As you delve into website development, you’ll inevitably encounter clients who need a WordPress setup to sell products online. You might wonder, “Where can I find a simple cart plugin for WordPress?” In this article, I’ll introduce you to a self-hosted payment plugin for WordPress that comprehensively meets most online selling needs—including subscriptions.
Covering All Needs to Sell Online Using WordPress
When you, as a freelancer or web designer, are the source of knowledge and best advisor for your clients, you want to offer them your best advice. Most clients don’t know how to sell their products on their website or how to set up a simple cart plugin for WordPress.
In this article, I wanted to present to you StudioCart. My go-to WordPress plugin to sell online. It’s really well-made and has features for many scenarios that should cover your clients’ needs.
Serving your clients by creating well-crafted websites will earn you a higher income. And with this plugin,
It’s not hard to set up a shopping cart for WordPress anymore. But to have a self-hosted payment system for WordPress that is flexible and looks good, you have to be selective.
More and more creators and website owners are selling products on their websites. And since WordPress is, at the time of writing this article, powering over 65% of all websites on the Internet, you will encounter clients who need your services for a setup to sell online.
StudioCart is a premium shopping cart plugin for WordPress that’s worth paying attention to.
A Simple Cart Plugin for WordPress with Upsell and Downsells
Our future clients won’t just be selling physical products, but simple digital downloads, subscriptions, and services. For more advanced setups, you want to be sure you can help your clients on how to create product upsells in WordPress.
Finding a WordPress plugin with upsell and downsell capabilities can be tricky. But StudioCart has this built in. So take note of this, as your web design clients may request this feature in the future.
Or, you could advise them and offer this added feature on their website.
Upselling can raise a business’s income by a lot. But it’s often something many website owners forget about or don’t even know about.
The reason I recommend StudioCart is because of how elegantly it is built. But there’s more. Even though this is a simple cart plugin for WordPress, let me point out a few 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 offers advanced selling options
- You can connect both Stripe and PayPal, or accept cash on delivery
- It’s a great upsell and downsell plugin for WordPress
- Coupon codes are supported
- You can have bump offers on products
- Easily set up purchase notification 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
- User account management page (Using shortcode)
To also have a WordPress recurring payments plugin in this setup is pretty awesome. And users can easily log in and manage their account and subscription.
What 3rd party integrations does StudioCart have?
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. But there are often more actions that the site owner wants to perform when a product is purchased.
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 on any of my websites. They’re subpar, and I don’t want anything to do with them. But if you’re fine with their prices and questionable business model, it’s supported.
You can stay up to date with all integration progress for StudioCart here.
Another valued feature in StudioCart is the option to add the customer as a WordPress user to the site you’re building. A very cool functionality here that I personally love is to automatically have the user logged in after purchase. This means you can use advanced page-builders like Bricks Builder or Oxygen Builder to conditionally show or hide content based on user login status.
This is what I have done for my course website. It makes the purchase and signup flow for the user seamless and smooth. While they are logged in, a welcome email will be sent for their reference.
Besides that, you can customize further by setting up more actions. You can even use webhooks to trigger actions externally.
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. Each product will have its own payment form and corresponding shortcode.
If you are new to WordPress shortcodes, they’re a neat feature some plugins and scripts offer to make it simple to add a module and plugin functionality into a website.
“[example-shortcode]”
For example, you could just drop the shortcode right into an article on the website, and you will have a payment form showing in the post. It’s magical.
I did this on my course purchase page where I offer my premium online course for beginner freelance web designers. You will also have a list of other supported shortcodes to fetch customer and purchase details. This way, you can create a custom “Thank You” page.
StudioCart comes with some ready-made templates for simpler page builders like Divi and Elementor. And for general page templates for WordPress Gutenberg builder. 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.
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 order bumps and upsells.
If you’re a beginner, let me include a quick round-up of what this means.
You can create an order bump
When a customer lands on a sales page and is ready to buy, they will be presented with a cart or payment form. 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 plus one extra item.
You can create product upsells
StudioCart is a simple upsell WordPress plugin that has upsell functionality.
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 with a SIMILAR product, 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. StudioCart has this upsell feature built in.
You can create down-sell products
You can do this also with StudioCart. I think it’s a perfect plugin to create product downsells in WordPress because the workflow is simple yet flexible.
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.
Order bump, upsell, and downsell are, of course, just options when creating products in StudioCart. And you can mix and match them. These are some powerful features in a self-hosted cart plugin for WordPress.
Own Your Platform — The Best Self-Hosted 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.
When building websites and consulting with your clients, advise them on the benefits of OWNING their platform and setup. Let me explain.
When creating a website on WordPress, you own it and you have the freedom to make changes to whatever you desire. Including the plugins.
But if you go for platforms like Shopify, SamCart, or ThriveCart, they are expensive solutions and you will be paying a monthly fee to “rent” their services on a third-party website. You don’t own the platform either. So you have limited options to change and keep things self-hosted.
By building your own website and payment system using a simple cart plugin for WordPress like StudioCart, you self-host it on your website. You own the platform.
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.
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 alternative to “WP Simple Pay” for WordPress.
Get StudioCart here and start building a better cart and payment setup for WordPress when building websites for your customers.
Nicole, who’s the creator of StudioCart, has been amazing with her support, advice, and quick solutions. Their team is fast and has a good pace at keeping the StudioCart plugin updated and maintained.