WordPress Ecommerce Plugin – PHPurchase
Plugins 17 Comments
*original image by pkmahanand
UPDATE: PHPurchase is now Cart66. Visit Cart66 plugin site
Following my previous article on WordPress E-commerce solutions, today I want to present you another awesome WordPress plugin.
Why didn’t I just add it to that post? Well, I got the chance to give it a test drive, and it impressed me so much, that I felt it needed a dedicated post.
It’s called PHPurchase and it is a powerful and easy to use premium WordPress E-commerce plugin.
As I said, I was lucky enough to get to try it out, so here’s what I think about it after playing with it on my upcoming email marketing blog.
The first thing that I noticed about PHPurchase is that it’s really easy to use. You simply upload it to your wp-plugins folder, activate it from the Plugins dashboard, and start adding products to sell.
OK. Not that fast, but close enough 
The plug-in appears in your menu as depicted in the picture to the left. As you can see, you have several options:
- Orders
- Products
- Promotions
- Shipping
- Settings
- Help
The first thing I recommend is taking a look at the Help section – the author has recorded some very helpful videos that explain how you need to set up your store and your merchant accounts / payment gateway.
After that, you can jump right into the settings page and set-up your store.
Below is an example of the settings page.
PHPurchase uses Pages in WordPress to manage your store and products. You can insert products through a handy link in the text editor when writing pages.
Adding a product in your PHPurchase store is as simple as clicking on Products and entering some basic info, like product name, item number and price of course. You have more options here, like specify if the product is taxed, if it’s a shippable or digital product, add options like color or size, and also specify the download link (if it’s a digital product)
After setting your merchant options and adding products, displaying them in your site is as simple as creating pages for each product and adding those little shortcodes that tell PHPurchase to show the Add to cart button.
PHPurchase Features List
- Easy Product Placement
It’s very easy to get started selling online - Order Management
Keep track of your orders as people make purchases from your website. - Promotions
You can offer both percentage off discounts as well as dollar amount discounts. - Shipping Options
Set up multiple shipping options for your customers. This way, you can offer as many or as few shipping options as you want (FedEx Ground, FedEx 2Day, USPS, etc). - Digital Products
You can sell both physical as well as digital products with PHPurchase. - Easy To Customize Everything
Every aspect of PHPurchase is easy to customize and can be adjusted to your site. - Payment Gateways
PHPurchase supports PayPal and the Authorize.net payment gateway API. - Documentation
Together with PHPurchase, you also get a high quality video tutorial that will show you how easy it is to get your ecommerce website running.
Personally I’m very excited with the features PHPurchase has and I’ll most definitely use it on Email Marketer’s Guide for selling email templates (that’s a sneak peak, yes )
Are you using PHPurchase on your site to sell online? If yes, what is your experience with it?
i think this is a very easy to use and to set up wordpress e-commerce plugin had it up and running in minutes the only problem i had was that ‘more of a feature then any thing’ was to add different downloads for different option groups for what i have to offer thats all i need now but excellent plugin.
Hi there,
I’m contemplating on getting either PHPurchase or Shopp plugin.. The only advantage I see here is the one time fee, while shopp, once it reaches version 2.0, would have to pay upgrade fee…
I’m in need of these features though:
Bank Transfer Payment
Emailing of Invoices/Sales Order to customers
I don’t think both Shopp/PHPurchase has them yet..
Which is really a headache for me, since I need to kick start my business soon..
Your thoughts?
@Faustine
I’ve personally chosen PHPurchase because it easier to use and it also has payment gateways functionality built in. So you could use Authorize.net or QuantumGateway (recommended) without paying for an add-on (example: Shopp requires you buy a 25$ add-on for authorize.net).
Bank transfer is harder to implement, as it requires a lot of “off-site” implementations – I’m not sure, but I think you need to be in a relationship with the bank to implement such a feature.
Anyway, I’d definitely go for PHPurchase for the easy-to-use system, powerful backend, multiple payment processors, growing community and excellent support.
Cheers!
Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
Not necessary bank transfer option need to have relationship with the local bank, as long as there is a way to invoice the customers, and get them to pay manually and I’d have to coordinate manually.
