When you start building websites, you will sooner or later have to create a WordPress setup for a client that wants to sell a product online. Then you wonder how to use a simple cart plugin for WordPress that will look good and have a simple workflow. I have just discovered the slickest self-hosted payment plugin for WordPress to do just this.
If you are a beginner Web Designer or are looking for ways to sell courses, files, and other products on your website, this tip is for you. I think it’s the best option right now to quickly create a flexible and good-looking payment form anywhere on the website.
Article Table of Contents
Why you want to use Studiocart plugin for WordPress
Serving your clients better by creating well-crafted websites will pay you a higher income. And you will have clients that will come back, again and again, to have you work for them.
Here’s a quick overview of what I will cover in this article.
- Show you the best cart plugin with upselling for WordPress
- It’s a self-hosted payment and cart system with Stripe and PayPal
- It’s a WordPress plugin with both upsell, downsell, and order bump
It’s not hard to quickly set up a shopping cart and payment form to sell products in WordPress anymore. But to have a self-hosted payment system for WordPress that is flexible and also looks good, then you have to be very selective.
The plugin I will show you in this article makes it simple to create products and website payment embed-forms using short-codes.
Simple Cart Plugin for WordPress with Upsell and Downsells
If you build your own websites or you are setting up websites for clients, sooner or later you will need a way to create payment forms. More and more creators are offering products to sell on their websites.
And I’m picky about my tools, plugins, and systems that I work with to create websites for clients. (Also for my own websites)
And the reason I brag about Studiocart is because of how elegant it is built. But there’s more. Even though this is a simple cart plugin for WordPress, let me point out a few valuable qualities and features worth mentioning:
- It’s a complete WordPress plugin with no need for an external platform
- You can create as many products as you like
- It’s simple and clean, but you can do advanced stuff
- You can connect both Stripe and PayPal, or accept cash on delivery
- Its a great upsell and downsell plugin for WordPress
- Coupons codes are supported
- Easily set up purchase notifications emails
- Easily set up custom purchase messages or forward to a Thank You page
- Set up tracking for various stages in the purchase process
- Set up abandoned cart email follow-ups
- Create recurring membership payments with various billing intervals
To also have a WordPress recurring payments plugin in this setup is pretty awesome.
What integrations does Studiocart have with 3rd party services?
If you are a beginner Web Designer, you should know that when using various plugins and systems, sometimes they should be able to integrate with other services as well.
In this case, when a visitor purchases something on a website, the customer should at least be automatically added to the website owner’s email service.
At the time of writing this post, this is what Studiocart integrates with for now:
Email services:
- ConvertKit Email service
- Mailchimp e-mail service
- ActiveCampaign email service
- SendFox
- Mailpoet
- Drip
Courses and LMS Plugins
- LearnDash LMS
- MemberVault
- Kajabi
- FluentCRM
- TutorLMS
Membership Plugins
- Restrict Content Pro
- Groups by itthinx
- Wishlist Member
For payment services, as mentioned, the plugin supports Stripe and Paypal. For my part, I’m not even allowing PayPal in any of my websites. They suck, and I don’t want anything to do with them. But if you’re fine with their prices and nasty business hustle, it’s supported. Good luck.
LearnDash is also natively integrated on the product setup page. LearnDash is my choice and the best LMS plugin for WordPress now.
You can stay up to day with all integrations progress for Studiocart here.
So in Studiocart settings, you will have the option to add the customer as a user to the WordPress site your building on. And you can add them to a course in LearnDash, plus set up further actions using Webhooks.
Simple payment plugin using shortcodes in WordPress
When you have finished setting up a new product in Studiocart, it’s easy to add the payment forms anywhere on the site. Because each product will have its own payment form and corresponding short-code.
If you are new to shortcodes, it’s a super-sexy feature some plugins and scripts offer to make it simple to add a module and plugin functionality into a website.
For example, you could just drop the short-code right into an article on the website and you will have a payment form showing right there on the page. It’s magical.
Studiocart plugin for WordPress supports both Divi and Elementor page builders. And if you’re more advanced and are building sites in other ways, like using Oxygen Builder, it’s easy to just drop shortcodes into the design.
Again, this is how I did it on this course purchase page where I offer my premium online course on how to make money creating websites as a beginner.
