A buyer’s guide, not a comparison table. Fourteen questions that apply to every Joomla shopping cart, what a good answer looks like, and where Solidshop stands on each one.
“Which Joomla e-commerce extension should I use?” is the question everyone asks, and it is the wrong one to start with. The useful question is “what do I need to know before I can tell?”. A shopping cart is the one extension on a site that handles money, tax and customer data, and the cost of a poor choice arrives a year later, as a migration nobody budgeted for.
So this post is a list of questions rather than a verdict. Each one applies to every option you might be considering, including the one whose website you are reading now. Under each question you will find why it matters, what a good answer looks like, and then Solidshop’s own answer in a clearly labelled paragraph. Several of those answers are “not yet”. They stay in, because a guide that only flatters its author is not a guide.
1. Does it run on Joomla 6 today, and what is the upgrade story?
Why it matters. Joomla 5 is on its way out for new builds. An extension that still targets Joomla 4 or 5 is a migration you will pay for later, usually at the moment you can least afford the downtime.
What a good answer looks like. Current Joomla and current PHP, a public changelog you can read before buying, a clear minimum-version line, and updates delivered through Joomla’s own updater rather than a manual download.
Solidshop’s answer: Joomla 6.0 or newer, PHP 8.3 or newer with 8.4 recommended, and MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 or newer. The full list is on the requirements page. Releases are listed on the changelog and announced on this blog, and every update arrives through the standard Joomla updates screen.
2. What does the licence actually let you do?
Why it matters. Joomla extensions are GPL, so the code itself is yours to run. The real question is what the price buys, and whether anything in the code checks a key, calls home, or stops working when the payment lapses.
What a good answer looks like. The code is yours to run, keep and modify. The fee buys updates and support for a stated period. Nothing phones home, and nothing switches off when that period ends.
Solidshop’s answer: the core and every commercial extension are GPL-3. A commercial licence buys 12 months of updates, downloads from your account and direct support. There is no activation, no key, and nothing in the code that checks. Support is scoped to one live domain per purchase by default. When the licence ends, the extension keeps working, and a renewal costs 30% less than the original purchase. The wording is in the terms of service and the FAQ.
3. What is free, what is paid, and are there fees on sales?
Why it matters. The sticker price is rarely the cost. A commission on every sale grows with your success, and a “free” core that withholds the checkout or the payment plugin is a trial with a different name.
What a good answer looks like. A free core that runs a real store on its own, add-ons sold as one-time purchases, no per-transaction commission, and a renewal price you can find without asking.
Solidshop’s answer: the free core covers the catalogue, cart, checkout, orders, tax, shipping, invoices, reports and basic discounts. The released add-ons are PayPal (free), Downloadable Products (free), Reviews & Ratings ($39), Stripe ($49), Discount & Coupons ($59) and the Foundra storefront template ($49). Each paid one includes 12 months of updates and support, renewable at 30% off, and nothing takes a percentage of your sales. Further extensions are listed on the extensions page.
4. Where does your data live, and can you leave?
Why it matters. The exit is decided on the day you enter. A cart that keeps your customers in its own service, or in a format only it can read, sets the price of leaving before you have sold anything.
What a good answer looks like. Everything in your own database, a CSV or API way out, no telemetry, and no platform account that the software needs in order to run.
Solidshop’s answer: the store is self-hosted. Products, orders and customers live in your Joomla database, so your existing backups already cover them. Products export and import as CSV, one row per variant, and a read-only catalogue API serves the same data to anything else. There is no telemetry, no third-party analytics, and no Solidshop account involved in running the software.
5. Does the checkout do what your customers expect?
Why it matters. Shoppers compare your checkout with the largest platforms they use, not with other Joomla carts. Every missing convenience is measured in abandoned carts.
What a good answer looks like. Guest checkout, saved addresses, product options and variants, coupons, a cart that updates without a page reload, and a currency display for shoppers abroad.
Solidshop’s answer: a multi-step checkout with guest checkout and an address book, products with options and variants, a coupon field with the discount shown on the cart page, and a mini-cart drawer that updates without a reload. Custom fields can collect a gift message or delivery slot at checkout. The currency switcher is display-only: the shopper reads prices in their currency, and the store charges in its own. The Discount & Coupons add-on brings the rule builder for stacked and conditional promotions.
6. How does it handle tax?
Why it matters. Tax is where a cart can cost you money quietly. A wrong rate is not a bug you notice; it is a liability you discover at filing time.
What a good answer looks like. Tax classes per product, rates that apply by the shopper’s address, several rates that can stack, a choice of inclusive or exclusive pricing, and an itemised record on each order that later rate changes do not rewrite.
Solidshop’s answer: tax classes with a store default for products that have none, zones defined by country or state, and rates that connect a zone to a class. The shopper’s shipping address decides which zones apply; when several do, their rates stack, and a rate can compound on the others or apply to shipping as well. Prices can be entered and displayed inclusive or exclusive of tax, and the tax on each order is recorded at order time. Details are on the tax configuration page.
7. How flexible is shipping?
Why it matters. Shipping rules change more often than anything else in a store. A flat rate on launch day becomes tiers by weight, then a free-shipping threshold, then a different table for one product line.
What a good answer looks like. Zones, rates by weight or order total, different rules for different products, and a rate model with room for carrier quotes later.
