[Daen Tyler]

I am looking for the best shopping cart for wordpress. I am currently using wp e-commerce but I’m finding a number of problems with it and I can’t get support or help from the forums. So before I spend more time pounding my head against the wall I’m wondering if anyone has found a great shopping cart plugin

[Dr Ron Suarez]

What is great for one project may be a headache for another project!

In the spring we implemented a WordPress and Magento integration for an online digital and physical music store – http://secondmotionrecords.com. We got a lot of power out of it, but had to work through a lot of headaches to make things work properly, including custom PHP coding.

Magento offers all sorts of options from bundling products to managing inventory and sales campaigns. However, like most things that offer more power and options, it requires a lot of work and learning for the sales administrator. In addition, hardly anything just worked the way it should have, but the positive side was that for each problem we encountered, we also found a solution or software patch in the forums. So, the Magento community is huge and there’s lots of documentation out there.

For Magento, make sure:
1) There is a budget for the custom work and user training you’ll need to do
2) The client is willing and able to learn how to use a powerful complex system

I have been interested in WP E-Commerce for simpler projects and I have been trying to find the time to read: WordPress 2.9 e-Commerce, By: Brian Bondari, Publisher: Packt Publishing, Pub. Date: March 01, 2010, Print ISBN-13: 978-1-847198-50-1

At WordcampNYC 2009 I got to meet Dan Milward, the owner of Instinct, the company that publishes WP E-Commerce and I had a lot of respect for him. I would try to contact him directly with a question if you’re not getting answers – dan [at} instinct [dot] co [dot] nz

[Krista Gonzalez]

I started with Shopp and got nowhere really quick. Then I took Dana’s suggestion and decided to give PHPurchase a whirl. So far so good, everything is pretty straight forward plus they have helpful vids that explain how to do things in a pretty simple manner.

I am wondering if anyone who is familiar with ecommerce has ever used or knows if CDG commerce with Quantum Gateway. The other alternative is Authorize.net which is fine but fees are pretty crazy. Any other suggestions are appreciated. All the feedback I have seen seems to be positive but I have yet to run into someone personally that has used them.

[Dr Ron Suarez]

Ultimately merchant payment gateways become competitive as your sales volume goes up and you’re able to get discounts on the fees you pay. Paypal has many different offerings and most people get confused about what you can and cannot do with Paypal. Like many other service providers, investing time in research and talking to the tech support people from a vendor is what you must do to make an informed decision. Authorize.net is often a top choice for people who want to preserve their own branding.

Here’s a tip on doing some research. Type the following into a Google search to find pages “related” to a CDG Commerce page:
related:http://www.cdgcommerce.com/free-payment-gateway.php

If you don’t want monthly fees, you should be using something like Paypal standard. You can keep all your pages under your own brand if you move to Paypal Pro or Authorize.net. People don’t have to leave your site to pay, but then you have to pay a monthly fee. You also have to take care of many other things, e.g. SSL certicates.

For a few years now, Amazon has been trying to compete with Paypal, but the fees for start-ups are virtually identical. The main differences are in feature sets and geography. Paypal lets you collect money in Europe (i.e. funds going into a non US Bank). The last time I checked on Amazon they had no plans for this until sometime in 2011.

If the project you’re working on is not going to be producing huge sales, it is likely to be best to go with a big player and follow the path of least resistance, e.g. a player who offers decent tech support.

[Dan Milward]

I’d love to know what worked in Phpurchase and not in WP e-Commerce or Shopp. Is that something you could share with us?

Authorize is pretty damn good. I’d go with them or experiment with paymentexpress.com and their new PX Fusion gateway. Its PCI to the max, has a nice checkout flow to it and it is reasonably affordable.

[Dan Milward]

Also stay tuned for the WP e-Commerce Plugin 3.8 release, its the best yet and its going to be big, we’re employing some of the best WordPress developers in the world to work on it.

[Gregg Watt]

I definitely recommend ecwid.com – worked like a charm for me.

[Author]

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