I’ve noticed what seems to be a predilection, by those who write reviews of WordPress shopping cart plugins and themes, to stick YAK at the bottom of the list. Probably because the number of downloads is below the others. But the final result is something along the lines of:
WP-Ecommerce: feature, feature, feature, feature…
Shopp: feature, feature, feature, feature…
Eshop: feature, feature, feature, feature…
YAK: [gawd I'm tired of listing features... let's not bother with it any more... what can come up with instead... oh I know] it’s a simple plugin!
It’s getting old. Frankly.
So, this is an attempt to come up with a reasonably objective comparison of the shopping cart plugins for WordPress, without excluding the one at the end because someone-got-bored-before-they-finished-writing. You might be wondering how I can be objective when I develop one of those very plugins — well, we’ll see how I do, I guess.
I’m going to take a look at the major e-commerce plugins (not themes, because this probably should be an apples-to-apples comparison). First up, let’s bundle all those features together into one nice big list and see who does what… this might end up being a work-in-progress, because in some cases, it’s not immediately obvious whether the features are included. If I’ve missed something, let me know.
| Feature | WP-Ecommerce | Eshop | Shopp | YAK | QuickShop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free or $40/195 for Gold, plus other modules | Free, open source | $55 single site, $299 developer | Free, open source, $25 for detailed handbook | Free, open source |
| # of Downloads | 277,527 | 57,415 | ~3,000 | 19,575 (~7000 on sourceforge) | 30,310 |
| Memory Usage | 6.15MB | 0.90MB | 2.5MB | 1.13MB | 0.10MB |
| Post-as-product | • | • | |||
| Multiple types of product (options/variations) | • | • | • | • (plus multi-select options) |
• |
| Support for digital products | • | • | • | • | |
| Confirmation email | • | • | • | • | |
| Email templates | • | • | Text & HTML | Basic, text and html | |
| Product search | Gold version only | Products are posts, so searchable via WP | • | Products are posts, so searchable via WP | |
| Product templates | • | • | |||
| Product tags | • | • | • | • | |
| Product catalog | • | • | Add-on | ||
| Products groups/subgroups | • | • (through categorisation, I think) |
Hierarchical categories (probably the same) | • (through categorisation) |
|
| Product attributes or metadata | • | • (via normal post meta) |
• | • (via normal post meta) |
Basic properties |
| Configurable out-of-stock message | • | • | • | • | |
| Order management/history | • | • | • | ||
| Dashboard Widgets | • | ||||
| Themes | • | • (not free) |
Theme widgets, but not themes as far as I can tell | ||
| AJAX support (drag & drop, live update, etc) | drag & drop with Gold version | drag & drop shopping | |||
| Image upload | Bulk upload | Via WP | Drag-and-drop | Via WP | |
| Drill-down (or filter) menus | • | ||||
| Promotions/Coupons | • | • (plus discounts by spending amount) |
• (rule based – by amount, by percentage, free shipping and buy x get y free) |
• (price or shipping discounts with promo codes, plus discounts by spending amount) |
|
| Related products functionality | • | Possible with WP tags | • | ||
| Subscription | Module for Gold version | ||||
| Membership support | Module for Gold version | ||||
| Flat rate shipping | • | • | • | • | I think so |
| Weight based shipping | • | • | • | ||
| Tiered and/or amount-based shipping | • | ||||
| USPS integration | • | Add-on | |||
| UPS integration | • | Add-on | |||
| Fedex integration | Add-on | ||||
| Shipwire integration | • | ||||
| CA Post integration | Add-on | ||||
| CSV (or other) export | Products, Orders, Customer info | Products, Orders | Orders and Customers in Tab, CSV, (true) XLS and IIF for QuickBooks (orders only) | Orders and Customer info | |
| PayPal Std payments | • (plus express checkout) |
• | • (plus express checkout) |
• | Redirects to PayPal |
| PayPal Pro payments | • | Add-on | • | ||
| Authorize.net payments | • | Add-on | • | ||
| Google Checkout payments | • | • | Partial | ||
| 2checkout payments | • | ||||
| Chronopay payments | • | ||||
| PayJunction payments | Add-on (US-only) | ||||
| FirstData payments | Add-on | ||||
| HSBC ePayments | Add-on | ||||
| eWay payments | Add-on (AU-only) | ||||
| Payson payments | • | Add-on | |||
| eProcessingNetwork payments | • | ||||
| iDeal (moille) payments (Nederlands only) | Add-on | Add-on | |||
| NetCash payments (South Africa only) | Add-on | ||||
| Webtopay payments | • | ||||
| Manual Credit card payments | • | ||||
| Simple payments (cash, cheque, deposit) | • | • | • | ||
| Accounts receivable payments | • | ||||
| Recurrent billing | Members module | ||||
| Sales Tax Calculations | • | • | |||
| Google Base integration | • | • | • | ||
| Google Analytics integration | • | • (free add-on) |
• | ||
| Facebook Marketplace integration | • | ||||
| Email marketing | • | ||||
| Affiliate program | Gold (beta at time of writing) | ||||
| Reports | Business reports dashboard | Basic Dashboard Stats & Aggregate information in the order log (by filtering) | Simple sales reports | ||
| Category/Product RSS Feeds | Business reports dashboard | Basic Dashboard Stats & Aggregate information in the order log (by filtering) | Simple sales reports | ||
| 3rd party integration | • | • | |||
| Developer API | • | • | |||
| WPMU support? | • | • | • (not officially supported) |
• | |
| Internationalisation | • | • | • | ||
| Support Model | Free support via Forum, paid support available | Free support via Forum | Free support via Forum | Free support via Google Group, plus paid | Free support via Forum, paid support by request |
Hard to draw any real conclusions from this matrix — WP E-commerce probably leads in terms of features, but those features come with a (resource) cost. Shopp looks like it might come second (in terms of featureset), and certainly covers the most payment gateways, but it’s also a reasonable investment (particularly purchase of a developer license). Given it’s commercial-only, it’s impossible to know what performance or memory usage is like.
Given that no single plugin covers all the possible features, I guess it’s very much a case of identifying the things that are important to you, then choose the plugin which best covers that featureset.
…At least, until YAK2 comes out, because that will do everything.
That’s a joke by the way.
More to come later, and do let me know if I’m made some glaringly obvious omissions.
Update #1: Added number of downloads, and project links.
Update #2: Changes to eShop features, kindly provided by Rich.
Update #3: Added info on WP E-commerce product search.
Update #4: Added info on Shopp, provided by Jonathon.
Update #5: Added iDeal to wp-ecommerce, i18n to eshop.
Update #6: Added 2 new YAK features
