Shopping cart with diff. product pricing & renewal?

Question

What EE shopping cart/e-commerce plugin that can do the following:

1. sell digital product, using PayPal or Skrill processors
2. different pricing schemes for a single product
3. one-time payment; purchase expiration; and an optional renewal

Example: I have a digital item to sell, named XYZ.

1. I want to sell ZYC for different pricing schemes & expiration:
   • XYC Lite for $50 & will expire in 6 months; $10 for renewal (not recurring but only an option)
   • XYC Pro for $100 & will expire in 1 year; $20 for renewal (not recurring but only an option)
   • other pricing schemes....
2. I must be able to set whether purchases of XYC is auto-approve or manually approve.
   • Auto-approve - after a user made the payment, it's already considered a "successful purchase" (see #3 below) and can immediately access the download.
   • Manually approve - after a user made the payment, it will be considered as "pending" and not yet successful. An admin must manually approve for it to become a "successful purchase" (see #3 below).
3. Successful purchase of the item will move the user to a certain Member Group:
   • XYC Lite purchasers will be moved to Lite Group member group.
   • XYC Pro purchasers will be moved to Pro Group member group.
4. In the "Purchase Area" (displays purchases) of the user, they have an option to renew even if it's not yet expired. Renewing will extend the timeframe of the expiration.
5. When an item purchased is nearly expiring, it must send an email reminding about it, i.e. "you need to renew".
6. Upon expiration of purchase, the user will be move back to a specified member group and can no longer access the download. He must have an option to renew as the price indicated in #1 but take note that the renewal is not a recurring payment, it's just an option.
7. Renewals (for example XYC Lite; $10) should be auto-approve (regardless if I set the item purchase to manual approve) and will again move the user to the specified member group and give him another 6 months access to download.

Answer 1

None of them will do all of that out the box.

@Jason-Mayo is correct in that Cartthrob is your best bet as it's the most flexible out the lot, and so is the one you should choose. However, @Ramil-Alcibar is also correct as it can't be done without custom coding. For example, your being able to set a product to be auto approve or manual approve, you would need to create a EE extension type add-on that, when the order confirmation comes back from the payment provider, will check the product that has been bought, see if it is auto or manual approve and then set the status of said order accordingly. Not actually that difficult to do if you know how to code.

There are plenty of excellent EE devs around that can help you with this!

Answer 2

I would go for Cart Throb (http://cartthrob.com) as that will pretty much do all this.

Remember, EE is quite durable in the way that a lot of the features are built in i.e. Member Groups etc.

I've run Cart Throb on a few eCommerce sites, all with different needs (Some with the need for different prices, per member group) and it's always worked out in the end. With no hacking and no PHP.