Plugin Review: Cart66

I’m building a new e-commerce setup here at wpdude to sell my downloadable video courses, and as part of that project I’m using a new plugin called Cart66.

I thought a plugin review was due.

What Is Cart66

It’s a plugin that allows you to sell physical or digital products.  It also allows you to create membership sites and protect content.  I’m not using that function, so I’ll just concentrate on the e-commerce side of things.

Lite and Pro

There are two versions of the plugin, the lite free version and the premium version with more functionality.  The premium version starts at $89 for a single license and goes up to $299 for a developers license.

Minimal and Simple Setup

Some of the e-commerce plugins I have used are a little unwieldy, but cart66 is very minimal, I plugged in a couple of details like my paypal information, create some products and I was good to go.

I like low overhead simple plugins like this.

Downsides

It doesn’t have as good a set of product display options, so you need to create post or pages for your products and embed a buy now button.

This is not that bad, the way I have overcome this is to create a course category, and list all of my courses with a category link wpdude.com/category/premium-courses.

Cool Features

What set’s it apart from the other e-commerce plugins in my mind are some of the cool feature they’ve built into the plugin, see below a few that I’m using:

Paypal Express Checkout

Using paypal express checkout you can complete the payment process and stay on your own site.   By adding a couple of API keys I can keep people on my site and not send them away to paypal to complete the checkout.

Amazon S3 Integration

I’ve written about amazon S3 a number of times in the past, but it’s a great and cost effective way to store large files.  The beauty of Cart66 integration is that it allows me to store my large course zip files on Amazon S3 and then serve them up only to people who have bought them.

Mailchimp Integration

I can automatically add people who buy from me into a Mailchimp list.

Digital Product Delivery

Built in to the system is the ability to host and download digital products upon checkout.

Wrap Up

I’m really happy I’ve chosen Cart66 to manage my new store, it a simple yet incredibly effective solution.

Check it out cart66.com (aff link)

Image by polycart