Best Alternatives To WooCommerce For 2025
Best Alternatives To WooCommerce For Your WordPress Membership Website
Discover top WooCommerce alternatives for your WordPress membership site. Find platforms with better pricing, features, and user experience. Compare now.
Are you looking for the best alternatives to WooCommerce for your WordPress membership website? In this video, we explore various options that offer robust features, ease of use, and excellent support. Discover platforms that can help you create a seamless membership experience without the limitations of WooCommerce. Whether you’re just starting or looking to switch, this video has the insights you need.
WooCommerce Subscriptions: The Drawbacks
Learning Curve
Slows Down The Backend of WordPress
The Need For Additional Add-on Plugins
LifterLMS
Prices Stripe Add-on $150
SureCart
https://fluentcrm.com/docs/surecart-automation-with-fluentcrm/
Prices Launch Free – 1.9% transaction fee | Pro PAY $199 per year
Easy Digital Downloads
https://easydigitaldownloads.com/pricing/
Prices Person $99 | Extended $399 | Professional $599 per year
Gumroad
Prices 10% + $0.50 | 30%
Samcart
Prices start around $79 per month.
ThriveCart
Annual Plan $295 or lifetime plan $495
A Major New Player
FluentCart
This Week’s Sponsors
Kinta: Kinta
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:07.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 126. In this episode, Kirk and I are going to be talking about the best alternatives to WooCommerce if you’ve got a membership community-focused website, and you’re taking subscriptions. Let’s say you’re a creator on YouTube and TikTok, and you’re looking to do courses or more advanced membership packages. WordPress is a great solution. It’s going to be an exciting show. We’re going to go through a ton of stuff. So, Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:00:58.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sure. My name is Kurt von Ahnen, and I own an agency called Manananoma, which works directly with the WP Tonic team and the good folks at LifterLMS.
[00:01:07.140] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Before we go into the meat and potatoes for this great show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Just before we go into the central part of the show, I also want to point out that we’ve got a fabulous wireless course done by Kirk himself that shows you how to build a membership website using the best WordPress technology from A to Z. It goes through every step. Kirk’s a great educator. It will save you a ton of time. It’s normally $49, but you can get it at half the price, plus some special offers from the major sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress technology. Where can you get all these goodies? Well, go over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals, and you find all the goodies there. So, Woocommerce, its pros and drawbacks. First of all, if you were doing a consultation, Kirk and WooCommerce came up. How would you initiate the conversation and convey the key points that people need to understand about WU commerce and subscriptions, with a focus on membership and community?
[00:02:45.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I think the biggest thing to consider, Jonathan, is that each project has unique qualities, so use case becomes very, very important. Sometimes, I help clients outside the US who need alternative payment options beyond PayPal and Stripe. So sometimes that changes the landscape. So just to be clear there. However, to start the interview or conversation, I’ll tell you that one of the things I do is try to find every excuse to stop using WooCommerce. It’s not just complicated; I also dislike the way it markets to people. I don’t like the way it tries to force you down the road it prefers rather than the one the creator intended. I’ve been exploring alternative options to help people transition away from Woo, especially since you require additional add-ons to accomplish the tasks we discuss, such as a recurring membership subscription payment. You need to pay extra for that feature to be able to do that.
[00:03:44.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. It’s got a couple of drawbacks. It is very flexible and very powerful. It will slightly slow down the back-end of your website. It depends on the hosting you’ve got, but even with excellent hosting, it will still… Depending on the mix of other plugins, but it has a bit of a reputation for slowing the back-end. It won’t slow the front-end normally, because that’s dependent on caching and other things. However, when you have a membership site, it can slow down, not just the login, but also the administrative elements of the back-end. That’s based on my experience. Some people may disagree with me on that point. The other factor is that if you’re going to offer subscriptions, you’ll need an add-on. The add-on that allows you to do subscriptions comes from WooCommerce. It’s not ridiculously expensive, but it’s not cheap either. I think they put the price up. I think it’s 2.
[00:04:51.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
99 a year now. Yeah, it’s now 2.
