Shopp is a shopping cart plugin that stands out from the crowd because of its professional quality. Using this application feels like you’re using a software on which millions have been invested on optimizing the user-experience and the backend code.
Does that make Shopp the undisputed champion of shopping carts for WordPress? You’re about to find out.
Ease of Use and Installation
Installation is just as easy as installing any other WordPress plugin. A screencast and a troubleshooting guide is also provided.
Shopp’s user interface is very intuitive and user-friendly. As stated earlier, the interface feels polished and very professional.
Supported Payment Gateways
With Shopp there are included payment gateways and paid add-on gateways.
The included gateways are: 2Checkout, PayPal (Standard and Express), Google Checkout. The additional paid add-on gateways are: PayPal Pro, Authorize.net, PayJunction, FirstData/LinkPoint, HSBC ePayments, eWay, and iDEAL. Each one of those payment gateway add-ons costs $25. You can buy as many as you need.
Selling Non-Digital Products
It is possible to sell digital products through Shopp.
Documentation and Support
This is another area where Shopp shines. The content of Shopp’s documentation is very comprehensive, organized, well written, and professionally presented. Every aspect of using the plugin is documented. Some tasks even have screencasts.
What’s also amazing about Shopp is that it was built with extensibility in mind. It’s not only a shopping cart, but it’s also a frame work for other developers to build on. And that makes it cleanly customizable.
As for personal support, it is possible to get it through the community forum or by using the help desk. There you can get a timely and professional technical support.
Pricing
Single-Site ($55)
With this option, you can download Shopp and install it on any number of websites, but automatic updates will only be issued to one website.
Developer ($299)
With this option, you can download Shopp and install it on any number of websites and you’ll get updates automatically pushed to all installation instances.
Additional Payment Gateways ($25/each)
Some payment gateways are not included by default with Shopp (see above). Each additional payment gateway you purchase costs an additional $25.
Refund Policy
Shopp would have been clearly the undisputed champion of WordPress shopping cart plugins, if it weren’t for this: no refunds! Once you purchase Shopp, there is no way to get your money back. In fact, the people behind Shopp claim that the software is GPL licensed and is free. What you pay for is the distribution and some other stuff. Go figure…
Anyway, what matters here is that you know that you’re not getting your money back once you pay. So, be sure that Shopp is really what you need before you go ahead and take the plunge.
