Pier #117 - A New Alternative to WooCommerce, EDD, SureCart & FluentCart

Stefan from Ahoi.dev | The Pier #117 | September 12, 2025

Welcome to the 117th issue of The Pier. After many years of dominance by just two major players, the world of e-commerce for WordPress is currently seeing a great deal of movement. SugarCart is the latest competitor to enter the market, and is currently available in early access. It’s a lightweight e-commerce solution for WordPress built on Stripe, offering zero platform fees and automatic tax calculation with Stripe Tax. For digital products only. Does it serve as an alternative to SureCart, WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads (EDD), and FluentCart, as well as Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy? Well, we’ll soon find out.

Free Workshop: “Getting Started With Etch” – Watch the walkthrough to learn how to build a full landing page.

Walkthrough: “Builderius Pro 1.0 (beta): The WordPress visual builder that actually thinks like a developer”. Watch the video to find out more!

Wow: Supa Mike from AssetsforWP for Breakdance has switched from annual plans to a one-off LTD plan. It’s a Really nice collection of premium assets!

Exciting: FormGent 1.0.0 has officially been released, offering free access to pro features that other WordPress form builder plugins charge for!

Milestone: ClickWhale is now installed on 700+ WordPress sites.

Here is a selection of the latest and greatest blog posts we published this week on Ahoi.dev. You will also find some interesting industry news, the latest directory listings on The Port, job openings, and deals. Enjoy!

👋 New: Unanswered Feed Filter

The best way to keep members of your BuddyBoss community engaged is to ensure that every question is answered.

The new ‘Unanswered’ filter for activity feeds allows users to view posts that have not received any comments or replies.

🗞️ Bites & Pieces

WordPress

WP Amelia 8.5 introduces dynamic pricing rates, which are displayed on the booking calendar using coloured indicators. These rates are based on the time of day and day of the week. New features include Mailchimp integration and smarter booking logic.

Blocksy releases its latest starter site in the Pro version, Landscape, featuring a clean, minimalist design and a glassmorphism effect.

Oxygen 6.0 Beta 3 is now available and features a Term Loop Builder element, a completely redesigned Code Editor and upgraded Design Sets, as well as UI improvements.

With the new Weglot partnership, you can now translate your entire Droip site into 110+ languages using AI-powered translation.

The latest Nexter Extension features include SMTP email and image upload optimization, Elementor ad-free mode, stronger security and much more.

WP ULike Pro 1.9.5 brings a refined metrics dashboard with enhanced filters, charts and list components.

Elegant Themes releases Custom Attributes for Divi 5. This feature allows you to add attributes such as alt, title, rel and aria-label to elements and sub-elements.

WP Travel Engine introduces a more accurate and reliable capacity management system, including minimum travellers per booking, total traveller seats and minimum passengers per category.

ACPT 2.0.35 introduces a new ID field that enables you to generate an ID.

Beaver Builder 2.10 will introduce significant accessibility improvements.

Chatics for WP enables you to add a customizable chat widget to your WordPress website. This widget connects directly to your n8n workflows.

E-Commerce

Following the release of SureBricks (see The Pier #105), FluentBricks is now also available. It extends the functionality of FluentCart elements.

SureCart 3.13.2 introduces a new ‘Restart instalment plan on completion’ setting for subscription-based contracts.

Lightfunnels adds sitemaps to its sales funnel builder, enabling search engines to crawl your store pages more easily.

SurelyWP releases a revamped settings UI for all its SureCart add-ons, featuring a polished design, faster navigation and an enhanced UX. Also new is an Import/Export option.

Screen Recording

Screen Studio 3.4.8 and 3.4.9 introduce a new macOS Tahoe cursor set and iPhone 16 mockups, as well as a built-in library of background audio tracks.

Customer Support

Gleap announces that GPT-5 is officially out of beta, making its AI-powered customer support agent smarter and more powerful.

LiveAgent redesigns ticket attachments, allowing you to identify the type of file at a glance. Coming soon: A new mobile app for handling calls.

Email Marketing

Mailercloud releases two new features to help you improve deliverability and list quality. The Inbox Tracker add-on allows you to monitor inbox placement in real time, and the Double Opt-In feature helps you to build verified, engaged subscriber lists.

