FluentCart (IMO) Not Ready for Production
I have attempted to build a full on website with FluentCart. Tried actively trading etc. But I just could not overcome the amount of issues and missing basic changes...
I have compiled a nice list - I hope this will help improve the project.
https://www.notion.so/webv8/FluentCart-Mishaps-2dc47e2b48c580db8f6bc6bded13132b?source=copy_link
- I am using FSE theme (as support told me that's the only way to get all the options/settings to work)
- It is a FRESH website (i'm not working around any plugins / fluentcart is the base framework)
- No subscriptions just basic physical products
I just want to make it very clear.. I WANT FLUENTCART to be the best! Please address these so we can stop using the bloated woocommerce.
I agree with the assessment of “Not Ready for Production”, and the same applies to FluentCommunity. Having managed and operated other community platforms for over a decade, I had hoped to migrate to FluentCommunity, but it simply isn’t at that stage yet. There are still too many fundamental aspects that are not production-ready. That said, the platform has huge potential; however, at this moment, it is just not feasible for us to adopt it. Please don’t take this as criticism—it’s intended as constructive feedback to help improve the platform. If I have time, I will share a detailed list of areas that could help make it stronger and more ready for production.
Diego Maradona without detailing the issues that make Fluent Community unusable, that seems unfair. I’m in several FCs, and my paid community runs on FC with 25 paying members ($33/mo or $97/mo). Now maybe there are some limitations for people looking for a perfect Circle clone, but you’re in a huge FC right now.
Kaneisha G. FluentCommunity isnt even gpdr compatible. Meaning any user from Germany can shut your website down or make you pay him or the state a lot of money. And why? Because fluent prefers to launch half baked product to get money. Its been more than a year since the launch of fluentcommunity. and its still illegal to use it. :D Apps? The official apps company's website has issues that would make me feel shame if i was them. And they are official.... and theyre all getting money..... If I was ceo of Fluent I wouldnt even allow such company to mention fluent name, but they are official partners.... There are no real roadmaps. Not a single fluent product works natively with fluent community, while promises were completely different.... Theyre launching new products faster than making the existing ones usable.... getting money feels good, thats understandable.... but if youre selling tech products then innovation or general usability should be in the 1st place and getting money secondary, but reality is different here. theyre launching more new products almost weekly and not making the earlier launched ones usable
Cointacter I'm intrigued - in what way is FC not GDPR compatible?
Jonathan Gwyer Right now, FluentCommunity is not fully GDPR-compliant because it does not integrate with WordPress’s built-in GDPR tools.
Specifically:
User data is not included in WordPress data export requests (right to data portability).
User data cannot be fully erased via WordPress’s data deletion tools (right to be forgotten).
Consent handling is mostly left to the site owner, not enforced by the plugin.
The next update is expected to:
Hook FluentCommunity data into WordPress user data export & erase flows
Add missing GDPR plumbing so site owners can legally fulfill user requests
In short: the missing part is automated data export and deletion, which is why the CEO says the next update will make it GDPR-compatible.
Cointacter ok, so it isn't that it is not GDPR compliant, it's just that for it to be GDPR compliant the site owner has to do some things.
So doesn't really make it illegal to use, does it?
Jonathan Gwyer its impossible for site owner to do anything to make it legal. UGC platform plugin must have data Export/deletion functionality. If it doesnt have it, it can get in trouble.
Cointacter it's easy to do either of these things in the database - it may not be as simple as clicking a button, but in the unlikely event I get that request then it's easily done.
I'd be more worried that https://cointacts.app/ is using Google Analytics without requesting permission to fire the cookie. Definitely illegal in Germany and the UK.
Jonathan Gwyer 😀 haha. cointacts.app and/or cointact.me arent functional for a long time and I doubt I will need them, cointacted itself is what im working on and the other two havent been touched or updated for 2 years. While FC is getting money for their software and actively promoting it for over a year.
