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The rise of eCommerce has opened up new opportunities for people to earn money online. With many eCommerce websites generating more revenue than brick-and-mortar stores, this business idea has immense potential for profitability.
Thankfully, starting an online business has become more accessible with the help of eCommerce platforms. Each platform offers unique features, so it's essential to research and select the one that best fits your needs.
One example of a versatile eCommerce platform is WordPress. Using WordPress for your business allows you to scale your eCommerce site through the use of plugins. With a vast selection of over 50,000 plugins, you can customize your WordPress site to suit your specific business goals.
To help you create a successful online store, we've compiled a list of the top eight WordPress eCommerce plugins. These plugins offer various features to cater to different types of WordPress stores, and can help with online payments and shopping cart integration.
Top 8 WordPress eCommerce Plugins
When evaluating the best WordPress eCommerce plugins, we take into account several factors, including ease of use, pricing, features, and limitations.
It's essential to note that installing too many plugins can affect the performance of your eCommerce store, so it's crucial to only choose plugins that align with your business goals.
1. WooCommerce
If you're looking for a reliable eCommerce plugin for your WordPress site, WooCommerce is definitely worth considering. With a rating of 4.6/5, this free plugin offers essential features to help you create an online store, and you can expand its functionality even further with free and premium add-ons (ranging from free to $150/year).
One of the key benefits of using WooCommerce is its versatility. You can sell physical, digital, and membership products all in one store, which is great for businesses of all kinds. Plus, you can easily add product listings to any part of your store using built-in WooCommerce blocks, such as the All Products, Product by Category, Newest Products, and Best Selling Products blocks.
To make setting up a WooCommerce store even easier, the plugin's developers have created the WordPress Storefront theme. This theme is designed specifically for WooCommerce and helps minimize compatibility issues with other plugins and extensions. Additionally, there are many free and premium WordPress eCommerce themes available online, including from ThemeForest and TemplateMonster.
While WooCommerce offers many benefits, it's important to note that some features may require add-ons to unlock. For example, if you want to use payment gateways other than the plugin's own processing solution, you'll need to purchase an add-on. Another potential downside is that a shipping address is required for all purchases, including digital products.
Overall, WooCommerce is a great option for anyone looking to create an eCommerce store on their WordPress site. With its robust features, flexibility, and extensive collection of add-ons, you'll have everything you need to scale your business and achieve success.
2. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is a highly-rated WordPress eCommerce plugin designed specifically for selling digital products. With a rating of 4.7/5, it's the ideal choice for online stores offering eBooks, music, software, and other digital downloads.
One of the key features that sets Easy Digital Downloads apart from other eCommerce plugins is its support for multiple forms of digital products. For example, visitors can choose which version of a product to purchase when it's embedded in a post or page. Additionally, the bundle downloads feature allows buyers to add multiple digital products into a single download, which is great for offering special product bundles.
Easy Digital Downloads also provides built-in analytics that are easily accessible from the plugin's user-friendly dashboard. This allows you to track your business performance based on various metrics, such as earnings, number of downloads, and website traffic. The plugin also includes download logs with details of each transaction's date and time, IP address, and payment record, as well as a customer management panel that lets you track each consumer's purchase history to improve your eCommerce targeting.
When it comes to payment gateways, Easy Digital Downloads supports Stripe, PayPal, and Amazon. Additionally, you can expand the plugin's functionality even further with various extensions, including ones from third-party developers.
Easy Digital Downloads comes in both free and premium versions. The Personal plan, which costs $99.50/year, includes email marketing tools and support. If you're looking for even more features, the Professional plan ($299.50/year) includes marketplace functionality, a checkout fields manager, and wishlists.
One potential downside to Easy Digital Downloads is that it's designed solely for digital downloads. If you're planning on selling physical products, you'll need to look for a different eCommerce plugin. However, if you're looking to sell digital products, Easy Digital Downloads is definitely worth considering for its robust features and user-friendly interface.
3. BigCommerce for WordPress
If you’re looking for a way to integrate BigCommerce with WordPress, the BigCommerce WordPress plugin is a great option. BigCommerce is a managed eCommerce platform that provides a headless solution, allowing you to keep your eCommerce infrastructure separate from your WordPress core.
With the BigCommerce WordPress plugin, you can easily connect your BigCommerce account to your WordPress website and set up your online store from there. The platform offers product blocks to embed product listings on WordPress pages, making it easy to manage various aspects of your store from the BigCommerce dashboard.
BigCommerce provides marketing tools like promotional information and discount codes to help improve conversion rates, as well as abandoned cart emails to reduce the risk of losing potential sales. The platform also offers real-time analytics, including purchase funnel reports and customer purchase history.
