MarketPress(Now known as WordPress E-Commerce) is the easiest to use,yet powerful ecommerce shopping cart plugin available for WordPress today. It was one of the earliest developed WordPress plugin to support multi vendor ecommerce features and it was found to be the most frequently updated plugin in this category. I am watching this plugin for years and found to be one of the greatest plugins that build for this category.

Quick Review

Pros

• Variety of good features
• Frequent updates
• Rock solid support
• Cheapest price
• Variety of money making methods (product sales or charge subscription fees)
• Supports WordPress single site, multi site and Buddypress
• Unlimited license (Buy single license and install with multiple domains)

Cons

As a WordPress plugin, the dashboard needs some branding (Remove UN-necessary dashboard menus and content) with the member dashboard (You can easily overcome this, using the plugin  “Ultimate Branding” which is also comes from the house of Premium WPMUDEV)

Recommendation
Highly recommended to purchase this plug-in, if you are determined to start your marketplace only with WordPress.You can’t find the best wordpress multiple vendor plug-in other than this.

Update

Now we have some  better alternative solutions like Dokan Multivendor Plugin (Scored 5 out of 5)  to build multi store marketplace on WordPress

You can also read the below detailed features review of this module to make decisions by yourself.

Supports both physical and digital goods  – Supports both physical products and digital (Electronic)goods with all the relevant features required to operate.

Supports multiple payment gateways– The plugin supports variety of payment gateways such PayPal Express Checkout, Authorize.net AIM, Google checkout, Moneybookers, 2checkout, Cubepoints, eWay shared payments.

Wide theme compatibility– Compatible to work with any WordPress themes works seamlessly works with all the WordPress templates.

Fully internationalized– Easy to translate into any language, comes with the pre localization support with more than 15 languages and can also internationalize into any language. And the language support comes from the WPML.

Shipping calculations– Supports manual and dynamic shipping calculations. In the dynamic calculations, the shipping information is calculated automatically by integrating with the shipping providers service like DHL,UPS and others.
In the manual method, you can configure the shipping upon the location of the buyers ( Country, State or Address)

Tax calculations– Tax information can be calculated dynamically by defining the fixed or varying percentage of tax according to the product price .E.g You can make exempt from the tax if the product is below $50.Fully supports VAT system.

Google analytics ecommerce integration– Can easily be integrated with the Google analytics for Ecommerce which helps you track the ecommerce sales and goals using Google analytics.

Unlimited Product Variations- Supports unlimited product variations (E.g Size, Color, Type) and it’s directly connected with the price change. E.g Product 1 with size 5″=50$, Product 1 with size 8″=$70

Discount coupons support- Can generate coupons and set validity date, number of uses, selected products on which the coupons may apply. Customers can redeem the coupons during the product order page.

In-Build themes– Comes with the in-build theme that fully supports the features of the plug-in and it was extremely customized using the theme options and preset CSS styles and there is nothing to with the code.

Widgets support- Drag and drop widgets to add the products in the sidebar, footer, hot selling products with image thumbnails and many other things with the store.

Multiple currencies support– Supports multiple currencies from the various countries and the buyers can easily change between these currencies using the currency menu displayed on the store front end.

Affiliate platform integration-Comes with the affiliate platform integration support to enable the affiliate promotion for the products. Super administrator can set affiliate percentage for promotion, add promotional materials ( Create text links and banner images) and manage the payouts. The affiliate can join programs, create affiliate links, track sales and traffic statistics. Update payment information and request payouts.

Product stock tracking- Projects stocks can be tracked effectively using the stock threshold system which triggers the alerts to the vendors/administrators if the product quantity is lower than the configured minimum required value. You can also create alerts per product variation.

Product order limits– Can create order limits for products per order, which configure the allowed product numbers per order.

AJAX Cart– The cart comes with the full AJAX support that updates and processes other requests without page loading. This will provides more pleasing interface to the buyers.

Product shortcodes– Products can be easily inserted to any page or posts using the short code feature come with the plugin. Just use the short code varied with the product ID to place the particular product, it was such easy.

Anonymous checkout– Plug-in supports anonymous checkout feature that lets the buyers buy the products without registering with the website, it helps to decrease the chances of the shopping cart abandonment.

External checkout or links– Products can be added with the external checkout system/links like (Amazon, Ebay, Clickbank or other affiliate page).

Network of blogs– Can create network of stores and blogs using the WordPress multi site system which helps to design the site like Etsy marketplace.

Global product feeds– Support product feeds across the network, can generate the feeds and create the global listing of the product in the base (core domain) store.

Custom profile fields- Profile fields are easily customized (Create and update custom fields) for products and as well as for the users.