Diego Maradona I support this motion too
It's been over a month now with no updates for FluentCart. It definitely needs more frequent bug fix releases. Plenty of stuff isn't working quite right at the moment.
I read your thorough writeup in Notion and found your documented challenges a compelling case for waiting on Fluent Cart to be further developed before implementing it—like waiting all of 2026 before trying. Interested in the team’s response.
Yes, I was also hoping that updates would be released more frequently. I'm trying to launch a German store, and there are countless strings that simply cannot be translated (in almost all Fluent plugins). Plus, I find the current customization options really insufficient...
In FluentCommunity, there are numerous technical bugs where images (in some places, not all) cannot be uploaded unless they are already WebP, because the background conversion from PNG to WebP fails. Due to the architecture, cookies cannot be managed at all, which can get expensive quickly here in the EU.
I really hope the dev team picks up the pace soon so that we can actually use this for production...
I could list many more points since I basically own all the Fluent plugins and every single one struggles with similar issues, but I think the problems are known.
Also, I was really looking forward to FluentCart getting an update before Christmas, as announced. Now it’s looking like mid-January. Let's just hope that the update will be a significant step forward.
I looked over your notion page and was trying to see if I had the same issues since you have declared this as not production ready. I don't use that theme you have. I am also new to this so I am taking your points seriously as I will be launching my site in a few months. Seeing you have mentioned some things that I am not replicating, I thought I would add my two cents.
My store is within Fluent Community. I use the Pro Theme builder from Theme.co with a code snippet for the store to use the Fluent Community template.
Single Product (No variations) - Doesn’t display price
I see price on my single products with no variations. Not sure how your theme affects the price display. I don't seem to have this issue at all.
SKU - Vital ID element missing
Does Fluent label the "SKU" as the product number? Are you looking to customize the SKU #? Being able to customize the SKU should be a useful function.
Basic Design Customisation
I just experimented and changed the background color of the "Buy Now" button with CSS. Having an option to follow theme button colors would be useful, but not sure how every theme implements this to be able to interact seamlessly with other plugins. But it def would be useful. We definitely should be able to disable the Buy Now button, but I was also able to hide the Buy Now button with CSS.
.fluent-cart-direct-checkout-button {
background: #efefef;
}
.fluent-cart-direct-checkout-button {
display: none;
}
Product Gallery
Image carousel for product? I don't see how that is user-friendly for someone like myself, but that is just my preference. Unless you are referring to the arrows to go forward and backward. Sounds more like a niche than it is a requirement for launching a store.
Store Settings > Product Page:
"Image Zooming: WORKS → But the override on product template makes no sense?"
I don't understand this comment. You click on it and it opens a gallery overlay. What are you looking for it to do?
All variation view options work for me. All variation columns work for me. Maybe disable your caching of the site?
Cart: The only way to display the cart in the header is to add a custom link. There should be a cart icon in the header that shows cart qty in the icon. I am not crazy about the floating cart, but would love an option to add this to the header easily.
Checkout Fields: I guess it would be important to add a custom checkout field. Like a message box to add a note or subscribe to newsletter or something.
Product Page / Shop Page:
Like most shopping product plugins, there is a certain level of customization to get what you prefer. It would be ideal to have some templates to chose from that gives more variety out-of-the-box. I have not dived deep enough with this to add any other comment.
Duplicate product has been mentioned before somewhere in this forum and should be a function we should have. How exhausting it is to have to recreate products from scratch every time.
Digital > Physical
That must have been frustrating. I wonder if the issue being able to change it has more to do with the feature differences of digital vs physical product.
I can see where some of these issues you have can affect a larger site. But I disagree that it is not production ready.
Kevin Watson Single Product with no variations is confirmed by several other threads inside this forum. > It is not being effected by the theme, as FluentCart is quite new almost no theme has any sort of intervention over it. > The problem seems to arise on the newer versions of FluentCart (IT WAS WORKING BEFORE)
SKU > Yes of course, each variation of an item often has a different SKU or BARCODE.
