It's been a long time coming, but Cargo is finally in alpha! 🎉
Cargo is basically a complete rewrite of Simple Commerce. It's been a massive amount of work, but I'm really happy with how it's turned out and I can't wait for you to try it out!
Carts & Orders
One of the biggest changes in Cargo is how it handles carts and orders.
Simple Commerce stored carts and orders in the same collection. It worked, but it always felt a bit clunky.
In Cargo, carts and orders are stored separately in their own Stache stores. This gives Cargo more control over how things work and also makes things more reliable, like the transition between flat files and a database.
Control Panel
Cargo is taking full advantage of the UI components built into Statamic 6, making everything feel polished and consistent. Here are a couple of sneaky screenshots:
Discounting
Discounting is another area that has received massive improvements.
It's now possible to create "site-wide discounts" which get applied automatically when a customer's cart meets certain criteria. Useful for Black Friday or Christmas sales. Of course, manually applied discounts (coupons) are still supported.
Cargo also allows you to build your own discount types, so if you need something more complex than just percentage or fixed discounts, you can build it yourself.
Pre-built Checkout
This is probably my favourite part of Cargo... the pre-built checkout flow.
Building a checkout flow from scratch can be daunting and time-consuming, especially for smaller sites where time is money.
Cargo's pre-built checkout flow features a minimal design and flexible Antlers templates, making it easy to customise for your project.
If you need more control, you can still build your own checkout page.
Docs
As well as building Cargo itself, I've been working with long-time Statamic community member, Mike Martin on the documentation and branding for Cargo. It's looking pretty slick if you ask me! 🔥
Migrating to Cargo
While I can't promise it'll be a 5–10 minute upgrade, I have tried to make it as smooth as possible with commands to handle most of the heavy lifting. You can find everything you need to know in the migration page.
Finally
I've been working on Cargo for a little over a year now. It’s been a massive undertaking, and in hindsight, I don’t think I’ll rewrite a side project of this scale again — but I’m glad it’s out there for you to try.
To get started, spin up a new site or migrate an existing Simple Commerce site and let me know what you think.
Oh, and by the way, if you want to update to Statamic 6, but don't have time to migrate to Cargo right away, you'll be happy to know that Simple Commerce also supports v6.