While there are many ecommerce platforms such as Shopify that exist, but what do you do if you want to maintain your WordPress site and simply add or augment its ecommerce functionality? The beauty of WordPress’s extensible architecture is that you can do this through a number of powerful WordPress ecommerce plugins.
If you’re using WordPress, you know how important plugins are. These nifty tools simplify numerous website processes, from optimization to content management. If you use them the right way, you can ensure that your store maximizes the potential from every website visitor.
There are several types of WordPress plugins that your ecommerce business can utilize. The most popular ones are all-in-one solutions that can be utilized for website building, posting, optimization, and other processes. However, there are also smaller tools that would allow you to tackle specialized tasks.
Let’s dig a little deeper into the world of ecommerce plugins for WordPress.
What Functionality Do You Need in a WordPress Ecommerce Plugin?
With ecommerce plugins, you get several advanced features for your website. The main purpose of using this type of software is so you can utilize popular payment gateways and sell virtual and physical products. Besides processing online payments, you’ll also get cool features for inventory management.
However, there’s much more to these plugins than simple transaction processing. The best ones also come with a plethora of customization options, allowing you to significantly boost visitors’ user experience. These plugins usually come with comprehensive analytics tools for measuring engagement and performance within search engines.
Online stores can also benefit from website-building functionality. In other words, these nifty add-ons can be utilized to create a site from scratch, even if you have minimal technical skills. A business owner can utilize numerous pre-built templates to create a perfect eCommerce platform for their niche.
How to Evaluate WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
There are lots of small tricks you can use to assess these programs:
- Check the customer management features
- Assess security vulnerability
- Assess memory usage
- Go through website-building features
- Check how often plugin developers update their tool
- Analyze customer feedback and overall company sentiment
- Compare pricing plans and fees, as well as the availability of free plans
- See how much you can do with a free plan
- See if you can access the community of developers
- Make sure there aren’t many content or product restrictions
There are lots of things you can check when assessing a plugin for your eCommerce WordPress plugin. Ideally, you should look for an all-in-one eCommerce solution that can have powerful features and can help you perform numerous tasks. Security, memory usage, and regular updates are also important, as you want to stay ahead of your competition.
15 Recommended WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
If you’re looking for a perfect WordPress plugin for your online business, you should start with these 15 tools. I use some of these regularly, so they’ll likely fit your needs as well!
WooCommerce is probably one of the more flexible platforms for selling physical and digital products. This excellent plugin is open-source, so you can easily integrate it with other tools. Users get access to a wide range of features, allowing them to manage shipping rates, utilize payment options, and even create a membership program.
This amazing software excels for small and medium eCommerce websites, but you can also squeeze a lot of value if you’re a big corporation. If you choose a few specific options, you can use the plugin almost for free. However, there are still fees on every transaction, making WooCommerce a much better solution for smaller businesses with limited sales.
WooCommerce gives you tons of options, such as hosting, customizable templates, user roles, communication, and security features, just to mention a few.
Unlike WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads has a completely free plan. Still, due to numerous limitations, you’ll likely have to switch to one of the premium versions sooner than later. This can be a bit troublesome if you’re on a limited budget (something that usually happens with smaller brands).
The software has several layers of security, ensuring full protection for third-party payments and content on WordPress. In that regard, it isn’t much worse than large, expensive enterprise solutions. Coupled with some of its essential features, you can rest assured your clients get a premium shopping experience.
One of the tool’s main selling points is its integrations. Besides the usual payment gateway integrations, you can combine the program with Slack, MailChimp, Google Analytics, Slack, AWS, and 100+ additional software. The dash is a work of art, helping you manage taxes, discounts, product listings, and refunds with minimal effort.
BigCommerce is a sound choice for businesses that offer retail products in different markets. Even the cheapest plan gives you unlimited bandwidth, storage, and unlimited products, something that other plugins usually offer with their expensive premium plans. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s a 0% transaction fee.
The platform has a multi-currency feature that would fit well for any international store. You can also create several sites with its core plans, albeit you need to pay extra for each additional webshop. This makes store and content management much easier, as you don’t need several subscriptions to run all your businesses.
Most small entrepreneurs turn to eCommerce store builders because they can make a site without a programmer’s assistance. Ecwid is especially good for this particular purpose as it can create eCommerce sites with a single click of a mouse. Alternatively, you can add Ecwid to your existing webshop without changing its design or functionality.
With this tool, you can easily sell on social media stores and popular third-party platforms such as Amazon and Google Shopping. Among its key features, you can access the Ecwid eCommerce shopping cart, create mailing lists and gift cards, track inventory, and much more. Although it isn’t the best SEO plugin, you still get access to numerous features for optimizing your store in search engines.
As the name indicates, MemberPress is a membership plugin tailor-made for WordPress. This makes it probably the best WordPress eCommerce plugin for online courses. You can use the program to add downloads to your site, limit exclusive content access, and manage credit cards. MemberPress also allows you to create community forums and streamline interactions.
It’s worth mentioning that MemberPress is significantly more expensive than your usual eCommerce plugin. The pricing plans start from $180, which is a major jump compared to the premium plans that other companies offer. However, if we consider the great user interface, integrations with hundreds of extensions, and an incredible customization process, it becomes evident that the tool is worth the money.
WP EasyCart is a lightweight plugin that comes with a free plan and a 14-day free trial. Even the basic version has Stripe, PayPay, and Square integrations, which is more than some other popular plugins. Although the tool isn’t the best if you’re using a third-party hosting provider, it’s fantastic for WordPress self-hosting stores.
