Issue #179 Loop WP

Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Welcome to Issue #179 of Loop WP!

Last week was about an exciting update to an old landing page, as the marketing battle between WooCommerce and Shopify gets a shiny upgrade.

This week, it’s about a new WooCommerce alternative, FluentCart.

Let’s go! 👇

The last couple of weeks, this newsletter has focused on “WooCommerce vs Shopify” from the perspectives of:

🛒 Shopify launched its plugin for WordPress (which we will be looking at very soon).

Now, we have a new offering from the WP Manage Ninja team, which brings a Shopify-style experience to WordPress with FluentCart.

🖥️ Back in Issue 160 of Loop WP, I shared the initial announcement video for FluentCart, “New Player in Town” - A New Era of Commerce With WordPress.

Since then, FluentCart has come a long way (when I last looked at it, there was no support for taxes), and Paul Charlton from WPTuts has made an excellent walkthrough video. 👇

💡 There is a lot of hype around FluentCart, and as expected, it integrates deeply with the Fluent ecosystem. So I would imagine that is where a lot of the initial users will come from.

✅ I think in time it will certainly carve out its own niche and will undoubtedly act as a disruptor to the eCommerce ecosystem in WordPress. This is a well-thought-out and modern plugin!

❤️ Of course, you have the inevitable “FluentCart vs WooCommerce” page, but what I love about it is that FluentCart:

✨ I can’t cover all the features, but here are some highlights for me:

(In the future, I would love to see an integration with Metorik, as I think Metorik offers the best reporting for WooCommerce and Shopify and could do the same with Fluent.)

WooCommerce has been focusing recently on “more in core,” which aims to bring features that generally require a plugin into the core. It’s been a retrospective but thoughtful process.

FluentCart has a strength here (similar to what North Commerce and SureCart have) in that it can identify WooCommerce’s weaknesses and leverage them as its strengths.

So with FluentCart, we have built-in (no extensions needed):

There’s so much I can’t cover in this newsletter, so if you want to learn more, check out the FluentCart Features page.

🤔 WooCommerce is the established behemoth within the WordPress ecosystem, and whilst North Commerce has tried (and arguably failed) to gain traction, SureCart has its own niche; maybe now Woo finally has a legitimate alternative (outside of Shopify).

Is FluentCart perfect? No, but this is the initial launch; based on this fact alone, the future is very promising.

Integrations will be a big part of the future of the plugin (e.g, creating a Google Merchant Centre feed integration), and in the first few months, we will see what’s missing and how the roadmap changes.

🎁 Check out the special launch offers for FluentCart for a limited time! 🎁

(If you missed the Launch Live Stream, you can watch it back, and there is a public Roadmap of what’s been and what’s to come.)

That’s it for this week. 👋

This week's excellent and insightful WordPress News & Tips:

If you have a question about this email or WordPress, please reply, and I will respond as soon as possible.

👋 Until next time,

Disclaimer: This image is for illustrative and commentary purposes only. All trademarks, logos, and brand names are the property of their respective owners. WordPress and WooCommerce are trademarks of Automattic Inc. FluentCart is a product of WP Manage Ninja. No affiliation or endorsement is implied.