5 Joomla Shopping Cart Extensions – Alternatives to Virtuemart

Web design community has recognized Virtuemart as a sole leader of the Shopping Cart rivalry for Joomla CMS. Its leadership is unquestionable and we are sure that many of you have positive experience of using this software. Today we would like to talk about the alternative pieces of software which are quite underrated due their current status (it's obvious that new and mostly unknown products have huge chances to fail the marketing competition - even if they're good).

In general any shopping cart plugin must have several universal features which are equally important both for the shop owners and webmasters. Simplicity is the key feature that must be kept in mind while developing any shopping cart software. Simple and quick checkout is a perfect way to improve your website usability, comprehensive interface will save a lot of your resources and of course clear and understandable structure will be a great find for the webmasters.

New or unknown software often scares potential clients with the possible issues that might occur during the installation process. Actually this myth can be easily busted because most of the new software is developed according the web standards which automatically removes possibility of occurring this problem. Anyways, all we are trying to say is that you shouldn’t judge things without having your own experience in using it. All right folks, let’s now go back to our dear universal shopping cart plugins.

* * *

1. HikaShop

If you are looking for simple and non-frustrating shopping cart than this is your lucky ticket. Excellent user interface, clean code and many useful features - these are the main features that won't let you stay indifferent to this software. This extension has a convenient dashboard that displays sales rate and geographical distribution, affiliate program and powerful currency support, easy-going checkout and many useful marketing tools. It is an excellent software for successful online businessmen. Here is the demo version of this shopping cart plugin.

* * *

2. SimpleCaddy

Looks like that developers of this plugin decided to make simplicity the main trump in their game. You won't find more comprehensive shopping cart for Joomla CMS than this one. The name of this software speaks for itself - simple and lightweight cart for small to average catalogue. Here you won't find tons of frustrating features and it won't take you endless hours to set up all options - and it is the main advantage of the SimpleCaddy.

* * *

3. redSHOP Light

redSHOP Light is a light weighted version of the redShop plugin created specifically for small webshops. It has a bunch of useful features that are fully compatible with Joomla 1.5. If you are a newbie than we believe that this plugin might be interesting for you because it supported by awesome video tutorials and excellent PDF manual. Of course you can always upgrade to the full version of the redSHop and get more plugins and options though we are not sure that you'll need all that stuff. Take a look at the demo page of this shopping cart.

* * *

4. Tienda

Tienda is being positioned as an effective, flexible and promising shopping cart plugin. Powerful multilingual support along with the easy-going checkout system are important arguments that may convince you to try out this software. It has nearly 30 various extensions that would help you to easily operate your online store. One of the greatest features of this product is integrating the Joomla features with its code - it is very important both for the users and web developers.

* * *

5. JoomShopping

Our last player for today, as all of its rivals, builds its campaign by being nice and simple little extension that will help you start selling online. It is worth mentioning that you can add audio and video files to the products descriptions, build successful SEO strategy due to the effective SEO features avaliable in this plugin. Among the other important options there are Customized PDF Bills and integrated Payment Provider. Clean code and flexible structure will help you to add new features to this software.

* * *

That's all for now guys, we sincerely hope that you'll try out at least a couple of these shopping cart extensions and let us know about your experience - we would love to hear a word from you! Take care and stay tuned!

P.S. You might be interested in our Virtuemart Templates - so please feel free to browse them!

Lingerie Store

* * *

C&G Shop

* * *