[00:04:52.640] – Jonathan Denwood
99 a year. And the final thing, but this depends on page builder you’re using. If you’re using Cadence WP, this won’t apply because it’s got the ability to build a modern one-page checkout in Cadence. Otherwise, if you’re using some other page builder, you’re going to need a third-party add-on plugin that will enable you to build a landing page. And The one I normally recommend is Cartflows, because otherwise, WooCommerce out of the box is not designed to have a one-page modern subscription checkout With upsells or downsells functionality, it’s not built for that. It’s built for e-commerce. So you need that. If you’re not using something… I’m not sure about the situation of Animator. We mostly recommend Cadence WP, and I don’t know, like with some of the more other modern page builders, website builders. How would you respond to what I’ve just outlined, Kerr?
[00:06:17.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
Mostly to the point. When you said it’s full-featured and flexible, and yes, so whatever I want to sell, I can sell through Woocommerce. Do I Do I have hard goods? Do I have a digital product? Do I have memberships? So it is full-featured in that way. And you can set it up. You can have it integrate with like, Tax Act. And so you could have it do taxes for you. You can do different currencies. The amount of plugins created for Woocommerce by third parties is huge. So you can do unbelievably flexible, great things with Woocommerce. But again, I drive back to use case and I go, okay, so what’s the specific use case for your project? You’re just selling a membership to a course, to a whatever. In most cases, I’m going to pick a different pathway for revenue than the WU commerce gateway.
[00:07:18.680] – Jonathan Denwood
The other factor, folks, is that it was bought up by the parent company company behind WordPress. Wordpress is open source, but it has this commercial company that’s controlled and owned by the found, one of the joint founders of WordPress, Matt Moweg. And they actually own WooComers, and they’ve owned it for over six years. And I’ve got to be truthful, I’ve been disappointed in the lack of progress. It’s very stable the team that have been supporting the code and increasing the functionalities. But I have been disappointed that it hasn’t really divercted in the way I was hoping for. Now, there are some alternatives, and there’s a new player that’s going to be coming on the landscape. It’s in beta. That’s quite exciting that we’re going to be talking about. But the other thing I would like to point out is that all the major learning management systems, and to me, there’s three There’s Lifter LMS, there’s LearnDash, and there’s Tuta LMS. They all work with WU commerce. I’m not sure with Tuta LMS that you have to the pro, so it will work with WU. I did know, but it’s left my memory banks. I will check and make sure that’s in the show notes, folks.
[00:09:11.860] – Jonathan Denwood
But the other two, Lifter LMS and LearnDash, they both have add-ons that mean that they work really fantastic with WU. Just want to point that out, folks. So all the leading free learning management systems that I would recommend all work with word commas. And the other factor is like what Kirk pointed out. It has an enormous, enormous library of third-party plugins add-ons that extend the functionality and enable WU commerce to work with external sasses, foreign bank banks. It’s just a So let’s look at one of the competitors. Well, not exactly competitor because it is Lifter LMS. But one of the strengths of Lifter LMS is that they have their own subscription system in built. And with the purchase of a Stripe add-on plugin that will cost you $150, You can then take subscription. You can then build out plans for membership for different courses. You can get Lifter LMS core for free and then just pay $150 a year. And you can build your whole membership with a page builder, with a modern page builder, and maybe a marketing optimization plugin. You’re really well-covered, basically. What to you, you think?
[00:11:01.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, this is my area of expertise, Jonathan. And with Lifter LMS, I think you really are getting the best of all worlds because you do get the membership controls, you get the course controls. And then this whole talk was really about the payment gateway feature of it. With Lifter LMS, if you opt for that Stripe add-on, you’re not having to add member press or paid memberships pro or something else to it. With Lifter LMS, you get the membership controls, the course controls, and for the $150 a year, you’re getting that payment access, which includes the subscriptions, so you don’t have to upgrade to a subscription plugin, for example. And so to me, if you wanted to launch a minimal viable product to see if your proof of concept course was going to sell or not, this to me is the way to go. Because once you do a proof of concept and you see some revenue, then you can say, Okay, great. Let’s add a CRM. Let’s do some marketing automation. Let’s do this. Let’s do that. But to launch an MVP, I think this is absolutely the way to go.
