what's the best ecommerce plugin for wordpress? [closed]

WP-eCommerce is the only plugin for WordPress worth looking at when it comes to eCommerce. You do get a lot for free.

That said, Alex makes some great points about how WordPress is NOT ideal for eCommerce.

However, after having completed 2 websites with WP-eCommerce and 2 websites with Magento Commerce, I can say that there is a HUGE difference in the time it takes to complete.

WP-eCommerce can be set up relatively quickly with very little customization to get it to look decent in your own WP Theme. A full eCommerce system such as Magento, on the other hand, has a huge learning curve and you will spend 3 times as long anytime you want to change anything.

It all depends what you're going for. If you want something simple that can be tweaked a little but doesn't need to be a great robust long-term solution, I would definitely consider WP-eCommerce. Otherwise, go for a real eCommerce platform.

Alternatively: Zen-Cart looks simpler than Magento but without some of the flexibility. Whatever you do, DON'T go anywhere near osCommerce.

Trick question: WordPress, a very simplistic blogging platform, should never be stretched into something as intricate as an e-commerce solution. An e-commerce platform offering a simple blogging module is another matter entirely.

Since you don't know much about WordPress anyway, you may want to consider using a e-commerce platform like magentocommerce.com, zen-cart.com, or oscommerce.com. All of them are PHP/MySQL based, like WordPress.

Wordpress.org has an extensive list of all of the various extensions and add-ons that are publicly available. If you look under all results with the ecommerce tag, you might find something that better suits your needs. If you are already using Wordpress as your content management system, why not just outsource the shipping and order management with something like Paypal or Google Checkout? Just have your catalog and if they like it, the can click "order with Paypal" or some such.

Also, I just went and looked up WP eCommerce and it is incredibly generous what they offer out of the box for free. The things that cost are listed at the Gold Cart premiumm upgrades page, and from what I can tell, most of the features you could do own your own, other than the added payment options (none of which I've heard of).