Within the control panel, you have numerous options that allow sales tracking, refund, and discount management. There’s also a simple catalog from which you can track all your physical and digital products. Among others, the WordPress eCommerce platform is a fantastic choice for any online business that requires numerous payment and shipping integrations.
If you’re looking to improve your WordPress functionality, this is the core plugin you need to get. Although not as comprehensive as some website builders on this list, this tool helps you create product cards. That way, you can post the images in any format you’d like and throughout different sales channels, including social media platforms and your eCommerce site.
Among others, the eCommerce plugin allows you to add and manage shopping carts and customize your site. You can utilize it to create custom landing pages and hasten the checkout process. Besides WordPress, this excellent plugin works for Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly.
Further Reading: WordPress vs Shopify for Your Ecommerce Store – and the Winner Is?
Probably the best Stripe plugin you can find online, WP Simple Pay helps visitors make payments without too much hassle. Your business can start making money as soon as possible without having to introduce complex online payments.
Although the eCommerce plugin doesn’t have added functionality like some premium plugins, its basic feature allows you to accept payments via WordPress without having to install a comprehensive, all-in-one solution. The program works under the drag-and-drop principle and has added security features that will protect each transaction.
As probably the best form builder plugin, this tool allows you to create surveys and WP forms. This makes it an ideal tool for just about any eCommerce business, as it helps you collect data and create an email list. There’s an option to create custom fields, so you can ask your visitors just about any question you want.
The eCommerce plugin has both desktop and mobile app features. Even better, there’s panel integration where you can hook up your WPForms with popular email and marketing tools like MailChimp. There are also a few online payment features that you can use to get donations from your visitors.
Further Reading: Email Copy for eCommerce Sites: 19 Examples to Inspire You
The main reason why most store owners get Dokan is because they need a versatile eCommerce plugin for multiple online marketplaces. In fact, even with the free plan, you get access to unlimited vendors. The program supports PayPal, Stripe, Mangopay, Razor Pay, and all major credit cards. I utilize this app for one of my bigger international brands and it works like a charm!
This excellent software has a fantastic user interface and a robust shipping system. Its premium plans come with a wide range of unique features and customization options, making Dokan a great choice for businesses of all sizes. Within the dash, you can get advanced extensions and advanced tools such as cart recovery and payment forms.
Further Reading: The 13 Best Ecommerce Marketplaces for Online Marketing
Advanced Coupons is an eCommerce plugin made for WooCommerce. As you can tell by the name, its key features revolve around loyalty programs, store credits, and advanced coupons. Your team or third-party developers can utilize the tool to add coupons and promotional codes to the site and execute discount purchasing.
It’s worth noting that each feature has its special pricing plan (for example, one for coupons and one for gift cards). The subscription-based products vary based on the number of integrations and sites as well as the available support features. Then again, you also have premium plans that unify all these functionalities.
Cart66, now known as WP EasyCart, is an all-in-one solution that can be used for a membership program, donations, and online selling. It allows users to circumvent annoying shopping carts and proceed directly with their purchases. It’s one of the more popular plugins for selling physical and digital products on WordPress, as it allows unlimited product variations.
The tool has a fantastic eCommerce functionality for fulfilling various business goals. Clients can introduce digital content restrictions, organize online events, track and ship packages, and track inventory with real-time data. You also gain access to more than 100 payment gateways for all your online transactions.
You can also use email marketing tools for streamlining your marketing outreach and engaging potential customers. As someone who lives from public speaking and course, I can’t recommend this tool enough.
Further Reading: 17 Ecommerce Statistics You Need to Know to Improve Your Ecommerce Marketing in 2024
Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, you can benefit from SeedProd. This simple website builder works under the drag-and-drop premise, allowing your developers to create a new site in just a few short hours. Among other things, you get access to 90+ configuration panels, helping you resize and redesign different website elements.
I especially liked its sales funnels builder, a feature that can significantly boost your conversions. With this eCommerce plugin, you can also monitor and improve various SEO aspects, such as slow load time, mobile optimization, and page performance. There’s also a nifty spam protection that would prevent bots from harassing your platform.
SeedProd can be integrated with numerous third-party apps and just about any major third-party payment gateway like PayPal or Google Pay. Iny a way, it’s a Swiss army knife for your website-building needs.
Further Reading: 17 Best Ecommerce CMS Platforms to Build Your Online Store
With this software, you can easily manage your product catalog website. The best thing yet is that the eCommerce plugin is completely free and tailor-made for WordPress. The user has the option of showcasing products with or without prices. Another nifty feature is adding customer reviews to each product listing.
The WP eCommerce plugin is even better if you have a team of developers on your payroll. It allows you to fully customize the way you display products in CSS. To make matters simpler for your clients, you can add a search bar that would allow visitors to go through all the product entries.
Although WordPress has integrated search bars, many entrepreneurs prefer creating their own custom fields. With SearchWP, users can find just about any page on your site with a single input. As such, it’s a perfect tool for boosting user engagement and getting more conversions from your organic traffic.
Like most other entries on the list, the software comes with numerous integrations. You can utilize it with BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and numerous other platforms. The thing I didn’t like, though, is the fact that the tool is quite pricey for what it offers.
Conclusion
Most people I know use comprehensive plugins to manage their WP sites. You can utilize these programs from day one to host a site and build it. Later on, a plugin would allow you to streamline transactions across different vendor sites and optimize your content for search engines.
The great thing about eCommerce plugins is that they’re rather easy to utilize. Most of the entries on my list are rather straightforward, and you should get the hang of the basics even if you have little experience. Just make sure that the plugin is the best solution for your site, as you don’t want to switch them too often.
Hero Photo by Justin Morgan on Unsplash
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