[00:12:10.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you can’t. How it works is totally fine. The mechanics of setting it up after you’ve done… You’ve watched some tutorials on YouTube, you should be able to set it up. It’s one of the more easier setups, in my opinion. You won’t be able to… Where you won’t be able to do, if you’re combining physical digital products or physical products, then you’re going to have to look at Woocommers or a couple of the other options that we’re going to be discussing. But I would say, especially for people starting out, I think the bulk of people, I would say between 70, 80%, I think Lifter LMS with the Stripe add on is more than adequate. What would you say?
[00:13:05.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and to finish the thought that you were starting there, with Lifter LMS, it’s important to mention it’s not a shopping cart. Like the other options we’re going to talk about, you’ll have a cart page where you can pick from different products or add multiple things to the cart and then check out at once thing. With Lifter LMS, each product, so either membership or course, has an access plan. That access plan is connected to the payment gateway, and your client, your student, picks that thing and then completes the purchase for that thing. That’s the way it works. And sometimes that can be a little bit of an adoption mentally for people to get over. But for me, I love the simplicity of it. I love that people go to the course page, they say, Oh, I want to enroll, and it takes them right to an enrollment page, takes the credit card, and it’s done. And instead of going to a cart page and then select the product and then click through a bunch of things. I really like the simplicity of it, but we have to drive back to this talk is about membership sites, not necessarily course sites.
[00:14:10.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
And so for membership, this is a great way to go. But if Jonathan’s point was real, if you had selling coffee cups, tote bags, and tapestries, well, then you’re going to have to have a real shopping cart.
[00:14:23.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. On to another really popular solution. He SureCart. Surecart comes from the world of WordPress, from a large plugin shop that builds astrophines and other great plugins. But it’s a SaaS Software as a Service, it’s hosted and you log in. They do provide a plugin that works well in the environment of WordPress, and they have a free plan plan that covers most scenarios, but not all. And with the free plan, they do add on a transaction fee on top of the 2. 9 that you’re going to be charged. They’re going to add an additional 2 % on top. So you’re going to end up around 5 %. The next plan up, they charge 199 a year, but you’re not then charged the 1. 9 transaction fee. I still think both options are great, and it does enable you to do upsells, downsells, subscriptions, and also think physical products. But it’s a SaaS-based. You can change the colors, but it’s not like a true native solution. The ability to customize it will be limited, but it has deep integration. And the other great thing, especially when it comes to LearnDash and BuddyBoss, is that it works hand in hand with a membership plugin called Sure members because it’s produced by the same people.
[00:16:21.560] – Jonathan Denwood
And because of this, and because you might not want to use WU commerce for the reasons that we explained, using LearnDash with Sure members with SureCart is a great combination, in my opinion. It’s the easiest route to go. What do you reckon, Kerr?
[00:16:41.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m a big fan of SureCart for lots of reasons. The simplicity of set up to me is really impressive. I have to say, it wouldn’t be so impressive if Woocommerce didn’t make set up so much of an obstacle. So a perfect example. Last week, I have experience. So I think to myself, what does a customer do when they come in here for the first time? There’s all these banner ads. Sign up for Whoopay here. Do you want to customize your store now? Click here, pick your colors. And next thing, the homepage to your website is different. It takes over the homepage of your website. It automatically starts adding its own payment gateways to the back end of your site. If you click something in error, you end up having to unwind a bunch of stuff. Surecart is not like that. Surecart, you install it, you say, Here’s the name of my company. Here’s my products. I want to sell them. And SureCart says, Go ahead, sell them. We’re here for you. And I really like the idea of the free plan with the 1. 7 transaction fee. I’m not a big fan of transaction fees, but I am a big fan of thinking of startups and thinking like it’s easier for a startup to say, Yeah, take the It’s 1.
[00:18:00.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
9% transaction fee because I don’t have 300 bucks to pay you today for using this thing. Then if you do well, if your proof of concept works, they have a lifetime plan that you can sign up for. It’s usually on sale, but even at its retail price, it’s not that hard to suck up.
