Top 4 Laravel E-Commerce packages

Laravel eCommerce describes online shop, marketplace and B2B eCommerce solutions based on the Laravel PHP framework. They can be standalone applications, headless API micro services or packages that can be installed in any Laravel application to add eCommerce features to existing setups.

Laravel is the most popular PHP framework for good reasons:

• Easy to use and customize
• Great community
• Extremely fast and scalable

These qualities make Laravel a perfect fit for building online shops and e-commerce applications in general. For our favorite PHP framework, there exist e-commere packages for different purposes. The most important ones are:

• Aimeos (e-commerce framework, API & shop system)
• Bagisto (shop system)
• GetCandy (e-commerce API)
• LaravelShoppingcart (shopping cart)

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of each package.

Aimeos

Aimeos is the most liked e-commerce framework for Laravel and is build for being as extensible as the Laravel PHP framework itself and integrates into existing Laravel applications. It’s feature rich and you can adapt everything to your needs regardless of what your requirements are.

Homepage: https://aimeos.org/Laravel

Supported Laravel: 9.x, 10.x

Positive:

• Supports latest Laravel versions fast
• JSON REST frontend API and GraphQL admin API
• Multi channel, multi vendor and multi inventory support
• Has multi-tentant SaaS support including custom domains
• Ultra fast render times of 20ms and response times of 100ms
• Has virtual, configurable and custom products incl. bundles
• Sell every product as subscription with recurring payment
• Supports discount rules and vouchers
• 100+ payment gateways via Omnipay PHP library
• Extension to build own market places available
• Great documentation available

Negative:

• Requires more time to learn due to its huge feature set

Bagisto

A shop system is a standalone application that includes everything to run a shop. It primarily focuses on small business and the middle east area with native RTL (right-to-left) support.

Homepage: https://bagisto.com

Supported Laravel: 9.x

Positive:

• Has configurable, group, bundle and virtual products
• Has multi channel and multi store inventory support
• Supports discount rules
• JSON REST and GraphQL API
• Extension to build own market places available
• Lots of videos from the company about Bagisto

Negative:

• Not suitable for existing Laravel applications
• No real multi-currency support (fixed conversion rates only)
• Almost all available payment integrations must be paid for
• ~100 tables incl. fixed structures that are hard to extend
• Requires ElasticSearch or Algolia for fast search
• CMS features are too simple for real use
• Limited documentation

Lunar

Lunar is the successor of GetCandy, a headless API package that offers a REST API only and an administration interface for managing products, orders and customers. There’s no front-end included because it’s best used by (web) apps you want to build on your own.

Homepage: https://lunarphp.io

Supported Laravel: 8.x, 9.x

Positive:

• Backend for progressive web applications (PWA)
• Uses ElasticSearch as storage so it should be able to scale

Negative:

• No example front-end available
• Only limited feature set yet
• No payment integration
• Documentation is very limited
• Currently in alpha stage
• Future seems to be a bit uncertain at the moment

LaravelShoppingcart (shopping cart)

Shopping cart packages are very small, easy to use and contain a limited feature set. The package consists cart/wishlist only and integrates into existing Laravel 5 applications where you have to implement product handling and checkout yourself.

Homepage: https://github.com/Hardevine/LaravelShoppingcart

Supported Laravel: 8.x, 9.x

Positive:

• Easy to learn and to integrate for Laravel developers
• Adds cart features if you already have products

Negative:

• Very limited feature set
• No checkout process available
• Doesn’t scale for higher volumes
• Doesn’t include an example template

Conclusion

Aimeos is the top e-commerce framework for Laravel if you need a highly customizable solution that is able to scale. Bagisto offers a shop system based on Laravel if you start from a green field. LaravelShoppingcart is best if you need a simple shopping cart for a few products while Lunar and Aimeos headless are candidates if you want to build your own PWA and don’t need anything else.

Add your own experiences and let’s discuss other recommendations :-)