*Apologies in advance for how long this is, Im trying to make it short but complete.*
I have been building WP websites for years using Thrive Architect and their Theme Builder, starting with a blank theme and building everything from scratch. I have enjoyed the Thrive ecosystem and have had mostly great experiences except for some small issues. But I haven’t actively built a site or even updated any sites in about 3 years, so I know a lot has changed and I am rethinking my WordPress Stack for a new ecommerce website project, and would like advice.
Apart from Thrive Architect/Theme Builder, I also will need these functions that I would have to replace:
* Thrive Quiz Builder – quizes
* Thrive Ultimatum – countdown timers
* Thrive Leads – email capture forms and various offer lightboxes
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**WHAT IM BUILDING**
The website I am creating is an ecommerce website for a health supplement company which start with a few products that can be purchased individually or as a subscription. I was going to use Ultracart ) since all ecomm functions are handled on their end and its very robust. I am afraid of Woocommerce because of the need to bolt on so many extensions, pay for each one individually, and dealing with broken plugins and incompatibilities as a non developer.
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**HERE ARE THE OPTIONS IM CONTEMPLATING**
1. Staying with Thrive Architect ecosystem + Ultracart (or an alternative if someone has one)
2. Moving to Elementor (As it seems to be the winner in terms of page builders) + Ultracart (or an alternative if someone has one)
3. Moving to a Theme like Blocksy and using the Gutenberg page builder (I know very little about this but seems very fast and is building in line with the future direction of WordPress) + Ultracart (or an alternative if someone has one)
4. Moving off WordPress altogether and going with Shopify – Whats attractive about this is that all of the ecommerce needs are handled by the platform + plugins and as we grow we could stick on this platform. My concern here is the cost of plugins and also not being able to customize a lot since I don’t have the dev skills specific to Shopify.
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**WHAT WOULD YOU RECOMMEND?**
So for my needs what would you recommend? Im open to a different ecommerce solution than Ultracart if someone has one, or if you want to convince me that Woocommerce is the way to go. I also am not sure how good using Shopify with WordPress could be.
In terms of the order of importance for consideration:
* Handle ecommerce needs easily with minimal dev skills and interruptions and be able to scale up to 20-30 products/subscriptions
* Ease of theme customization ability without a developer
* Site speed
* Keeping the number of plugins down to avoid bloat and speed issues
* Overall costs for the page builder, theme and plugins. Im willing to pay but want to keep it from getting out of hand.
Thanks in advance. Let me know if Im missing anything from above.
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