[Plugin: WooCommerce – eCommerce plugin for WordPress] very expensive *free* plugin

I have to agree with this assessment. So far I’ve spent a whole week trying to deal with the inconsistent functionality presented by WooCommerce, with and without the free Wootique theme (which seems to present its own set of headaches).

If I do stick with this, I may well have to pay for support access (that is, just join WooThemes) or even hire a “WooNinja” to get things going as they should. We’ll see….

@p3air Anyone can get started with WC for no cost at all – it comes with enough functionality and built-in gateways to get started, and works with the default WordPress themes out of the box. Woo have even given away a WooCommerce theme (WooTique) for free.

If you want more power (e.g. additional gateways/shipping modules) then you have the choice to purchase them – this is not unreasonable at all, especially seeing as you will be making money from your store and/or passing the cost onto a client…

On top of that, with any purchase you get access to Woo’s support forums – again, this is very reasonable.

Sounds like you want everything for nothing IMO :p

@aminkaozmun If you find bugs with WooCommerce please report them here: https://github.com/woothemes/woocommerce

Thanks, Mike: an outlet at last!

Sounds like you want everything for nothing IMO :p

Mike,

rubbish – quite a few people here in WP have develop very decent plugins and functionality for FREE. And yes, we have supported them with development and money.

On top of it: WordPress is FREE. This is a priceless CMS-platform which would be worth thousands of Dollars if sold individually. But like firefox and other great internet tools, they remain FREE.

WooTheme is a revenue-oriented organization, which is legit. But it needs to be said in description. Instead keywords like: unbelievable functionality, full e-commerce plugin are be thrown in … The functionality is achieved AFTER the purchase which is quite steep.

I am sure you looked at PrestaShop – oh, newsflash: Double the functionality of WooCommerce for – guess?? – FREE!

We don’t really expect everything for free, rather it’s been offered to us for FREE. So, just show yourself in your true colors …

None of the functionality we provide as paid addons is *needed* to start a store. Its optional. The core plugin is free, as advertised, and is a full solution. As I said above, you can start a store without buying a thing.

Prestashop have a paid module section too btw https://addons.prestashop.com/en/

P3air, I just tried the WooCommerce plugin for the first time today, and I was able to get a functioning store up and running without the need for any of the Woo themes or paid addons. It seems to have a good amount of functionality built in. What, in particular, do you find lacking from the core plugin? I’m not asking rhetorically, BTW. I’m eager to hear your experiences, as they may influence my decision to use the plugin. I’ve only done very preliminary testing so far.

Google Checkout $50+, PayPal IPN $50+, individual shipping $50+, feedback $30+, …

Checkout PrestaShop or ZenCart to understand what an online shop needs to have (and could have) in terms of functionality for free.

All these mentioned extensions and almost ‘must-have’ are integrated already. Also in comparison to the mentioned modules the back-office capabilities of WooCommerce are bare-bone.

Additionally we’ve discovered plenty of bugs integrating this plugin into a WordPress environment. Works basically only on their themes in an ok-way.

if you find bugs (and I mean bugs with the plugin, not styling issues due to the theme your using) please report them here so they can be fixed ?? https://github.com/woothemes/woocommerce/issues

We’ve decided to drop the plugin/theme. Functionality and stability is a fraction of what can be achieved with better products for free.

Unfortunately your support is very, very limited and only available to (paid) members. We’ve spent quite an amount of manpower and therefor money into the evaluation of your product. Since your business-model is happening behind closed and PAID doors, we don’t feel comfort to participate and contribute significantly in your development for FREE.

Good luck.

Github and www.remarpro.com are not behind closed doors, only the forum is. Those are outlets for (free) support. And to be fair, you could buy a $15 extension and get on our paid forums if you really wanted. If your providing a service for paying clients then this amount is pittance.

Anyway, good luck to you.

The plugin is very limiting compared to other shopping cart solutions.

Here’s an example. I want to show a featured product on my home page with large product image, the excerpt and link to the product. Woocommerce can’t do this out of the box.

Prepare to spend money and wrangle the hell out of it with CSS.

It’s a good first step but has a long long way to go.

As someone using WordPress for several projects on a regular basis I feel I should chip in with my 5c.

I worked with wp-e-commerce and shopplugin and tried WooCommerce for my latest project. It is very developer friendly, almost bug-free and working with developers and translators via GitHub has been a breeze. Totally different to what I experienced with the other ecommerce plugins.

If you want something that is pretty out of the box, you should go with a WooTheme, though. WooCommerce is not something you just plug in in 5 minutes. For the quality you get, I think the themes and extensions are reasonably priced. Not everything has to be free.

I worked with wp-e-commerce and shopplugin and tried WooCommerce for my latest project. It is very developer friendly, almost bug-free and working with developers and translators via GitHub has been a breeze. Totally different to what I experienced with the other ecommerce plugins.

Totally agree jessor. WooCommerce is awesome, the support is fantastic. I’ve been in ecommerce for close to a decade, and have really come to admire the simplicity and flexibility that Mike and crew have created. Yes, there are situations where you may want something different, but honestly, for 99% of business, especially ones using wordpress, WooCommerce is top of the list by miles.

I am testing woocommerce & wp-ecommerce for an upcoming project. wp-ecom as well has paid plugins. the first thing I wanted to do, display the items in a grid, requires the gold cart plugin which is if I remember correctly, $40.

Out of the box, woocommerce is appering the do everything we need including a grid display on the front page and tags / category pages. we are listing images, and people are going to buy prints, so I had to learn how to create a variable product to allow for frame choice. I was able to figure this out without any tutorials in just a few minutes. we only need per order shipping, so the only paid plugins I was looking at were the checkout and potentially the other paypal one.

It seems that any cart will require a few plugins or customizations. This is planned in the startup cost of the store, thus we are just trying to have a clear picture of what costs are there before making a decision. the prices are pretty fair, so its not really a huge deal to us, its more about functionality.

right now, i am looking at more of the order processing / management aspect of it. it seems woo is slightly more smoothly integrated into the wp dashboard. given I am handing this off to some very non-techie people, I am thinking that this might be a real strong case to go with the woocommerce plugin.

I see mention of various themes in this thread.. I am wondering if there is any issues starting from the twenty-eleven default theme and going from there?

Did a stupid thing – wanted to download a CSV file from wordpress / Woo and they suggested to convert products to Woo which I did and now I do not know how I can revert it as I wish to go with a different theme. Too many products to want to start over from fresh. What can this idiot do ?