If you want to give your users the ability to create posts from the front-end area then Frontend Publishing Pro is the perfect solution for you. It works well with custom post types/taxonomies and comes with a simple drag and drop interface for easy form building. Thanks to the included shortcodes you can deploy this plugin on your WordPress website in just a few minutes.
You can use it to create WooCommerce product forms, guest post submission forms and much more.
Looking for a way to notify users when the status of one of their posts has changed? Give Post Status Notifier a try. It seems to work well with Frontend Publishing Pro.