[00:18:16.840] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s still the worst offender is Podia, the SaaS platform that we use, one of the ones that I recommend if you’re looking at SaaS, because their basic plan that starts month to month at They have a 5% transaction fee plus the 2. 9 Stripe fee, so it makes it the 1. 9 look very reasonable. How does member press, Sure members, the membership plugin work with Lifter LMS. Does it work okay with it?
[00:18:56.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
It does. I don’t prefer it with Lifter LMS because Lifter LMS has its own membership. So if I were going to have Lifter LMS and I was using SureCart, I wouldn’t have Sure members. I would just have Surecart and SureCart integrates with Lifter LMS. So literally, when you’re setting up SureCart, it says, Oh, you have Lifter LMS. Do you want to integrate with that? And then what levels of integration do you want to have? Do you want to have it like someone makes a purchase, they join this course? Yes. And then it It is pretty intuitive, and there’s a lot of online tutorials to get you going in the right direction.
[00:19:36.580] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. We’ve covered a lot of stuff in this first half. We’re going to go for our mid-break, folks. We got a ton of other insights and plugins and add-ons to talk about. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast, a feast about about Woocommers and some of the alternatives. Kirk’s in good heart. He’s had a load of info to give to us. But before we go into the second half, I want to point out a great free resource, and that’s the Membership Machine Show Facebook Group. If you’ve got any questions, comments about what we cover in these podcasts and videos, you can go and join on Facebook, the Membership Machine Show. And if you, like I said, got any questions, insights, need help, you can put them there. And it’s a great community, and it’s totally free, folks. So why don’t you go over there and join up and join us there. On to the next… Let’s get one next. A Biggie and an Oldie, Easy Digital Downloads. Edd.
[00:20:59.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
Edd.
[00:21:00.720] – Jonathan Denwood
What would you say about this, Kurt? I’m going to let you take the lead.
[00:21:06.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
I use easy digital downloads. It’s funny. We come across these things that we review and you say, Oh, it’s an oldie, right? And it’s like, Yeah, I still have it. I have an e-book on one of my sites for a book that I published, and that’s how I sell the book to people. I just let them use easy digital downloads. It forwards them the document, and it’s good. It’s easy to go. It was easy to set up. The payment gateway through Stripe was easy to set up. And I had all this in place before I even moved to Hutchinson, Kansas, and met Pippin, the guy that invented easy digital downloads. So I really like it. I like its simplicity. I will say I have not used it from the terms of like, hey, this is going to be my… I’m going to create an extensive online library and a shopping cart and like an online library mall. I have not done that yet, but I understand that it’s capable of doing that. And I have seen, because I’m not in the product business yet, but I have seen where plugin developers will use easy digital downloads to manage licensing and distribution of their plugins, but I have not had experience with that yet.
[00:22:19.770] – Kurt von Ahnen
So I hesitate to comment too much on that. I will say for membership usage and for giving people access to your resources, easy digital downloads is a really simple plug and play solution, and it’s super affordable.
[00:22:34.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it was really the only alternative to Wubicom was until SureCart, and a couple of the other ones we’re going to discuss, but especially before SureCart came on the scene, it was the only credible alternative if you weren’t using Lifter LMS, really. It does deal with VAT in Europe really quite well. That’s another thing because you’ve got your membership website in Europe, in England or continental Europe, you are going to have to charge for your ATE, and it deals with that. And it’s got some good add-ons and some third-party add-ons that help assist you in dealing with that. And it’s a pretty solid solution. Starts at $99 and then goes up to $399 and the professional $599. I think for a lot of people, you can start with the $99. It’s a solid… Have a look at it.
[00:23:35.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
It it picks up some functions that you would assume would be the responsibility of a CRM. If you don’t invest in your own CRM to start with, easy digital downloads will take care of things. I think when you get to the extended platform that they have, it’ll do like automatic billing and payment renewals and renewal reminder emails and things like that that you can program and communicate with your users so they don’t get surprised by their recurring billing. So a lot of times you would rely on a CRM tool to send that messaging, but this tool includes it, which is a fun bonus.
