How to Find Good Quality OpenCart Extensions
We love OpenCart, it's a great platform and has a thriving and active community who support users on the forums and develop great extensions ... most of the time. OpenCart has always welcomed extension and theme developers and has a very low bar to entry - if you can create an extension you can create an account, upload it and either sell it or release it for free.
Unfortunately, because it's so easy, not all extensions are created equal and the rating system/number of sales/comments isn't always the best guide to extension quality for 2 main reasons:
- Fake reviews and ratings are rife all over the Internet.
- People rate a theme or extension as 5* if it looks good and seems to work, even if the code is an absolute mess. This actually matters more than most people realise because it's more likely to conflict with other extensions and cause problems down the line if it's badly coded.
We aren't the first to have identified this issue and tried to provide a curated selection of OpenCart extensions, but although we highly respect the developer behind that site, if you buy from there, the OpenCart project itself won't get any commission and you may not get as good support because if a developer selling on the OpenCart Marketplace itself doesn't provide good support they will get their sales income reduced until they improve.
So we've come up with a short list of extension developers that we have come to trust after working with OpenCart since around 2011.
- Antropy (main account)
- These are extensions we developed ourselves in-house.
- Antropy (other account)
- These are extensions we bought the rights to after extensively verifying good code quality.
- Clear Thinking
- Johnathan who runs ClearThinking is one of the most respected OpenCart developers and provides some of the best customer support I've ever seen anywhere. You can guarantee that any extension you buy from here will be great.
- Bull5-i
- Always provides helpful support and the code is very clean. We espcially recommend the Similar Products extension.
- MarketinSG
- Singapore based developers who produce great quality extensions.
- UKSB
- We like the code from this developer, especially their Google Merchant Shopping Feeds extension.
- JNeuhoff
- Jeff wrote some of the earliest and most downloaded free extensions and is active and helpful in the forums.
- JAY6390
- Jay Gilford is a great developer who produces great extensions and provides great support.
- qphoria
- Qphoria is one of the core OpenCart developers who produces great extensions and has built many of the built-in payment gateways that come with OpenCart.
- iSense
- These guys were probably the biggest OpenCart agency in the world and their extension quality was very good but more recently they seem to have made a few questionable decisions like doing more Shopify work and withdrawing their Nitropack Cache extension in favour of a subscription model and their support has suffered a little too. Their extensions can be complex but they are often still good.
- We will add more as we come across them, please comment below or email us if you'd like to suggest one.
Notes
We have not been influenced or paid in any way for the recommendations and links above (although we list ours first of course), we have recommended them purely because we have had good experiences with the extensions and their support. We cannot of course take any responsibility if you have any issues although we're always willing to help out on a commercial basis.
How to Select a Good Extension
Try and stick to the developers listed above, but sometimes that's just not possible. In that case, try to make sure:
- The extension has lots of sales.
- The extension has a good rating.
- Comments are replied to quickly on the extension page and are mostly positive.
- The filesize is small and the number of files are small - there are loads of technical checks a developer can make once you've bought the extension, but in most cases (depending on what it does) if the extension is over about half a megabyte or contains more than 50 files it could well be bloated and cause problems.
How to Get Good Extension Support
If you do have an issue with an extension you've bought, after making sure you followed the installation instructions to the letter, it is best to contact the developer via the OpenCart Support Contact Form here:
https://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=support/contact
This is because OpenCart have a team dedicated to making sure that customers get great support and they will usually provide a full refund if there really is an issue with the extension you bought.
Finally, if you think we've missed any great developers let us know in the comments or by email, but we'll only list a developer if we have worked with their extensions and/or sampled their support ourselves and we believe them to be extremely good!
Testimonials
The deliveries are now incredibly clear and there is no more admin work on this side which is excellent. It’s amazing really and I think our customers enjoy knowing exactly when they are getting it unlike nearly every other furniture company out there! Thanks for this.
We worked with Antropy on our new webshop at kikgoes.nl in the past months. We have enjoyed working with them because of their extensive knowledge of Opencart and the rapid pace of development. We regularly added requirements to the projects and we've never had anything that couldn't be done. We look forward to working with Antropy again for new projects or adjustments to our webshop!
Merged two previously HUGE separate sites (website and webstore) into one streamlined website with integrated store, with improved social media and mailing list results. Joe helped communicate complicated jargon into simpler terms, solved issues/queries quickly, and the follow up support has been invaluable.
Just wanted to say a big thank you for all your help and support thus far. You've been absolutely brilliant. You've given me absolute confidence that when there is a problem it is sorted which really gives me peace of mind.
We are really delighted with the finished product, it has far exceeded our expectations... Many thanks again for your support and setting up what I feel is the best Alzheimer's website in the country.
Wow, I am speechless. Thank you so much, this is perfect !!!! Thank you, thank you !!!
Antropy not only gave freely of their time to talk with me, they had the patience to teach me as we went along. They came up with various ideas that allowed me to choose what I liked best and with their guidance we got exactly the website we dreamed about.
Good to work with, very straight forward
Thank you all for the hard work, it has paid off, it looks good. The logo is great to promote the practice and the website we can be proud of.
Thank you again.
After many years of trying to update my website, dealing with problematic code, delays, etc, I found Antropy about 10 years ago. I can not say enough great things about the quality of their coding and stability of my website along with the professionalism of their staff. I now have a well functioning website that has stood the test of time. Our site is an e-commerce site so that having it up and running is crucial to our business. On the rare occasion that there is a problem with the site, Antropy's team is quick and responsive to finding the problem and fixing it quickly.
Always helpful and extremely responsive to any request and once the project has been rolled out they continue to assist you with great help and advice to make the most of your website
Thanks again for all your hard work on the 3D renders … the results have been fantastic and I look forward to working together again in the future.
Taken on both smaller and large projects to a very high standard. Delivered on time, with a professional level of service. Always better than we envisioned.
Staff are always ready to help with any issues we have. Really pleased with the results of Antropy, and hopefully we can do more business together in the future!
We found Antropy to be very responsive and approachable to work with. They gladly took our own designs and transformed them into an easy-to-manage website. Communication was easy and any requests for change were promptly done. Many thanks for the work!
Excellent company with outstanding knowledge of opencart and how to get the best from it. If you are looking for a reliable and professional company to work with I wouldn't hesitate to recommend these guys.
Excellent work, delivered in a friendly and consultative way throughout the whole process. For a small company such as my own it was great to be guided through the process, and all my requests were responded to and I felt involved from start to finish.
Thanks for your hard work, it's very much appreciated.
Firstly, thanks ever so much to you and your team for getting these two sites up and running. It’s a pleasure to work with people who are so helpful and responsive to our requirements. We’re very happy with both sites and all seems to be working fine.
We recently started using Antropy for our OpenCart website as internal IT is swamped and we needed back up and they have been great. Work is quick and efficient, we never need to ask for something twice and communication is good. Gives us confidence that when we need something to be done, it will be and to a high standard.
Very impressed with the quick service! There is nothing more we need help with right now but we would certainly use you in the future for other issues or alterations we may have. Thank you very much!
