Considering selling a WordPress digital product that doesn’t include WooCommerce? If so, keep reading this SureCart WordPress plugin review, the new WooCommerce alternative, and the eCommerce free solution.
One of the principal motives WordPress is utilized by over 40% of the net is its inexperienced ecosystem. Thousands of quality plugins serve almost every imaginable purpose and WooCommerce alternative.
Whether it’s social sharing, security, speed optimization, SEO, or contact forms (all our solution form plugins), it’s usually a matter of choosing the best one if you can. Unfortunately, however, WordPress has always fallen short of options when it comes to eCommerce.
With almost 2 hundred million downloads, WooCommerce is, with the aid of using ways, the maximum popular. It works well for brick-and-mortar stores with extensive catalogs of products, but online seems strange to his business owner, focusing on digital products.
These smaller stores like WooCommerce are:
- It is resource intensive
- This affects your site’s page speed
- These are third-party plugins from various vendors to accomplish what you want
- Advanced functionality gets complex and expensive
- It’s hard to work with site migration
- Also, e-commerce platforms are like other e-commerce software but need more digital knowledge for e-commerce and checkout development companies to customize the developer experience
With the recent release of SureCart, we finally have a real alternative for selling digital products.
What Is SureCart WordPress Plugin?
SureCart WordPress plugin is a brand new headless eCommerce answer for WordPress, and a WooCommerce alternative.
Sell your products and authorize payments on your website with a simple, customizable order form.
Wait… a headless e-commerce solution? After all, what this means?
Headless e-commerce is a relatively new concept and one that is still being refined.
In a few minds, e-commerce is without reference to an e-commerce platform that separates a front-end interface from the backend database.
That means you manage your order forms, subscriptions, etc., within the WordPress admin as usual, but all the processes would do behind the scenes on SureCart’s servers.
The benefits of this are:
- Load on your WordPress hosting server
- Improved security as data isn’t stored in WordPress in its database
- You don’t have to worry about optimizing your database or fixing bugs
- Easier to scale as your business grows
A headless setup like this has its solutions.
That means you depend on SureCart eCommerce free solution to be operational, and they have to design images to handle data.
That’s why developer ownership is essential.
I don’t foresee any problems here, and I think the pros outweigh the cons.
SureCart was created by Adam Preiser (of WPCrafter) and his team as a WooCommerce alternative.
Having started selling useful YouTube videos around WordPress, Adam is now starting to produce a public SaaS portfolio amazingly.
His other companies include CartFlows, Presto Player, SureMembers, and SureTriggers.
PS I also wrote an in-depth review of SureMembers here.
I bought and used CartFlows on client sites and can be in touch with its quality.
Also on the team are Sujay Pawar of Brainstorm Force (the creators of the Astra theme), Ben Bartling, who has had successful SaaS exits, and Andre Gagnon, a designer/developer who was behind ProjectHuddle.
Who Is SureCart WordPress Plugin For?
SureCart WordPress plugin a WooCommerce alternative, is still under active development, so this list will almost certainly expand over time.
It currently works great for:
- Creators selling digital products like courses, templates, and slider files
- Freelancers or service providers looking for an easy way to receive or pay their invoices
- Social organizations that want to collect donations from supporters
- Entrepreneurs selling unique and simple physical products like books
- Event marketers looking to sell tickets to an event online
- Currently, the car is more suitable for the trade with which it is not known what right to manufacture the car for the trade of a classic car.
- More options for physical sellers are expected to arrive in late 2022.
How SureCart WordPress Plugin Works
SureCart plugin review: Starting
SureCart’s setup process is no different than any other WordPress plugin a WooCommerce alternative.
After installing and activating the plugin, you will see SureCart added to your WP Admin navigation.
So, click on it to start the integration process:
As I mentioned, all backend activity takes place on SureCart’s servers. That means you sign up for a free account.
It will ask for your store details:
And to connect to a payment processor:
SureCart WordPress plugin a WooCommerce alternative is now connected to the payment processor.
When done, it will give you an API key to copy to the plugin settings:
Creating A Product With SureCart WordPress Plugin
We are ready to build our product now that we have the configuration resolved.
In WP Admin, go to SureCart -> Products -> Add New.
Here you can set the product name and pricing options.
Currently, Dividi, you can choose between Single Payment, Subscription, or Payment Plan (also known as Payment).
A one-time payment is pretty straightforward, but there is flexibility with how much you charge.
You can enable a set price or enable “allow to pay the custom price.”
Subscriptions allow you to set multiple pricing options for each product.
The payment plan also allows you to choose the number and frequency of payments.
Let’s say you run a membership site. And you can charge $99 for a monthly subscription or also give them 2 months free by charging $1,000 for an annual subscription.
Or, if you have a site care plan, you can also charge $299 one-time setup fee and $99/month after the first month.
Pricing options are quite flexible, and also you have full control over what is shown on the checkout form.
If you hover over each pricing option, you will see a “Copy purchase link” button. This gives you a quick way to purchase your product without creating a custom checkout (more on that below).
On the product page, there is also a section for uploading files as a download.
Creating a checkout form With SureCart WordPress Plugin
If you go to SureCart -> Forms, you will notice a created checkout form.
This will serve as your default checkout.
This form will be used when using the Copy Buy link above.
Of the different ones you’re selling, create products that form a personalized.
