WordPress platform is becoming more and more flexible every day, and it is no longer just a blogging solution. Due to tons of plugins it may become virtually anything you want it to be. There are even plugins available now which enable bloggers to incorporate eCommerce applications to their WordPress-powered websites. Today we are going to look into those plugins that offer maximum flexibility, allowing WordPress site owners to easily build their own eCommerce website solution. They comprise a whole new lot of features which are capable of turning a standard WordPress site into a fully fledged eCommerce store complete with powerful backend product administration.
So here’s a short list of plugins that WordPress site owners might want to use to conduct online sales. These WordPress eCommerce solutions that go beyond styling to deliver a fully functional storefront to be plugged right into WordPress powered site. All of them are very flexible, easily managed, and make adding new products easy as a breeze.
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Shopp is a premium WordPress shopping cart plugin, it will cost you $55 for a single-site license (you’re getting a single license for the software, and then you can buy extra plugins such as payment gateways, shipping modules and priority for support) or $299 for a developer’s license. The plugin includes a lot of features, including a streamlined installation system, shortcodes, widgets, drag and drop shopping, a slew of payment options, flexible shipping calculators, and search engine optimization.
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PHPurchase is a paid plugin, $49 for the Standard edition and $99 for the Pro version. It helps to develop a blog into a complete online sales facility managing everything from sales to shipping and integrating it all with WordPress. Aside from its ability to create an entire catalogue of products with custom variables (size, color, etc.), PHPurchase has a powerful dashboard-based order management system, and a bevy of other features. This plugin offers the ability to create multiple stores and to add greater customization than most e-commerce software for WordPress, plus it accepts a few more payment gateways.
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WP e-Commerce is a free full-featured shopping cart plugin for WordPress. This WordPress application provides full-feature shopping cart functionality and allows for one-page checkout, which makes it easy to sell things like ebooks, mp3s, clothing, crafts and more. It offers a wide range of features including SSL compatibility, customization and merchandising, integrated payment processing solutions including manual payment (checks/money orders), Google Checkout and PayPal Payments, and email marketing. On the source website, there is also a number of add-ons for the cart such as product sliders and shipping modules.
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WP Auctions is an innovative eCommerce plugin for WordPress which allows you to host auctions on your blog or website easily and for free. WP Auctions has various features, you can create and host as many auctions as you like, upload multiple images for each auction, sell items only on ‘Buy It Now’ basis, show 3rd party ads when there are no new auctions, get payments via PayPal (PayPal account required), RSS feed for your auctions, and many more. Besides, once you list your auctions, you can register your plugin with the WP Auctions Live page and generate some traffic for your website.
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Quick Shop is a simple, yet complete and free WordPress shopping cart plugin option for basic users. It adds a sidebar widget that shows the users what they currently have in the cart and allows them to remove the items. They can also place tags in their post that will generate a form to add products to the cart. A handy little feature of Quick Shop is the TinyMCE inventory listing button that allows users to easily add products to posts or pages. Besides, Quick Shop has the integration with the CFormsII plugin, full range of formatting for widget layout, ability to add drop-down product options, and WordPress MU compatibility.
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YAK is a free plugin that creates a simple shopping cart that associates products with posts, so it turns posts and pages ID into product ID and the post description to an item description. YAK handles different types of product through categories, and provides customizable purchase options (cheque or deposit, basic credit card form, basic Google Checkout integration, standard PayPal integration, PayPal Payments Pro, and Authorize.net). YAK also supports downloadable products, multiple product types, order administration, promotions, SSL and Sales Reports. Plus this plugin has three screens for simplicity: one for showing and fulfilling orders, another for product management, and basic sales reports.
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ShopperPress is a fully featured shopping cart plugin for WordPress that is created with the idea of turning your WordPress blog into a total ecommerce store. ShopperPress does this by making the shopping cart software a theme that can be easily installed and maintained. This plugin includes all the necessary features, including custom variables, promotion abilities (coupon codes, discounts, etc.), Adsense integration with dedicated advertising slots, and shipping/tax options, multiple options (weight, sizes, brands, etc), and various ways for listing products. Free version can be downloaded from WordPress plugin website, paid version starts at $69.
