Child themes, WooCommerce works really well with them.