[00:24:14.000] – Jonathan Denwood
One of the negatives, folks, is the company that now owns it because Kirk covered this around WU commerce, and you’re going to get a similar experience is the amount of upsells, banners for other products that this company owns. As soon as you installed it, you’re just going to be bombarded by banners and nag screens, and it will be endless. It’s just the philosophy of the company that owns this product now, which is a bit unfortunate, but you get the same with Wu as well, don’t you?
[00:24:54.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
You do. I think Wu is getting actually more pushy than than the other company.
[00:25:01.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you’re right on that. So onto a SaaS solution. I’ve got three. I did add one. I had Frife Cart, which I didn’t tell Kurt, but we got three, but they’re all SaaS solutions. Got a well-known one here called Gumroad. But their pricing model is they charge 10% or plus 0. 50% and 30%.
[00:25:37.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
But it’s in their marketplace.
[00:25:40.160] – Jonathan Denwood
But they got a marketplace. I don’t know. And it’s easy. I know some people in the WordPress space that do sell their digital products. They did for some reason, they decided not to use easy digital downloads, but it has got a marketplace. How big is the marketplace? Is Is it really worth considering because of the marketplace, or is it diminished, do you think?
[00:26:06.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
Regardless of whether the marketplace was effective or not for products, I don’t think a membership is the right thing for a marketplace per se.
[00:26:17.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, this is for digital products.
[00:26:19.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, so it would be a digital product conversation. Even then, when I think about the revenue on digital product, I wouldn’t want to pay 30% finders fee to somebody. So I would be completely out. It’s irrelevant to me. I think I don’t like that model at all. It’s like the only fans of digital sales.
[00:26:41.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. I wouldn’t discredit it. I do know some people There’s a lady, if you would have got her name, we do promote a product on the deals page, and she sells it through Gumroad.
[00:26:55.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
There’s some services on the back end of Gumroad that are worth considering, though. So for a solopreneur or a small shop, you might read the details of this website and say, oh, yeah, they’re going to take a big chunk, but I don’t have to hire a bookkeeper, right? Because they become the, what do they call that? The merchant of record, right? And so they handle all of your taxes. If you’re international, they handle all of your tax obligations globally. They make payments for you. They do the remittance on your behalf. I mean, there’s a lot of features there. So maybe that’s where you can make some justification for the percentage.
[00:27:33.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think they’re great points. Thanks for doing that, Kurt. No worries. On to the next one, Sandcart. $79 a month. A bit broader about what you can sell now, I would imagine. I haven’t used it in anger. Got any thoughts on Sam Cart?
[00:27:51.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
Is it okay if I say I hate their marketing?
[00:27:54.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes.
[00:27:55.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
Their Facebook-It’s your honest opinions. Their Facebook ads that they ran for a while, I found really misleading. Spend so much money running a Sam Cart site and we’ll make you rich by Christmas. And I was like, That is not ethical advertising. It used to really bother me. And it would come up a lot for me. And then when you go to their pricing model and you start saying, it says there’s a scale there and it says, what is your monthly revenue? And it says $79 a month. $79 a month if I’m not selling anything. But if I’m selling $4,000 a month, it’s $109 a month. If I’m selling $20,000 a month, I’m up at $300 a month. And I have to go back to the beginning of our conversation where I was like, $2. 99 a year for a subscription add-on for Woocommerce is robbery. So I got to walk things back a little bit and go, okay, if I’m looking at what Sam Cart would cost me to run, then I’m not being true to myself. Maybe Woocommerce isn’t that bad. I understand that I’ve worked with a couple of clients that use Samcart in the past.
[00:29:06.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
The user interface was nice. It felt modern. It didn’t feel too clunky. It was pretty intuitive. There are some pluses that I could mention. But I don’t like their advertising. I don’t like their business model, and I’m not a fan.
[00:29:19.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, well, there we go. On to the next one, which I didn’t add to the list until the last minute. I didn’t give it to Gert. That’s for I’ve got, and I realized I should I had it. I think in some ways, it’s very similar to Sam Cart. I’m sure there’s some differences, but broadly. But they’re the master of the lifetime deal. They do annual planning for 2. 95, and then they got this lifetime plan for 4. 95. Well, it’s normally… They say it’s over a thousand normally, but it’s always on sale for 4. 95. Ever since I’ve done the product. What’s your thoughts? I don’t know if you got any thoughts because I didn’t really tell you.