In Studiocart you will also have a myriad of other supported short-codes to fetch customer and purchase details. This way, you can create a custom “Thank You” page.
And, it comes with some ready-made templates for Elementor and general page templates for WordPress. This makes it easy, even for beginners, to quickly create checkout pages for each product.
A clean WordPress Upsell plugin with Order bump
I should also mention the more fancy stuff you can do with Studiocart on the websites you are building
As a beginner Web Designer, it’s important for you to know what options you have and what you can do with a simple payment plugin for WordPress like Studiocart. Your client may ask for features like the following:
And, If you are new to this, let me quickly explain “order bumps”, “upsell” and “downsell” products in a shopping cart.
You can create an order bump
When a customer lands on a sales page and is ready to buy, they will be presented with some sort of cart or payment form. And sometimes you want to offer the buying customer one extra item for a small price in addition to the main product. This is called an “order bump.”
This means the customer will buy the main product + one extra item.
You can create product upsells
Yes, Studiocart is a simple upsell WordPress plugin as well. An “upsell” is when a customer has clicked to purchase a product and go to the checkout. You will then have the option to present them a SIMILAR product, or one that is more feature-rich, but for a higher price. So, you are up-selling them to a more expensive product. If they click yes to accept, they will drop the initial product and go for the upsell instead. This is very often an effective method to improve sales.
You can create downsell products
You can do this also with Studiocart. I think it’s a perfect plugin to create product downsells in WordPress because the flow is flexible but simple.
Let’s say that you have a product with an UPSELL presented to the customer. The customer is not interested so they click “No Thanks”. When they continue, you have one last option to present them with a DOWNSELL, which is a cheaper option, but still a product with a higher price than the initial one they selected.
Both order bump, upsell, and downsell is of course just an option when creating products in Studiocart. And you can mix and match them.
It’s magical.
Own your stuff! -It´s the best selfhosted shopping cart plugin for WordPress
There are many shopping carts and payment systems to be used when building WordPress websites. But usually, you have to pay a very high cost to purchase such software. And usually with a monthly recurring expense.
As a beginner Web Designer, keep this in mind:
When building websites and consulting with your clients, advise on the benefits of OWNING their own platform and setup. Let me explain;
When building a website on WordPress, you own it and you have the freedom to make changes to whatever you desire.
If you pay for platforms like Shopify, Samcart, or ThriveCart, they are expensive and you will be paying a monthly fee to “rent” their services on a third-party website. You don’t own the platform. So you have limited options to change and keep things self-hosted.
By building your own website and payment system, and using a simple cart plugin for WordPress like Studiocart, you self-host it on your website. You’re in control and things load much faster. The only add-on you would need is Stripe. Which you HAVE to use if you want to accept credit cards at all. A Stripe account is free to set up anyway.
I have tried and tested a lot of systems. And so far, Studiocart is the best self-hosted shopping cart plugin for WordPress I have found.
Looking for a WordPress plugin to replace Samcart and ThriveCart?
I like simplicity and clean website builts. I think it’s one of the reasons I have been getting so many clients that keep coming back for years.
If you built websites for customers, keep simplicity in mind. It can benefit you greatly over time.
Payment and shopping cart systems like ThriveCart and Samcart are expensive and complicated. And very often overkill for many online creators. They are good products, and I can recommend both. But it’s for creators and business owners that sell a lot and are okay to pay a lot for such systems.
I will say that Studiocart is the best Samcart alternative. It’s also a good WordPress ThriveCart alternative because I have spent a lot of time in ThriveCart. I like it, but it’s complicated and slow compared to Studiocart.
Currently, with Samcart you have to pay at least $99 MONTHLY to have similar features as with Studiocart.
With ThriveCart, be prepared to pay at least $494 for the standard account now.
Get the Studiocart plugin for WordPress here.
Compared to the other plugins for WordPress, Studiocart will give you a bunch of slick built-in features. It’s also the best “WP Simple pay” alternative.
Get Studiocart here and start offering a better cart and payment plugin for WordPress when building websites for your customers.
Make things look good, load fast, and own the setup of your website.
I really recommend it. And Nicole who’s the creator of Studiocart has been amazing with her support, advice, and quick solutions.