15 Resources for Setting Up an E-Commerce Site with WordPress
This post is part of e-commerce week, which features e-commerce related content on DesignM.ag and the Vandelay Design blog, as well as e-commerce design inspiration at CartFrenzy.
WordPress is a popular blogging platform and content management system, but it can also be used for powering e-commerce websites. Although its primary purpose is not e-commerce, there are a number of plugins and themes available that will allow you to use WordPress for your online store (some are free and some are premium).
In this post we’ll take a look at some of the resources that can help you to set up your own e-commerce site on WordPress.
Plugins:
WordPress e-Commerce Plugin
An extremely popular plugin that offers a lot of options for setting up an online store with WordPress. WP e-Commerce integrates with PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net and more. Designers will have the flexibility to tweak and customize the appearance as well.
Shopp
Another popular e-commerce plugin. The cost is $55 for a single-site license or $299 for a developer’s license. The plugin includes a lot of features, including several payment options and flexible shipping calculations.
eShop
eShop is a free plugin that also has a lot of features and options for setting up an e-commerce site with WordPress.
Quick Shop
Quick Shop is a free plugin that users sidebar widgets to create a simple shopping cart. You can place tags in your post that will generate a form to add products to the cart.
YAK for WordPress
YAK is a free plugin that creates a simple shopping cart that associates products with posts, so it uses the post ID as the product ID.
Themes:
Crafty Cart
A free e-commerce theme designed to work with the e-commerce plugin.
SimpleCart(js)
A new free theme from Chris Wallace (a child theme for Thematic).
Ecommerce Theme
A premium theme from iThemes. A single-use license costs $79.95 and a developer’s license costs $199.
Market Theme
A premium theme that provides you with everything you need to run an e-commerce site with WordPress. The cost is $55 for a standard license or $150 for a developer’s license.
WPShop
A premium theme that is available through ThemeForest for $35. Includes 2 child themes.
eGoods
Another premium theme that is available through ThemeForest for $30. Includes 3 child themes.
ArtShop
Another premium theme that is available through ThemeForest for $30. Includes 2 themes, each with a child theme.
Tutorials:
How to Create an E-Commerce Website with WordPress in Under 5 Minutes
This video tutorial will show you how install WordPress, change the them, and use the e-commerce plugin to quickly get an e-commerce website online. The focus is on getting the basics set up rather than going in to great details of the plugin settings and options.
Getting Set Up with the WP e-Commerce Plugin: Settings and Configuration
This video tutorial covers how to get set up with the WP e-Commerce plugin for your online shop.
How to Build an Online Store with WordPress
A basic article from iThemes about what you will need to get an e-commerce site started with WordPress.
54 Responses from Readers
No mention of FoxyCart?
http://foxycart.com/
http://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/56-integrating-foxycart-and-wordpress/
Ethan,
FoxyCart isn’t exclusive to WordPress, which is the only focus of this post. FoxyCart was mentioned in yesterday’s post, E-Commerce Web Design Toolbox.
Oops, wrong link. Here is the E-Commerce Toolbox.
Thanks for mentioning WP e-Commerce http://instinct.co.nz/e-commerce first on the list.
We’re really making some good progress this year. Last week we silently launched 3.7 and got over 9000 + downloads (in one week!!) and there were not many reports of problems.
Next week we’ll be launching 3.7.1 which fixes some minor issues and includes some more core e-Commerce functionality for shop owners (stay tuned for the announcement).
The really inspiring thing for me about this post is that most of those themes either integrate WP e-Commerce Plugin out of the box “or” have been built specifically for the WP e-Commerce Plugin in the first place. It just shows how extensible our Plugin is and how keen people are to work with us.
Awesome post!!
Steven Snell thanks for share right link, you also write very helpful stuff here.
Great post bro.
specially for the plug inns,
but will they work with ssl?
because currently I stuck with joomla v.mart.
thanks again for the post.
Aneslin,
If you visit the features page of each of the plugins you’ll see info about SSL.
@Steven Snell,
thanks bro.
let me browse.
Awesome! I love the idea of including my own e-commerce app right on my WP.org site. Up till now I’ve been using Payloadz and a 2nd party vendor. The disadvantage of Payloadz is that I pay every month, irregardless of the sales volume. The 2nd party vendor has been good, except my product tends to get lost in the array of products on the site.