While BigCommerce offers three core plans and an enterprise solution, the cheapest plan doesn't include advanced tools like abandoned cart saver and customer segmentation. Prices for the platform start at $29.95 per month, and the plugin is free to download.
4. Ecwid eCommerce Shopping Cart
The Ecwid eCommerce Shopping Cart plugin for WordPress is a freemium tool that enables users to integrate their online store with WordPress and use social media platforms for sales. With a rating of 4.4/5, this plugin is highly recommended for integrating the Ecwid eCommerce platform with WordPress.
Unlike BigCommerce, the WordPress version of Ecwid offers an integration that imports all the dashboard and configuration panels into WordPress. This means that you can easily manage your products, sales channels, and payment options directly from your WordPress dashboard.
The plugin includes a built-in Google Ads configuration panel that allows you to set up advertising campaigns and select Google Ads packages in one place. The analytics tool, however, requires a third-party app that you can install easily from the dashboard. Additionally, a free analytics app from Kliken is available.
Ecwid supports several online payment methods, including Stripe, Square, and Paypal. The plugin also accepts manual payments, such as bank transfers, cash on delivery, and checks. It also automatically calculates shipping rates if you integrate your store with major couriers.
Ecwid’s free plan offers basic features for building a small online business. However, the premium version provides more advanced features such as integrating your business with social media stores like Facebook Marketplace and Instagram Shopping. A premium plan is also required for mobile point-of-sale and Amazon integrations.
While the plugin offers many benefits, it also has a few drawbacks. For instance, the configuration panel may not be beginner-friendly. Additionally, the free plan only allows for up to 10 products.
5. MemberPress
If you're looking to transform your WordPress site into a membership website, MemberPress is one of the best eCommerce plugins available with a rating of 4.6/5. This plugin allows you to offer digital content, courses, and downloadables behind paywalls.
MemberPress provides multiple pricing plans to create a membership program that suits your needs, along with unlimited access rules for blocking user access to pages, posts, and other content based on their membership tiers.
This plugin uses a custom post type to create a pricing page and offers built-in pricing templates that you can modify with custom CSS. Its automated billing system reminds users when it's time to renew their memberships and automatically revokes membership if a user fails to pay the renewal fee on time.
Similar to WooCommerce, MemberPress offers a library of add-ons to expand your membership site's functionality, including the ability to integrate international payment processors beyond PayPal and Stripe and redirect members who want to cancel their membership to a custom landing page.
The only downside to MemberPress is that it does not offer a free plan. However, its lowest tier subscription provides excellent value for money to build a fully-functional membership website without needing other plugins.
6. Shopping Cart and eCommerce Store by WP EasyCart
WP EasyCart is a powerful WordPress plugin with a rating of 4.4/5 that offers easy-to-use shopping cart features for selling different product types on WordPress. It provides a comprehensive yet streamlined report for easier performance analysis and integrates with multiple popular payment gateways.
The free plan is limited to selling retail products, and you can only collect payments using PayPal, Stripe, and Square, with a 2% application fee for each transaction. Support is only available via the community forum.
Upgrading to the Pro plan removes the application fees and unlocks more product options, including memberships and digital downloads. Adding new product entries with WP EasyCart is simple via a sidebar pop-up, and over 30 payment gateways are available to support global transactions.
For the most out of this eCommerce plugin for WordPress, consider opting for the Premium plan. It offers all the Pro features, along with access to advanced extensions like MailChimp eCommerce, BlueCheck age verification, and AffiliateWP marketing. You can manage your store from desktop and mobile devices using its apps.
WP EasyCart supports a wide range of product types and comes with a comprehensive dashboard with an excellent user experience. It also offers built-in diagnostic tools to aid store management. However, the free plan only offers limited basic features and charges a 2% application fee.
7. eCommerce Product Catalog by impleCode
These are some of the best WordPress eCommerce plugins that offer unique features and functionalities to cater to your eCommerce website's needs. WooCommerce is a widely popular and comprehensive plugin, while MemberPress is the best for membership websites. WP EasyCart is perfect for selling different product types, and eCommerce Product Catalog is great for creating product catalogs with eCommerce functionality.
If you're looking for a free eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce and eCommerce Product Catalog offer free plans. However, their free plans are limited in features and may not cater to your eCommerce website's full requirements. For advanced features, consider upgrading to their paid plans.
WP EasyCart and MemberPress offer freemium pricing plans, with their paid plans starting at $69/year and $179.50/year, respectively. These plugins provide additional features and functionalities that can enhance your eCommerce website's performance, scalability, and security.
