iThemes Exchange was released only a few months ago, but they’ve been iterating quickly. As I shared then, they released Exchange without support for physical goods. Now they’ve not only added support for physical goods, but memberships (recurring and non-recurring) as well.
My experience with Exchange
I used iThemes Exchange for the first time about a month ago. It was a relatively basic digital download store that needed some custom theming, but not too many programming customizations. Out of the box, Exchange delivers quite well. It did exactly what I wanted it to do for digital downloads, and was a very simple and intuitive interface, which is a huge bonus for client work.
My struggles with Exchange were more in terms of developer grade documentation and understanding some of the verbiage and structure for modifying the plugin’s output and default behavior. Exchange is super flexible, and I could tell that, but being new to the product and on a tight deadline, better developer documentation would have been awesome. However, I know iThemes knows that’s important, and I think the plugin will only get easier to modify and extend in the future, as the bones necessary to make it so are definitely there.
I will also say that when I asked them a question, Exchange’s lead developer Glenn Ansley gave me a super thorough and excellent summary of how to do what I wanted to achieve in an email.
Framing Exchange amongst other options
Making shipping and physical goods available is a good thing, and inline with Exchange’s “competition,” namely WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. I put that in quotes because I’ve used all three plugins on client projects, and they each have pros and cons and determining which product to use depends on the project requirements.
Few brands in tech have skyrocketed in exposure like WP Engine in the past couple of years. WP Engine has experienced massive growth, and they are showing signs of acting very much like a grown up company.