Email Validation

ZeroBounce ONE is a comprehensive new email deliverability suite that combines all deliverability tools in one place. These include email validation and scoring, email finder, DMARC monitor, and more.

Video Hosting

Origits announces a major infrastructure upgrade coming in the next 3–4 weeks. The new GPU-based hardware will encode your videos 10–20 times faster than the current setup, deliver them 30–50% faster, and generate subtitles 60 times faster.

Icons

The Iconists team releases a new Framer plugin, a web app and a React package for the Central icon system.

Server Management

xCloud introduces Wasabi as a storage provider and HTTP/3 with NGINX servers for all new websites. It also supports MySQL 8.4 and MariaDB 11.6.

LMS / E-Learning

Klasio introduces a new OneSignal integration for mobile app notifications, a new video orientation field for mobile app support & a new private course type.

Gamification & CRO

Claspo rolls out a major upgrade to its gamification mechanics. You can now launch scratch cards, wheels of fortune, quizzes and ‘pick a gift’ campaigns without requesting an email address, encouraging instant actions such as adding items to the cart or unlocking discounts.

Personalized Outreach

LipSync personalised videos are finally here, having been announced last month for version 2.2. Sendr‘s new features also include automated web scraping and a brand-new, pre-built prompt library.

Salesforge releases new Clay integration that allows you to seamlessly connect Clay’s data workflows to your Salesforge sequences.

Link Management

AI Audio

The new ElevenLabs Agents Testing feature, currently in alpha, allows you to easily deploy conversational agents. There is also a new Sound Effects v2 model featuring higher-quality sound effects, new looping SFX and an increased sample rate of 48 kHz, favourites and an improved SFX library.

Social Media

ContentStudio now allows you to add music to your videos. You can browse fresh tracks, save favourites, trim audio and mix tracks. New features include voice mode in the AI assistant and the ability to share analytics via link.

From the Editor: Biff.codes

We’ve launched a new side project called Biff.codes, a free job board for WordPress developers and more. Find out why Biff can get paid in burgers. 🍔

🚨 Latest Posts

The following highlighted articles have been published in the last 7 days. All posts can be found on our blog.

👋 Latest Jobs

Looking for a new professional challenge? Find your new job.

🔥 Quayside Deals

A few irresistible offers that might be of interest to you, don’t you think?

⏰ Last Chance: Secure your Etch LTD before annual subscriptions replace them on 15th September.
New: Origits LTD – Professional video hosting, lead capture & A/B testing.
Exclusive: Get 50% off the Gleap Team plan for 3 years. The support OS comes with features such as bug reporting, engagement, onboarding and a help center.
3rd Birthday: Save up to 50% on annual Nuelink plans.
Promo: Save 30% on Sendr, the personlized outreach platform, for 3 mo.
Exclusive: Get 20% off Replient for 3 month(s) with code Glumpler20.
Summer Sale: Save 20% on Kitchen.co lifetime plans, the client portal platform for agencies.
Exclusive: Save 10% on all CookieYes plans (valid for first billing cycle).
Summer Sale: Save 40% on all Trafft plans.
LTD: Get Modern Cart for WooCommerce for $129 by CartFlows.
Last Chance: Get a Blockstudio LTD before it is retired on October 1.
New: Save 10% on all Greyd plans with code ref_10_SG563924.
Special Offer: Save $354 with the AffiliateWP + RewardsWP bundle.
First Year: Save 30% on Content Control for WordPress.
Early Adopter: Save 30% on SnipVault LTD. Only 120 licenses available.
Exclusive: Save 15% on PassiveWP with code AHOIDEV.
Save $200: Get Breakdance Pro for just $199.99 per year.
Extended LTD: Don’t miss out on the Bit Flows lifetime deals.
Exciting: Save BIG on the SleekWP All Access Pass LTD, which includes SleekPixel, SleekAI, SleekMotion, SleekView and all future plugins.
Recurring: Save 10% on Publer, the social media management platform.
It’s Back! Get the FlowMattic LTD. Split payment options available.

That’s all for this week. We hope you enjoyed the 117th issue of The Pier. Until next week! Please tell your friends about The Pier if you like it.

Curated and published with lots of ♥ by Ahoi.dev!
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