In summary, choose the WordPress eCommerce plugin that best suits your eCommerce website's requirements, budget, and scalability needs.
8. Shopify
Shopify is a popular eCommerce platform that offers a range of easy-to-use tools and features to help you create a fully functional online store. While often compared to WooCommerce, Shopify's approach to integrating with WordPress is slightly different. As a hosted eCommerce solution, Shopify can host your online store without the need for a third-party hosting provider. To sell products on your WordPress site, you simply need to enable the Buy Button feature.
Unlike WooCommerce, Shopify doesn't offer a free plan, but it does provide a 14-day free trial. The platform's WordPress integration includes core eCommerce features, such as unlimited products, over 100 payment gateways, sales tracking, and global currency support. Shopify also offers robust SEO features to help improve your search engine rankings, including the ability to modify the robots.txt file.
One thing to keep in mind is that Shopify Payments, the platform's built-in payment processor, is only available in certain countries. If you want to use a third-party payment gateway, Shopify will charge a transaction fee between 0.5-2% depending on your plan. However, Shopify does provide easy integrations with shipping providers, an intuitive setup process, and advanced reporting capabilities.
What to Look For in a WordPress eCommerce Plugin
When searching for a WordPress eCommerce plugin, it's important to consider more than just your store's requirements. There are several factors that can impact your website's performance and user experience. Here are four key elements to keep in mind when choosing a powerful WordPress eCommerce plugin.
Impact on Site Speed
Installing too many plugins on your website can negatively impact its loading speed and ultimately harm the user experience and search engine ranking. To avoid this issue, consider using lightweight plugins or a small number of high-quality plugins with multiple functions.
If you're considering a plugin with a free version, it's a good idea to test it on a staging environment before implementing it on your live site. Alternatively, select a premium plugin that offers a free trial for testing purposes.
You can gain valuable insights into each plugin's performance and potential issues by reading reviews and forums.
If you're using Hostinger's WordPress hosting, you can use the hosting control panel to check on your plugins and get useful performance tips.
Payment Integrations
Selecting a plugin that integrates with payment gateways suitable for your online store is critical if you want to process online transactions efficiently. It is essential to avoid installing payment gateways separately, as this may compromise your page load time and SEO.
Some plugins come with built-in payment processors or an in-house payment gateway, while others offer payment gateways as add-ons. To ensure the plugin is available in your country, research its availability and check for any transaction fees.
Customization
It is crucial to find customizable WordPress plugins that cater to your specific business goals, as each online store has unique needs.
The best plugins typically come with documentation and learning information that explain all the features and offer ways to customize them on your website. Additionally, many plugins provide shortcodes and hooks to make the customization process more manageable.
If you lack coding knowledge, it's advisable to choose popular plugins with an active support forum that can answer any queries you may have. Alternatively, consider hiring plugin developers to assist you in setting up eCommerce functionality on your WordPress site.
Support
One of the downsides of eCommerce is that any downtime can result in a loss of revenue and customers. As plugin conflicts and issues can cause website downtime, it is essential to obtain the assistance you need promptly to minimize any damage to your brand.
The support team of your chosen plugin should be easy to reach through multiple channels. Since plugin conflicts can happen unexpectedly, we recommend selecting plugins that provide 24/7 support.
Many plugins offer premium support in their paid plans, which is worth investing in for plugins that your eCommerce store cannot function without.
Conclusion
WordPress eCommerce plugins provide the ability to run an eCommerce business using the content management system. Since each plugin offers different features, selecting the appropriate WordPress eCommerce plugin is critical.
To recap, here are our top picks for the best eCommerce plugins for WordPress and their most suitable uses:
WooCommerce is a versatile eCommerce plugin for WordPress suitable for online stores with various product types.
Easy Digital Downloads is an excellent eCommerce plugin for selling digital goods, such as eBooks, online courses, and media files.
BigCommerce for WordPress offers extensive analytics tools and infrastructure to support medium to large businesses.
Ecwid eCommerce Shopping Cart is a great WordPress plugin for eCommerce sites looking to expand their reach into social media segments.
MemberPress is the best eCommerce plugin for selling exclusive content through membership subscriptions.
Shopping Cart and eCommerce Store by WP EasyCart offers a unique user interface and a comprehensive plugin dashboard for a better user experience.
eCommerce Product Catalog by impleCode is one of the best WordPress eCommerce plugins for creating attractive product catalogs with online payment features.
Shopify is one of the best WordPress eCommerce plugins for businesses that run both brick-and-mortar and online stores.
Do you agree with our selections? Leave a comment and let us know your favorite eCommerce plugins for WordPress.
