ExpressionEngine and E-Commerce Have a New Name: CartThrob

By
Angie Herrera

Last Thursday marked what I consider a big day for ExpressionEngine and e-commerce: CartThrob, an e-commerce module for ExpressionEngine was released. And while I haven't had a chance to thoroughly review the documentation or play with it, I believe this is a huge step forward in the whole EE/e-commerce saga.

ExpressionEngine has been missing a solid and flexible e-commerce component. While it does have the Simple Commerce Module built-in, it just isn't robust enough for anything beyond a very small store where the focus is unlikely to be the products. Not to mention that it's only usable with PayPal which just isn't an option for most businesses. CartThrob, however, was built to keep ExpressionEngine's flexibility by keeping the e-commerce piece as flexible as possible while allowing for easy management of inventory and orders.

The beauty of CartThrob – from what I can tell so far – is, as Chris Newton of CartThrob told EE Insider put it, that CartThrob doesn't assume a structure or flow for anyone's business. That means small businesses will have an e-commerce solution that can be tailored to their own store workflow. That's true flexibility.

I should note that while I'm thrilled about CartThrob's release, it clearly won't be for everybody. After all, CartThrob is an add-on for ExpressionEngine (1.6.x only as of this writing). If a business owner either isn't running EE or has no intention of managing their own content, this would probably be unnecessary and a more conventional e-commerce solution is probably more appropriate.

All in all though, I'm very excited about this and can't wait to try it out in-house and eventually start recommending it clients needing an e-commerce component. Be sure to head over to the CartThrob website to learn more!