Basic Design Customization > Again I'm saying.. WITHOUT CSS overrides. 99% of themes have a "Default Button CSS" as it is pulled through Gutenberg. Having FluentCart read this is just the most common approach, just like WooCommerce does, just like SureCart does and every other plugin on the internet.
In any plugin I have developed, I am able to pull this data simply by not applying any styles to my buttons.
--
Based on your comments > I think you haven't grasped that.. I know what I am talking about.
>> I am a Senior Web Developer / Owner of a Web Hosting Company / Website Speed Consultant
I'm so sorry, Slim, that I didn't raise your bar high enough.
Following. Interested to hear what the Fluent team has to say as I was planning to spin up some live EC sites with FluentCart.
About Digital > Physical, it is possible but I had to open a support ticket to figure it out.
You open your product > Change the product from simple to Variations > Edit the product > There you can change the type of the product. Not really easy to find it if you don't know it, but luckily it's possible.
Gee Adriaansz that is declaring a single variation as a digital then i guess?
I really tried to work with FC for a website that needs to migrate from WooCommerce. So, it started with good hope and faith.
But there are many issues. So I am building the new site now with SureCart.... Hopefully, they will value the money and have a market-ready product. For no,w it is a waste of time trying to work with FluentCart.
There’s little response from the team here in the forum too. There are so many threads and comments that never get a response. Is the team reading them?
F. C. I share the same concern as you. My major concern when choosing a plugin or software is whether the team is active in their forum or community. If they’re not, it often signals possible long-term issues down the road. I’m not saying WPManageNinja necessarily has that problem—in fact, they may just be handling support through other channels—but based on my past experiences, lack of engagement in a community space can turn into a real headache later.
Diego Maradona They do have a support ticket area but that's 1 to 1 communication. Bugs and feature requests are publicly shared here in the forums as well so hopefully those are tracked too, even when they don't get an official response.
Maybe it's because they're very busy right now due to the sale and the fact they only just released. They've stated something to that effect to me.
I cannot agree more @slimx91. Thank you.
In my case, I was trying to create just a very simple product loop card, just like the one you can see in this screenshot below by FluentCart (the card with the shoes).
Paradox: it turns out, it's not actually possible with FluentCart believe it or not.
There are no product reviews, no stars. Expected in Q2 2026, plus you can't actually add an 'Add to Cart' button to the loop product card. The FluentCart comes with a 'Buy Section' element, which includes quantity, add to card, buy now, and whatnot, and unfortunately, it cannot be split into individual elements, just to use 'Add to cart' only.
I find these two features in particular a bit basic for any eCommerce solution, to be honest. Not to mention that support for Brick Builder is quite sad at the moment, with four elements only.
So, sadly for me, at this point, I'm back to Woocommerce again unfortunately for a bit longer.
I have a FluentCart license but have not implemented it; I purchased on the hope that it would be improved for use in 2026. My use is not particularly complex, but I do need digital and physical variations and real shipping options. Would happily switch if the plug-in supported my needs. I, too, really want this!
Sander W. Physical products need weights and dimensions for calculating shipping; when I last tested FluentCart, these were not available as product specs.
The sales copy for FluentCart specifically said it has real-time integration and will dynamically calculate shipping with both flat rate and real-time carrier rates (see attached screencaps). None of that is true. When I asked about shipping here, I was told to do it manually and then manually update the account, which would automatically email the customer and that was the automation. To say I was disappointed in that response is an understatement.
Ideally, we'd have an integration either with carriers directly (WooCommerce does this) or with a third-party agent (such as PirateShip). I understand if this isn't a first-look feature, but it was in the sales copy, so I expect it to be very high on the roadmap at minimum.
Sander W. Yes lack of an attributes system appears to be a big concern for this to be adopted by larger retailers.
To be honest, it doesn't look too hard to develop a plugin that'll just slap attributes in. So maybe I'll just make one :)
The ninja's have big shoes to fill against WooCommerce. Look forward to seeing how FluentCart fills their shoes as they grow to match up with big daddy Woo.