[00:30:04.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have some thoughts.
[00:30:06.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Go on, off you go.
[00:30:07.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m not going to say it’s horrible. It’s a cart, it works, it can generate revenue for you. That’s great. Having done support with Lifter LMS and been involved with people running membership and learning websites and trying to integrate with Thrivecart, I can tell you that there’s been some stumbling blocks in the integration process. Typically, there will be things that don’t work or automations that don’t work, and then we have to help guide people through that a little bit. So it’s not the most intuitive, but I’ve said it publicly many, many times. I am a sucker for a lifetime deal. So if you got the lifetime deal on this thing and you have to figure out how to make it work, do the work, make it work and start making your money.
[00:30:56.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, they’re my views, really. I I don’t really see the point with something like shortcut in the environment now. These were solutions that gained a lot of popularity because you only had Woo or easy digital download, if it’s a digital. But now with SureCart, I don’t really see these plans the necessity of them so much, but people still like them and they’re doing okay, aren’t they? On to a major new player, a friend of the show, Jules, the founder of Fluent, the family of Fluent Plugins. He keeps marching forward, him and his enormous army of developers, and they put the cat in the as they would say this week with his announcement that they’ve been working on their own shopping cart solution called Fluent Cart. I’ve watched some demos, watched some walkthroughs. It’s still in beta, but quite a few people have been using it. They’ve got a track record. We love fluent CRM, we love fluent community, we love fluent forms. I think it’s going to be a real competitor to WooCom as a real competitor. What do you think, Kurt?
[00:32:40.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
I am painfully optimistic about this one, Jonathan. The thing that I find myself getting into, and it’s one of those, it should be a yellow flag. It really should be a yellow flag for me. But I find myself consistently saying, oh, Fluent CRM, Fluent form, Fluent support, Fluent booking, Fluent. And it’s like, next thing you know, you’ve built this walled garden thing that you and I have talked about as being a negative before. And so I want to be careful.
[00:33:09.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but to counteract there, they are separate plugins where it’s some of these other light fire themes, it’s all embracing.
[00:33:20.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
You’re forced into the theme and you’re stuck with it. But this, you do have some choices. I agree 100%. I have taken sites from Groundhog to from Fluent to Groundhog and migrate the users over. You can do that. So you’re not trapped. You’re not trapped. But when I did my research on Fluent Cart because I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, I got to tell you, Jonathan, it really looks like from a user interface, it looks to me like they really were intuitive and they stole the best features from the different platforms and combined it to make something I think creators are really going to like. Because because the graphics are visual enough. There’s color coding for the types of orders. Did it go through? Did it not go through? Did it fail? And they’re color coded. So you can instantly pick out what’s a problem, what’s not a problem. The screens themselves have little avatars and pictures and graphics, and it’s just much nicer to look at than some of the older carts that are out there. And that’s not to say bad things about those carts. It’s just this is the newest thing, so it’s going to come with the most updated design.
[00:34:31.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
You’ve already said it, the other tools that they create have great user interfaces, and so I expect nothing less in this case.
[00:34:41.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, the functional, I think sometimes they’re not the most prettiest, but they do the job. And the thing is, I don’t know if you agree, I’ve just been deeply disappointed with Automatic and what they’ve done with Woocom was all not done. I For themselves, because I think they’ve just missed the enormous opportunity to have a fully hosted competitor to Shopify, but then be able to offer people when they want a customized a solution. They can self-host. So it’s a win-win. And they just not been able, or they decided not to do that. And I just been disappointed. Other people have a different opinion. I just been really disappointed disappointed in the lack of real deep development and movement with word commerce.