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eShop gives you the ability to add a PayPal powered store to your WordPress site and use your pages or posts to create new products. It gives the ability to create multiple options for a product, upload electronic downloadable products, provides basic sales statistics, and can download sales data to your computer. Some other features include the ability to list multiple products, offer various shipping options, send automatic emails on successful purchase (user configurable email templates are available) and create an add-to-cart function. Also eShop offers a number of payments options that include Authorize.net, Paypal, Payson, eProcessingNetwork, Webtopay and Cash/Cheque.
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Are PayPal is a unique WordPress plugin that allows monetizing of a WordPress blog content using Paypal. With Are PayPal you can set post/page to contain hidden content, instead of the hidden text user is shown a message about the action he/she has to take to be able to see the content, content can be set as hidden for unregistered users and visible for registered. The search engines will only see the visible content. The administrator can grant the users an access to content for certain payment. Besides, all the features of this plugin are configurable using administration screens. Plus, Are PayPal uses Instant Payment Notification protocol so payment/content delivery process is fully automated.
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FatFreeCart Plugin allows you to add “Add to Cart” and “View Cart” buttons on your blog posts so that you can sell your products straight through your blog post. Note also that it flawlessly integrates with Paypal and Google Checkout, has product variations, Shipping handling, and Sales Tax. Plus, there is no need to generate or paste code using this plugin because it works within the post editor.
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Ecwid is free full-fledged shopping cart that can be easily add to any WordPress blog. It is extremely easy to install and even easier to maintain. Ecwid plugin supports drag-and-drop and AJAX. Additionally, it features customizable e-mail notifications, order history, tracking payment and shipping status, support for PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.NET and 2CheckOut.
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ArtPal is a free WordPress plugin to seamlessly integrate PayPal with WordPress blogs (all you need to supply is your PayPal email address). The plugin also offers real time sales updates as soon as the item sells and disables it so that it’s not sold twice. If you need commercial support, it’s also available through Digital Sublimity, so you can be rest assured that your critical application will stay up and running when you need it.
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WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin gives users the ability to quickly and seamlessly integrate an online shop with a fully functional shopping cart interface into any WordPress website. With a ton of payment options, product options, and affiliate and digital product support, it’s got everything you need to make a fully functional online shop for $49.99. It features easy to use interface, digital downloads of products, multiple payment methods, including PayPal (standard), 2CheckOut, MoneyBookers, First Data (Linkpoint & YourPay), Realex Payments (redirect), eMatters (HTTPS), credit card (POS), bank wire and manual/custom payments.
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WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart is a very easy to use plugin that allows you to sell products or services online in one click from your WordPress blog. WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart provides users with the ability to add an ‘Add to Cart’ button on any posts or pages, as well as to add/display the shopping cart on any post or page or sidebar easily. This shopping cart shows the user what they currently have in the cart and allows them to remove the items. Plus, it can be easily integrated with the NextGen Photo Gallery plugin.
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The FireStorm Ecommerce Shopping Cart Plugin is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to turn your WordPress website into a fully functional online store. The plugin is ideal for any corporate, small business or home based store. The administration is easy to use and loaded with features. It operates stand-alone which means it does not require blog posts for each product. This allows you to keep your blog separate from the store.
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Using the WordPress shopping cart plugin is definitely something to strongly consider when developing a medium-sized eCommerce project. Still, be sure to check out each of the WordPress plugins available to ensure you get the right one for your website.
And of course another thing that's important here is that WordPress shopping cart plugins remain something for WordPress geeks and fans, and for now you don't often see shopping cart functionality in WordPress websites. Obviously things will change over time and more WP websites will utilize shopping cart functionality but so far Magento and osCommerce are the most popular solutions. We're looking forward to see the changes!
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