Best Joomla shopping cart and eCommerce extensions for 2021

Are you planning to invest into your online business? In fact, e-commerce is a growing field in this web based world. The first thing you need to keep in mind is deciding the right platform to build and manage your online store and your products efficiently. If Joomla is your CMS of choice, you’re going on the right track as there are lots of free Joomla extensions and quality templates for your preference.

Creating an e-commerce website isn’t as simple as other websites. You need to put the product management, selling options, order processing, payment method and many other things into consideration. Luckily, there’re e-commerce/shopping cart extensions that support you to take care of these issues.

Joomla shopping cart extension (or so called "Joomla e-commerce extension") offers a huge range of functionality to support your online business such as product and sales management, checkout process, sales/order report, invoice, product display, etc.

Since it is essential to include the shopping cart extension in your e-commerce website, we have gathered a comparable list of, in our opinion, the top Joomla shopping cart extensions. This can be your reference when deciding the most suitable e-commerce extension for your website.

Which are the top Joomla e-commerce extensions?

Based on our experiences and after thoroughly reviewing, we have come up with 7 names that we believe are the top Joomla e-commerce extensions, including: VirtueMart, HikaShop, EShop, J2Store, redSHOP, Quick2Cart and Phoca Cart.

Why are we choosing these extensions?

"What makes these shopping cart extensions stand out from the rest?" you ask? The answer is simple. To gather this list, we looked for extensions that are popular among the community and also have all the following features:

• Easy to use: simple and quick installation; easy to manage and configure dashboard
• Rich features: Including necessary functions for shoppers such as discounts, coupons, media integration for each product
• Multi-language and multi-currency support: With international online business, this feature will smoothen the pain from your back and make your shoppers’ experience more comfortable.
• Different payment methods: Multiple payment methods for shoppers to choose from, this will enhance their shopping experience
• Availability of documentation: documentation is like an user manual for extension, which is a must for every extension

Hence, when reviewing all the Joomla e-commerce extensions out there, we found that the top Joomla shopping cart extensions all contain these must-have features.

Now, let's walk you through the detailed information of each shopping cart extension on the list.

Top Joomla shopping cart extensions review

VirtueMart

VirtueMart is one of the older extensions and is considered the most popular Joomla e-commerce extension. The basic product is free to download and just like any other established e-commerce extensions, it has numerous integrations.

Not only is the pioneer of Joomla online shop solution but VirtueMart has also been continuously improved for the past 10 years.

Besides its compatibility with Joomla 3.9x, users can easily experience the changes such as clearer architecture, more stable interface and effective performance.

While you can take full advantage of its built-in features, you can also use VirtueMart extension to complete your website.

Price: Free

JED Reviews: 4/5 - 510 Reviews

Main Advantages:

• Maintain all Joomla! product support
• Easy to use and customize
• Various templates and layout per category
• SEM/SEO friendly with meta tags
• Multilingual support
• Auto-update currency rates
• Excellent community support

Payment Gateway: Paypal, Eway, Brsoftech, Klarna, Skrill, System Pay, Payzen, Klarna, Cash on delivery included and others.

Notice: You need to understand the basic Joomla framework before setting up VirtueMart.

Check out JoomlaShine templates that perfectly sync with VirtueMart here

HikaShop

HikaShop’s core values are simplicity and flexibility. Those are included in all of its editions: HikaShop Starter, HikaShop Essential and HikaShop Business. You can choose which edition you like based on your purpose and budget.

HikaShop’s look is quite basic, to be honest. You have to purchase one of the commercial versions and know a little bit of CSS and HTML to beautify and tweak it around.

However, don’t let just that put you off. HikaShop has received a huge number of positive reviews due to its powerful features package. Thus, you barely need to use any third-party extensions.

Price:

• HikaShop Starter: Free
• HikaShop Essential: €45.95
• HikaShop Business: €99.90

JED Reviews: 5/5 - 274 Reviews

Main Advantages:

• Fully packed features
• User-friendly and flexible interface with powerful dashboard customization
• Quick and Easy setup
• Efficient marketing tools: affiliate program support, coupons, discounts, etc.
• The large quantity of language, currencies, zones and advanced taxes
• RSS/Atom feeds and Social Network Support on categories and products
• Great forum support and documentation

Payment Gateway: More than 60 free payment methods (Credit cards, bank transfers, PayPal, Authorize.net, etc.)

Notice: Don’t mind the not-so-attractive backend, effective features are what matters!

Check out templates that perfectly sync with HikaShop here 

EShop

EShop is one of the top Joomla shopping cart extensions on the list. It’s a very responsive and powerful extension which is built based on standard Joomla MVC structure with many great features. The uniqueness of this extension is the incomplexity.

Simplicity is the "word" to describe EShop. You just install, add your products and create categories, product pages, … to improve your online shop performance.

