Joomla ecommerce templates

Which Joomla cart should you use?

Three cart extensions cover almost every Joomla store:

• VirtueMart is the longest-running Joomla cart and is free. The current release, VirtueMart 4, runs on Joomla 4 and Joomla 5 but not on Joomla 6. VirtueMart 5, which targets Joomla 6, is in development with no release date yet. A VirtueMart store today belongs on Joomla 5.
• HikaShop has a free Starter edition and paid editions, and its 6.x releases support Joomla 6.
• J2Commerce is the community continuation of J2Store, which stopped development in 2024. It adds cart features to regular Joomla articles and supports Joomla 4, 5 and 6.

If you already run a VirtueMart store, stay on Joomla 5 until VirtueMart 5 is released. If you are starting a brand new shop and want Joomla 6 from day one, you will need HikaShop or J2Commerce, and a template made for that cart.

What to check before you buy a shop template

• It is built for your cart. A general template will show a VirtueMart or HikaShop store, but the product, category and cart pages will look unstyled next to the rest of the site.
• The whole buying path is designed, not just the home page: category listings, product pages, the cart, checkout and the customer account area. Click through all of them on the live demo.
• It comes with a quickstart. A quickstart installs Joomla, the cart, the template and demo products in one go, so you start with a working store instead of an empty one.
• Checkout works on a phone. Most shoppers will see your store on a small screen. Add something to the cart on the demo from your own phone.
• It is still being updated. Look for a changelog with recent dates and a clear statement of which Joomla, cart and PHP versions it supports.
• You can change it without fighting it. See where the logo, colours and fonts are set, and whether your own CSS survives an update.
• It doesn't get in the way of search. Look for one clear heading on each page, pages that load quickly on a phone, and room for your own titles and descriptions. You can test a demo in Google's PageSpeed Insights before you buy.

Are there free Joomla ecommerce templates?

VirtueMart and the HikaShop Starter edition are free, and both work with Cassiopeia, the template that comes with Joomla, using their own built-in layouts. That is enough to test an idea. A paid shop template gives you a designed storefront, styled product and cart pages, and a quickstart with demo content, which saves a good deal of setup time on a real store.

About the templates on this page

Every template above is a complete VirtueMart store for Joomla 5 with a live demo and a quickstart. Current version numbers are on the template compatibility table. For a larger range, our sister site has more than 60 VirtueMart templates. Not building a shop? Browse our Joomla 6 templates.