Solidshop’s answer: shipping profiles hold zones, zones hold regions of countries and states, and each zone carries flat rates that can be limited by weight range and order value range, with several rates per zone for tiered options. Profiles can be attached to specific products or variants, and a cart of non-shippable items skips the shipping step. The rate model has a place for carrier-quoted rates, but no carrier integration is downloadable today. See the shipping page.
8. Which payment methods work out of the box?
Why it matters. Which gateway you can use depends on your country and your bank, and the gateway plugin is where money and software defects meet.
What a good answer looks like. At least one offline method, one major gateway free, more gateways as add-ons, a test mode, and refunds from the admin rather than from the gateway dashboard.
Solidshop’s answer: bank transfer and cash on delivery ship in the core. PayPal is free, and Stripe is a paid add-on. Gateway plugins have a test mode, each method can carry an optional surcharge, and refunds are issued from the order screen where the gateway supports it. Setup is on the payment methods page.
9. Does it use Joomla, or fight it?
Why it matters. This is the question Joomla people care about most and the one generic guides miss. A cart that brings its own copies of things Joomla already has is a second CMS to learn, and it breaks in its own way at every Joomla update.
What a good answer looks like. It uses Joomla’s custom fields, search index, access control, task scheduler, language system and template overrides instead of reinventing them, and the storefront works in the default template.
Solidshop’s answer: product, checkout and address fields are Joomla’s own Custom Fields, with their validation and view levels. Products index into Smart Search. Every admin action is gated by Joomla’s per-group ACL. The email queue runs on the task scheduler. Multilingual stores use Joomla’s content languages, with translations bundled, right-to-left ones included. Every storefront view is a standard template override, the storefront works in Cassiopeia out of the box, and Foundra is an optional storefront template built for the cart.
10. Will search engines and AI assistants find the products?
Why it matters. A product nobody can find does not sell, and assistants now sit beside search engines as a place shoppers ask first.
What a good answer looks like. Clean URLs, an XML sitemap, Product structured data on every product page, and a way for an assistant to read the catalogue without scraping it.
Solidshop’s answer: all four are in the free core. How they fit together, and how to check them, is the subject of Making a Joomla Store Visible to AI Assistants; the catalogue endpoint has its own walkthrough in How to Connect Your Joomla Store to an AI Assistant with MCP.
11. Is the storefront accessible, and does it work on a phone?
Why it matters. Accessibility is a legal requirement in a growing number of markets, and most of your shoppers will arrive on a phone.
What a good answer looks like. WCAG 2.1 AA as a stated target, keyboard operability, and a storefront where dark mode and right-to-left languages are not broken afterthoughts.
Solidshop’s answer: WCAG 2.1 AA is the stated target for both storefront and admin, with semantic landmarks, keyboard navigation, visible focus states and a dark-mode palette that keeps its contrast. Dark mode and right-to-left layout are design requirements of every storefront layout, not options bolted on later.
12. What does day-to-day admin look like?
Why it matters. You will spend far more hours in the admin than any customer spends in the checkout.
What a good answer looks like. A dashboard that tells a new merchant what to do next, orders you can edit after the fact, reports an accountant will accept, bulk import, and a search box that finds an order by its number.
Solidshop’s answer: the dashboard carries a store setup checklist that ticks itself off and links to the next screen. The order page lets you edit lines, addresses, shipping and payment, with a timeline of every change. Sales reports download as CSV, the CSV wizard bulk-loads a catalogue, and quick search in the admin header finds an order, customer, product or coupon from one box. Email templates are edited in the admin, and a queue shows every send with its status and a retry.
13. Can you migrate in, and what happens to old orders?
Why it matters. Most people choosing a cart are leaving one. The importer, and the honesty of its documentation, decides whether the move takes a weekend or a quarter.
What a good answer looks like. An importer for the cart you are leaving, and a plain statement of what does not carry over, before you start.
Solidshop’s answer: the free Solidshop Migrator moves a VirtueMart 4 catalogue onto a Joomla 6 site: categories, brands, products, translations, prices, variants, images and stock. It has a preview that writes nothing and a report that names what it could not map. Orders, customers and reviews do not migrate; the migration page lists exactly what stays behind. For other carts, the CSV importer recognises Shopify and WooCommerce column headings, and there is no automated path for order history.
14. Who is behind it, and how do you get help?
Why it matters. You are choosing a vendor for years, not a download for today.
What a good answer looks like. A named company, a support policy with published response times, a public place to report bugs, and a product history you can check.
Solidshop’s answer: Solidshop is built by Solid Labs, the team behind Solidres, a Joomla hotel booking extension first released in 2013. The free core is supported on the public community forum. Paid extensions come with private support tickets and a first-response target of one business day, set out on the support policy page.
The short version
- Does it run on Joomla 6 today, and what is the upgrade story?
- What does the licence actually let you do?
- What is free, what is paid, and are there fees on sales?
- Where does your data live, and can you leave?
- Does the checkout do what your customers expect?
- How does it handle tax?
- How flexible is shipping?
- Which payment methods work out of the box?
- Does it use Joomla, or fight it?
- Will search engines and AI assistants find the products?
- Is the storefront accessible, and does it work on a phone?
- What does day-to-day admin look like?
- Can you migrate in, and what happens to old orders?
- Who is behind it, and how do you get help?
You can put every one of these questions to Solidshop yourself, because the core is free and installs like any other Joomla extension. Grab it from the extensions page, then follow Your first store to set it up. If an answer above does not hold on your site, that is a bug report we want.