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The most cost effective WordPress e-commerce platform?

E-commerce is the most cost effective way of selling products and services on-line. That being said there are costs involved, and there are an abundance of different products to choose from when you are running an e-commerce store on one of the worlds most popular CMS platforms, WordPress.

In this article I will try to find the answer to the question: Which of the e-commerce solutions offered through WordPress is the most cost effective for a small business?

I will present an approximate costs of running a typical small business site with one payment gateway, one shipping method and one additional extension for a period of one and three years.

Woocommerce

Woocommerce is the WordPress e-commerce product with the most number of downloads, but surprisingly enough it’s not the cheapest one. It can be downloaded for free, like the majority of them, but extensions cost $100 on average (there are free ones and some cost more), plus PayPal generates additional costs. When buying an extension you buy it for one year after which you will have to renew your license in order to receive updates and support (without the updates the plugin can become obsolete).

After your license expires you have sixty days to renew with a fifty percent discount, if you miss the deadline it is full price again. Summing up it is: $100 for the first year, then if you are not late another $50 the next year and another $50 the next year which comes to the total of minimum $200 or maximum $300 for a three year period for one average priced extension. On top of that one have to keep in mind the fees charged by PayPal, which for small businesses come to 2.9% + 0.30c per transaction.

However, Woocommerce does not offer support in any other form than sending tickets through their help desk which is something to consider since time sensitive matters can suffer from a delayed response. This issue seem to be a problem as stated in many one star reviews on the WordPress page where they are a 15% of all of the reviews submitted, granted it is the Internet and one should take it with a grain of salt but the problem of poor customer support seems to be a prevalent one.

WP e-commerce

WP e-commerce comes in second in the number of downloads on WordPress. In the criteria chosen for this article it is also relatively cheap, as the download of the basic version is free. The extension price averages on $100 and there is no need for license renewal, but there is a twist there; support lasts only for one year from the date of purchase after which period the client is left to their own devices. The PayPal gateway comes with the standard fee for small businesses which is 2.9% + 0.30c per transaction (US rates as the percentage varies from country to country). But if one takes this e-commerce solution under serious consideration he/she should take a look at users’ reviews.

A shockingly high 43% of reviews give this software only one star, pointing to lots of bugs, payable customization services and poor customer support. To sum up, if one looks only at tangible figures this software with one extension and a PayPal gateway will cost a hundred dollars for a year and three hundred dollars for a three year period plus the PayPal fees. But taking under consideration the possibility of spending many hours trying to fix problems with the software the costs of running it grow dramatically.

Jigoshop

This e-commerce platform has downloaded by over 410,000 people so far. You can download it for free, which suits most users (free software has all the options one may need to run a small shop). Extensions cost - on average - around $40 and they do not require license renewal. You may want to pay $40/month for a small business support but it is not necessary as you may contact support via tickets on their website, the paid option comes with additional perks like phone support and quicker response time.

So without the additional support the small shop fulfilling the criteria of this article will cost $40 for a year and $120 for a three year period; plus the additional costs of the Paypal fees. So it works out as the cheapest option out of the three biggest e-commerce platforms running on WordPress. As for the opinions expressed in reviews: 85% of them are positive which - considering a large number of them - is a strong indicator that the software runs without any major problems and the support is responsive and helpful; which in itself means that you will not be wasting time (money) trying to fix bugs.

WP Marketplace

The next in line in terms of downloads but far behind the first three platforms. There is no license renewal for extensions and they are not all that expensive. They average around $40, but there is a limited choice. What is more, if you would like support you have to buy a membership, the cheapest Gold option costs $45 per purchase and an additional $35 every three months, it comes with a number of themes and the promise of at least one new theme every month, and there are the usual PayPal fees.

The cost of running this e-commerce platform for a year amounts to: an extension $40 + Gold membership $45 (additional $35 every three months) = $190; the cost for a three year period will amount to $470. This software is certainly not cheap, as for the opinions on support and bugs there are not many of them (only 51 of them in total; it is probably caused by a relatively small number of people using this product), but it seems to work OK.

Shopp

With a little over 25,000 downloads Shopp is the fifth one in this list although it is nowhere near the first three. It is free to download and without support you can run it with one add-on for $45 a year plus PayPal costs.

However, if you want support the cheapest option is Merchant support for $75 a year (Developer Support costs $299 a year and boasts faster support). It is worth noting that each extension comes with only a year of updates and support, although there is no need for license renewal if you want updates you will have to pay again. Shopp, with the cheapest support option will cost: for a year - $45 plugin + $75 support = $120; for three years - $45 plugin (times three for updates and support) + $75 support (times three) = $360. Short of using the platform and making contact with support there is no way of knowing the quality of their services as there is not enough reviews to come to any credible conclusions.

Wazala

Another one of the smaller e-commerce providers, Wazala offers three types of plans Small (50 products), Medium (250 products) and Large (unlimited number of products). There is basically no option of running it for free (you can but you will be limited to 5 products) but they do offer a 14 day trial period; the cheapest plan costs $192 per year or $20 per month and besides the limit of 50 products it offers additional 1 GB of digital file storage and that is all.

In my opinion not very impressive when you consider that they do not offer any extensions. The cost of running the cheapest option for three years comes up to $576. One has to also add the PayPal costs for a given country. The Medium and Large plan cost $384/year or $40/month and $768 or $80/year respectively; they also come with additional perks like larger digital storage, Google Analytics etc. This is not an expensive option but a limited one, only for those that are sure they will not need anything more in the future. In this case there is also not enough credible data to come to any reliable conclusions.

Note: There are more e-commerce platforms available on WordPress but they were not included in this article for one of two reasons; either they are relatively small or they did not reply in time for the purposes of this article.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Benjamin Kerry .