So this is a very helpful post that is appreciated.
I am bookmarking it and will dig in ASAP.
Thanks, Steven!
I want to know about follow-up comments so have checked the box.
I’m so glad smashingmagazine finally reported on something different relating to WP other then the normal themes, hacks, custom fields most often mentioned! Good article thanks for the post!
**WARNING TO ALL READERS**
I have used WP E-Comm and Shopp and I have to say I will never use Wordpress for an E-Comm site again. Its great if you’re bootstrapping and want a really simple store, but when you get into a project and clients start asking for coupon codes/combined shipping/Google Checkout you will just run into problems. Many of these plugins tout all these features that just happen to not work on “your setup”. No way. Do yourself a favor and look into using Joomla with Virtuemart or just go the hosted route of Shopify (fully customizable). You and your clients will thank me.
**WARNING TO ALL READERS – ABOUT Joe**
This is probably the first and last time I’ll back up Jon over at Shopp. But both our Plugins work fine – it seems Joe couldn’t get it to work for something specific to his needs (or he is simply a Joomla fan).
We have hundreds of users making serious cash using google checkout and paypal payments pro. I receive reports from google and paypal that indicate WP e-Commerce is generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in economic wealth.
Hopefully oneday WP e-Commerce is even good enough for Joe and we integrate whatever features he requires.
Use shopify if you don’t want to own your online store. If shopify die (weird things happen) then so does your online store and all the time you put into it.
We advocate WordPress because its yours!!
Hi,
I am searching for a markeplace shopping cart, where users can visit my web site and sell their stuff and that which includes a unified payment pipeline.
Regards
Brijesh
@Brijesh – I would use WP e-Commerce and the Paypal Payments Pro payment gateway
Thanks for the great list, Ive got a few wordpress blogs that I may try ecommerce with. If you dont have wordpress or just need a standalone, I highly recommend trying bigcommerce.com .
Joe,
Sorry you had a bad experience with using WordPress for e-commerce purposes. While WP is not created specifically for these purposes, I know a number of small shops are very happy with the plugins that are available.
Dan,
Thanks for your involvement in pushing the boundaries with WordPress and working to make it a more valuable CMS. I find it to be really interesting how people are using WP for various purposes and e-commerce is one of them.
There are two free solutions from us -
1. FatFreeCart (http://www.fatfreecart.com/) which is literally copy-paste, no registration or product entry required. Good for tangible goods which do not require complex shipping or tax settings.
2. FatFreeCart Plugin for Wordpress (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/fatfreecart-wordpress-plugin/)
and, then a paid solution -
3. E-junkie (http://www.e-junkie.com/) – which has a monthly subscription fee, but you can pretty much sell anything (digital or tangible or service) anywhere with it.
Great articles & Nice a site
Thanks for including wpShop, eGoods and the ArtShop in your list
Be sure to check out the folioShop as well. A hybrid portfolio, blog and shop theme. (just some shameless self-promotion here, he, he)
Oh and keep an eye out for the release of my new “The Clothes Shop” theme
We recently switched our website from Shopp to PHPurchase. PHPurchase was much less expensive and since we only sell a few different products we didn’t need all the fancy grid layout features and so forth. We just wanted to build the pages the way we wanted and then sell our headphones. Plus PHPurchase is backed by a nice bunch of developers at PHPoet which made me feel comfortable in case I needed some support. So if you are looking around, you may want to consider checking out http://www.phpurchase.com
Please have a shot at Zingiri Web Shop. A new e-commerce plugin for Wordpress with plenty of features.
Thanks for the great list, I am looking for this for a long time!
I just started using eStore, the “premium” version (it’s only $30) of Simple PayPal Shopping Cart (free and also very nice) for Wordpress and it works really well and is very customizable (inventory, mutliple gateways, manual purchase, digital downloads and lots more) and the developer is very responsive, even adding tweaks and features on request within days of my giving him feedback.
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com
Well you should have included Store template from TEMPLATIC. It’s a hell of a e-commerce sollution for WP. I love it!
Ionut,
I could be wrong but I think that theme was released after this post was published. There were only a few e-commerce theme options at that time.
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