This allows you to more specific pricing options or collects specific information.
When creating a new one, you can choose a form template:
Your pricing options and select whether to use a custom thank you page:
What’s really cool about building the checkout form is that it’s all done in Gutenberg.
It gives a familiar feel.
It also means that you can rearrange and add fields as you wish.
You can add titles, input fields, dividers, columns, checkboxes, etc. wherever you want:
I love how much control it gives you. You can create the perfect checkout for your product.
Selling a simple swipe file? You can just put your name and email.
Sell a complex service? You can see all things as additional.
Creating Coupons With SureCart WordPress Plugin
Just like the rest of the platform, creating coupons is incredibly simple.
You can choose the text of the coupon code, either a fixed or percentage discount, the duration of the discount, the end date, and the maximum number of redemptions.
Viewing customers
You will see a list of everyone purchasing from you on the customer’s page.
You may notice that this list seems longer than expected.
That’s because SureCart eCommerce free solution also collects abandoned carts.
There is currently no way to filter the list to show only the current client, but I submitted a feature request, and they said they are working on it.
Click on a customer to view the complete profile of that customer.
Your profile shows your previous purchases, active subscriptions, and associated WordPress user accounts.
You can also refund orders, cancel subscriptions, and revoke access to files.
View subscription
The Subscriptions page allows you to view all active and canceled subscriptions. Click on a subscription to view related orders and cancel.
Additionally, you can fully manage your subscriptions.
So, you can change the quantity, add a free trial, or switch your subscription to an entirely different product.
Most other e-commerce platforms don’t offer this level of control regarding managing subscriptions.
This means you can upgrade a customer from Basic to Pro and prorate the price change without the customer having to lift a finger.
Configuring the Customer Portal
Having all these controls on the backend is great, but what if your customers want to manage their own accounts?
After all, you don’t want to email you every time a customer changes their subscription or updates their payment method.
And this is where the customer portal comes into play.
And once again, delivery.
By default, you get a nice dashboard where users can manage their accounts:
It’s entirely self-service, which means they never have to contact you to make a change.
However, there may also be cases where you don’t want your customers to have free reign over their subscriptions.
For example, you may not want your hosting customer to cancel their subscription before you let them know what it means for your website.
Or maybe you don’t want an email marketing client to cancel their subscription if they’re in the middle of a 12-month contract.
Fortunately, SureCart lets you decide what your customers can and cannot do:
You can opt out of subscription changes, quantity changes, and cancellations.
In addition to managing your account, the Customer Dashboard is also where users can view their orders, their invoice history, and access their downloads.
In addition to creating checkout forms, the Gutenberg editor gives you full control over your customer dashboard.
You can also create new tabs and add your content.
Each section of the dashboard is its own Gutenberg block. Of course, you can create your custom dashboard from scratch if you want.
Integrations
Payment processors
SureCart eCommerce free solution currently supports both Stripe and PayPal.
They said they plan to integrate with many other payment processors in the coming months.
Third-party apps
Integrations will be a big selling feature for the SureCart WordPress plugin.
It already has some core integrations built into the app and an entirely separate platform called SureTriggers (coming soon) if you want to take things further.
When someone buys a product, you can add them to a LearnDash or TutorLMS course, assign them to a WordPress user role, and add them to a SureMembers or MemberPress membership.
The idea is that SureCart eCommerce free solution allows you to connect your products to the rest of your WordPress site.
So, if you want to perform more complex actions such as adding customers to Google Sheets, etc., that’s where SureTriggers come in.
SureCart Plugin Review: Upsells, down sells, and order increases
They are not available in beta but will be added as part of a Pro plan in the coming months.
Funnel management
It remains to be determined if SureCart plugin will be used to manage funnels in the future, and we can review that.
Until then, I’m using Happy Files to manage my site.
SureCart Plugin Review: Reporting
There are screenshots in your FB group of a reporting dashboard, but this is not currently included in the beta.
Tax calculation
SureCart plugin comes with built-in free tax calculation built-in, let’s review it.
The interface is intuitive, responsive, and clean looking.
And I felt like I got the hang of the platform within minutes of using it for the first time.
SureCart is already well documented if you get stuck, considering it’s still in beta.
Most of the documentation is currently in video format only, but and will add a more detailed knowledge base closer to the official release.
SureCart Plugin Review: Support service
Based on my experience with SureCart eCommerce free solution, the support was top-notch. After discovering some bugs in the early beta, one of the developers contacted me the same day and resolved the issue within 24 hours.
But early beta testing and mass support are two different ball games.
We’ll continue to monitor the level of support over the next few months as SureCart is rolled out to more users.
Given the developer’s reputation, I don’t think support will be an issue.
SureCart Plugin Review: Pricing
The initial release of SureCart, a WooCommerce alternative, is free only.
The free version is pretty generous. So, everything you need is to start selling products and collecting payments on your website.
The Pro version will be released in Q3 or Q4 2022 and will include advanced features such as order boost, one-click upsell, and an affiliate platform.
Given where the product stands in the free version, I’m curious to know what the pro version offers.
That’s all
We hope you found this SureCart review helpful. And if you decide to try it, let us know in the comments below.
The post SureCart WordPress Plugin Review: The New WooCommerce Alternative & eCommerce Free Solution appeared first on Visualmodo.
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