Price: $39.99

JED review: 5/5 - 313 reviews

Main Advantages:

• Unlimited categories, manufacturers and products
• SEO/SEF friendly
• Multiple currencies
• Multilingual support
• Responsive Layout
• Multiple Themes
• One Page checkout
• Intelligent SEF URLs
• 10+ Shipping methods

Payment Gateway: More than 60 free payment methods (Based on Omnipay payment plugin library)

Check out templates that perfectly sync with EShop here

J2Store 

J2Store is totally different from other Joomla online shopping cart extensions. It’s impressively simple and straightforward.

While others provide their own database with their own categories, product pages, etc.; J2Store has a completely new and innovative approach for your e-commerce business: it allows you to use your Joomla articles as products.

Although J2Store is the youngest out of these third-party extensions, it certainly has the potential to surpass many other’s top extensions because of its simplicity and convenience.

Price:

• Basic: Free
• Professional: $49
• Developer: $99

JED Reviews: 5/5 - 249 Reviews

Main Advantages:

• Quick, easy to start and configure
• Various tools to extend Joomla articles into product pages: add price, tax, use images, etc.
• Powerful product options from physical products (clothes, cosmetics,…) to digital products (software, PDF files,…)
• Multiple, Geozone based shipping methods
• 100% Joomla MVC design
• Quick and user-friendly one-page checkout
• Helpful support team

Payment Gateway: PayPal, Authorize.net, Ogone, DIBS payments, iDEAL, CCAvenue, etc.

Notice: J2Store is perfect for small to medium shops with a small database.

Check out templates that perfectly sync with J2Store here 

redSHOP

redSHOP, a product of redCOMPONENT, is a webshop extension with a huge range of features, providing superior access to any user to completely style around and change their online store, without knowing much about HTML and CSS.

Unlike other shopping cart extensions in the market, the price structure of redSHOP is quite different. The basic product is free to download and it can be extended with features by adding exactly what modules or plugins you require. All redSHOP templates and extensions can be accessed with a PRO subscription.

Price:

• Basic: Free
• Support subscription
  • Monthly: $9.00
  • Yearly: $89.00
• PRO subscription
  • Monthly: $19.00
  • Yearly: $195.00

JED Reviews: N/A

Main Advantages:

• No limitations to design and template ability
• Offer gift certificates and gift wrapping
• Show an unlimited number of products
• Multiple currencies
• Add pictures in different sizes
• Send out newsletters and catalogues
• Statistics and Search Engine Optimization
• Multiple payment and shipping methods
• Create action emailsCreate action emails
• Ready-to-use and easy-to-manage webshop

Payment Gateway: DIBS, Authorize.net, Bank Transfer, Skrill Payment, Paygate Payment, Paypal, Quickpay, etc.

Check out templates that perfectly sync with redSHOP here

Quick2Cart

Quick2Cart is a product created by Techjoomla. Quick2Cart is a super flexible shopping cart with Multi Vendor, Multi Store and awesome Social Integrations. The option of multiple vendors and multiple stores allows you to maximize your amount of products.

Additionally, the extension allows you to use the native Product manager or integrate with CCKs such as Zoo, K2 or even Joomla Content.

Price: $33.99

JED reviews: 5/5 - 31 reviews

Main Advantages:

• Multi vendor support
• Multi store support
• Stock Management
• Multiple currency support
• SEO, metadata management
• EasySocial app
• Fast and Easy product creation with Global Attribute

Payment Gateways: LinkPoint, Authorize.net, 2CheckOut, PayPal, etc.

Phoca Cart

Phoca Cart is a powerful shopping cart extensions built on Joomla and its framework. It is fully integrated with Joomla's latest system and designed by modern Bootstrap library or Grid/Flexbox CSS. This means that it supports responsive design and your shopping cart will be able to display in all devices such as desktop, notebook, mobile phone or table. 

Phoca Cart is built for template overrides, therefore it has unlimited possibility to customize and adapt to your own needs.

Price: Free

JED reviews: 5/5 - 14 reviews

Main Advantages:

• Responsive design
• Unlimited products
• Multiple currency support
• Multiple language support
• Multiple payment and shipping methods
• PDF invoice, delivery note or receipt support
• Powerful statistics

Payment Gateways: PayPal, eWay payment, Stripe payment, etc.

Conclusion

There you have it, according to our expertise, these are the best Joomla e-commerce extensions. Just remember to choose them wisely depending on your budget and needs and I’m sure that your e-commerce business will perform just fine.

Additionally, if you are in a myth and don't know where to start to build your online business, you can check out this blog on How you can create a Joomla e-commerce website from scratch. 

And if you disagree with our recommendations, feel free to write down your Joomla e-commerce extensions of choice in this post.