For a start I’m going to use Paypal for credit card payments, and as I’m in Singapore, I’m not sure I can use any of those payment gateways you mentioned… which cost a bomb in itself.. especially Authorize.net.
Does it have Email Notification of Order/Invoice for the customer? I think Shopp has a simple notification via email. but PHPurchase doesn’t seem to have one at all..
PHPurchase is integrated with the IPN from PayPal so, yeah, they do have notifications
So does the IPN integration serves to alert the customer with the order details indicated in the email it send automatically?
How does this compare with the eStore plugin? I see PHPurchase integrates with the affiliate plugin from the maker of eStore, but if all I am selling is digital goods is there any reason to choose this over eStore (for less $$)?
@Dan – well they’re both easy to install and use; and some features are different, like eStore has Aweber integration for example.
However, if you’re only selling digital, I’d go for PHPurchase for one strong reason: more payment gateways (this is very important if you don’t want to use Paypal or 2Checkout)
Thanks for the input. I’ll probably start with just Paypal, but in the future may use a gateway for payment processing. That side of things is all new to me. I’ve narrowed it down to these two plugins. The difference in price really isn’t that great, although the author of the eStore plugin offers a package discount. I’m definitely using the affiliate plugin, so I am just wondering if it would be better to stick with the same plugin author for both. I know PHPurchase is integrated with the affiliate plugin as well, but sometimes 3rd party integration isn’t as clean and easy. I’ll have to play around with the demos more on the two sites. Thanks for all the info on PHPurchase!
Very useful plugin for those who wants to start an e-commerce website.
hello,
can i use the plugin for my restaurant and collecting orders/payment online in holland, eg ideal payment, paypal?
@andre – you sure can, PHPurchase can be used for both digital and physical products
Has anyone else had the issue of users not knowing what to do after that click on the “Add To Cart” button?
Since PHPurchase goes back to the same page after they click on ADD TO CART, some of my users do not realize they have to then click some where else for it to go to the “Cart” so they keep clicking “Add To Cart” button lots of times…
Or is there a setting to get around this, and for it to go straight to the Cart after clicking Add To?
I didn’t see anywhere in your post where you mentioned that your links to PHPurchase were affiliate links. I assume you get some sort of kickback for anyone that buys this plugin?
I’m finding it very hard to find unbiased information on the different WordPress ecommerce plugins out there. I have no way of knowing if you are recommending PHPurchase because it is truly a better product or because they offer you a better affiliate marketing deal than other plugins.
@Dalton – Regarding links, you are correct, it is a way to monetize the site and keep it running.
As for PHPurchase, I really think it’s the best plugin I’ve tried and that’s the very first reason I’m recommending it for. If it was only for the affiliate stuff, I wouldn’t bother, because trying to promote a crappy product will never get you anything
PS: take a look at how WP Swag Store is using it.
I’m looking for the perfect, simple WP ecommerce solution. I bought a copy of Shopp thinking I might have found it, trusting in their hype about “great customer service”. That, I’m afraid, is total rubbish! The Shopp team were a massive disappointment. I had a couple of very simple questions, that despite numerous forum requests and emails to the developers, never got answered!
PHPurchase would be my next trial, there seems to be a lot to like about it. However, having emailed the developer, there are a few major flaws that need to be addressed.
In order, they are:
1. I often work with charities, and need a payment facility for donations in addition to selling goods. This absolutely has to allow for the customer’s input of a variable amount (not fixed a value). PHPurchase doesn’t support this, and unfortunately that makes it useless for many of my projects. I can’t stress what an important feature this is.
2. Typically, the payment gateways favour an American market, meaning no support for the UK other than PayPal. This is not acceptable for most of my clients (who require at least some choice), especially non-profits & charities who may loose money through PayPal. The plugin really needs to include SagePay (and possibly some UK high street banks such as HSBC).
3. From the videos on the PHPurchase site it doesn’t look like a customer can view their order history. This is a massive oversight in terms of building an onging relationship with ones customers.
Other than that, it looks very interesting.
I really wish somebody would sort out a decent premium plugin that covers all the obvious bases with an international perspective. E-commerce is the weakest element of WordPress. I wouldn’t mind paying the developer license for a reliable product trustworthy product.
wicky look at romancart for the uk options so far found them to be really helpful.