Updated for Devani 2.2.0+, which turned the original lightweight commerce layer into a full store, and 2.3.0, which made checkout Stripe-only.
Products are content
Devani's store isn't a separate system bolted onto the CMS: products live in the same flat-file structure as pages and posts. Create a product, give it images from the media library, write its page in the same editor you use for everything else. No database, no separate admin.
Four sale models
Every product picks one of four models:
- Physical. Ships to an address, with optional shipping costs per product.
- Digital. Delivered as a download after payment: files, PDFs, anything.
- Pay-what-you-want (Koha). The customer names the price. Good for donations, tip jars, and honesty-box sales.
- Subscription. Recurring billing through Stripe, with trial support.
What the store handles now
The commerce layer grew up in 2.2.0. It now includes, built into the CMS:
- Variants: size, colour, whatever your product needs, each with its own pricing.
- Live inventory tracking: Devani knows how many you have, decrements on sale, and can flag low stock.
- Discount codes: a built-in promo engine, no third-party coupon service.
- A real cart: multi-item checkout, not one-product-at-a-time buy buttons.
- Collections: group products for browsing and listing pages.
- Order management: orders, fulfillment status, and customer details in the dashboard, with webhook-driven payment status from Stripe.
- Upsells: per-product suggestions at the right moment.
Checkout runs through Stripe
Stripe is Devani's checkout provider: one-time payments, subscriptions, and pay-what-you-want all flow through Stripe's own hosted checkout, with live and test modes. Tax is Stripe Tax's job; Devani deliberately doesn't build its own tax engine, because Stripe's is better than anything a CMS should ship.
(Earlier versions also offered PayPal. That was removed in 2.3.0: here's why.)
Who it's for
The design target is the huge middle of the market: catalogs, digital products, donations, memberships, subscriptions, merch. If you're running a thousand-SKU warehouse with multi-location fulfillment, you want a dedicated commerce platform. For everyone else, the store that's already inside your CMS: with no plugin stack, no per-sale platform cut, and no second admin to learn: covers the whole job.