[00:35:38.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
I feel like there’s a social contract that isn’t being honored there. In good faith, you add it to the website, and then it tells you to do this or that, or add a feature, or click on a banner. And that’s a misleading way to do business. As I mentioned earlier, I’m someone who has experience, yet I still instinctively click on the wrong button or window, and then I have to go back and redo a significant amount of work. And if that is happening to people who are new to the space, we often say that WordPress is about democratizing publishing and similar concepts. And so we’re trying to welcome new people to the space, and then we’re giving them something confusing to work with. And that’s coming from what I consider people at the top of the WordPress market pushing down. And so that to me is a social contract, that’s hard to get over.
[00:36:32.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you know, one of our panelists on our other show, our monthly roundtable show, he promotes WuComers as your core Lego brick, the center of your spoke, because it offers all these integrations with almost every plugin, and you can follow the logic of it. There is no right or wrong in things. It’s just different views, and it’s just gray. But I have always disagreed with that point of view because of the problems, the performance here on the back-end, the complexity of getting it set up. If you’re just an average user, you’re not aiming at power users or quasar freelancers. I think the people who have pushed that, underplay the negatives. But on the airline, it can’t be argued. It will integrate with everything, won’t it?
[00:37:41.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, that’s that necessary evil thing. Sometimes, and like I said at the very beginning of the show, there are use cases where I’m like, Who’s your bet? You need to use this weird credit card from Zimbabwe, whose is your bet? Let’s add that and hook it up to make it work for you. But I do go out with my own opinion and say, I don’t like the way that they do that business. To your point, like when you say lack of progression, there are so many add-ons that are available to purchase for WU e-commerce that, in your heart of hearts, it should have been part of the core by now. Not being able to process subscriptions in a membership-driven economy is, to me, like not being able to do that. Do you need $300 per site to do that? It’s a single-site license only. They don’t even offer a ‘Hey,’ as we used to. As an agency, you can purchase unlimited licensing for $900, regardless of the number. But they don’t do that. So it’s 300 bucks per site, per site, per site.
[00:38:50.400] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s rock solid. I’m particularly pleased that something like Fluent Car is being launched shortly. And I’ll probably, depending on factors, offer it as part of the WP tonic because it’s a natural for me to do. Let’s wrap it up. It’s all done. We’ll wrap it up. Is there anything else you want to add to the conversation before we wrap it up, Kerr?
[00:39:21.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
The only thing I would like to add to the conversation, particularly for new people joining in, is that I often see this issue. You hear us talking about all these different tools, subscription rates, and how much software costs. I can’t emphasize this enough, as I just had another client today in this very conversation. It’s work on your minimum viable product. Get something going. Move forward with something before you burden yourself with 10 subscriptions to software that you haven’t made a dollar off of yet. Figure out how you can sell the most minimal product first and generate that first piece of revenue. Experience some success, and then start looking at some of these other features.
[00:40:02.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, there are two ways. I honestly feel, folks, that with Lifter LMS, the Stripe add-on for $150, Cadence WP, which probably costs around $100, and Fluent CRM, which costs $100, you can achieve this for less than $400, perhaps around $ 350, plus your hosting. In my opinion, that’s all you need. It’s either Fluent CRM or it’s WP Funnel with Melmin. Probably, if you’re starting, I would recommend WP Funnel Melmin, but Eva will do the job, right? And you’re off to the horses. And if you host with WP Tonic, you get great hosting. Plus, you get all that I’ve mentioned as part of the hosting deal, a bargain of the century, as I would say.
[00:41:06.550] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that’s the way to go.
[00:41:08.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:41:15.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, LinkedIn is a great way to see what other podcasts or things I’m a part of. So go to LinkedIn, find Kurt von Annen. I’m the only Kurt von Annen on LinkedIn, so you know you got me. And if it’s for business, anything Manana No Mas would lead to me. Manana No Mas.
[00:41:30.200] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. And if you want another fantastic free resource that will help you on your journey to build a membership or a community-focused website, it’s the WP Tonic YouTube channel. It’s got over 1,600 videos, covering reviews of all the best technology, not just WordPress, but also marketing tips, the whole gamut. And we’re getting very close now; probably within the next week, I’ll be over 10,000 subscribers. And we love you to go there and subscribe. I usually make four to five videos a week, and it’s just a great resource. We will be back next week with another Insight, another feast of information to make your journey to build a great membership or community-focused website in 2025. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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