BuiltWith reports that over 3.3 million websites use WooCommerce to power their online stores. It even outranks dedicated ecommerce platforms like Magento, OpenCart, and BigCommerce.
But there are other ecommerce plugins besides WooCommerce that can add commerce functionality to WordPress. And that’s not all. Some are tailored to sell specific products and address unique business needs.
So if you’re looking for the best WordPress ecommerce plugins for your ecommerce business, just keep reading.
Here’s a comprehensive guide that explores:
- Ecommerce Plugins 101
- Factors To Consider When Choosing a WordPress Ecommerce Plugin
- Best WordPress Plugins for Ecommerce
- Final Thoughts: The Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins for 2024
Ecommerce Plugins 101
WordPress is one of the most user-friendly content management systems on the market. But it has a significant limitation. It lets you market your business and services, but you can’t sell products with it.
Ecommerce plugins help you overcome this by transforming a WordPress website into an ecommerce store. The best WordPress ecommerce plugins on the market give you access to additional features such as catalog, cart, and order management.
Some take it a step further with detailed dashboards and helpful integrations. Ecommerce plugins make it easy for you to sell online with WordPress.
Factors To Consider When Choosing a WordPress Ecommerce Plugin
So what plugins do you need in WordPress for ecommerce? The answer is — it depends.
Here are four factors to consider when choosing the best WordPress ecommerce plugins for your website.
Analyze Your Business Model
Review your business model to outline the business tools you need to sell online. Ask yourself:
- What will you be selling? Digital or physical products?
- Where will you sell them? Locally or globally?
- Which payment methods will you accept? Do you need multiple payment gateways?
- How will you market your products?
- Do you need integrations for marketing automation or CRM support?
These questions will help you identify the features you need from an ecommerce plugin.
Ensure the Plugin Is Actively Supported
You’ll likely run into an issue at some point in time while using the plugin. It can be a minor compatibility issue or a major bug that breaks your site.
Look for plugins that are actively supported and regularly updated. An easy way to do this is to check their changelog and support requests on WordPress.org.
Check Online Plugin Reviews
Check WordPress.org, TrustPilot, and Google reviews to identify any underlying issues with the plugin or customer support from the plugin developers.
Don’t just look for positive reviews. Look for negative reviews to see which points users highlight and how important they are to your business.
Measure the Impact on Site Performance
Even the best WordPress ecommerce plugins can impact your site speed. What matters is how much.
The best way to check the performance impact of an ecommerce plugin is to test it on a development site with Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
Best WordPress Plugins for Ecommerce
WooCommerce.
Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart.
Easy Digital Downloads.
WP EasyCart.
BigCommerce for WordPress.
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1. WooCommerce
You can’t talk about the best WordPress ecommerce plugins without talking about WooCommerce first. It’s the most flexible, scalable, and easy-to-use ecommerce plugin for WordPress.
The WooCommerce plugin lets you sell virtually any product type, including simple, configurable, and virtual products. It also includes a powerful centralized WordPress dashboard that gives you a birds-eye view of your entire online operation.
WooCommerce is the ideal plugin for beginners. And thanks to its popularity, there are hundreds of add-ons for WooCommerce in the WordPress plugin ecosystem.
Price: Free.
2. Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart
Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart is the best ecommerce website plugin to sell internationally. It supports over 45 languages, 40 payment options, and popular payment processors like PayPal and Stripe.
Ecwid also includes shipping and tax integrations. And the best part is that Ecwid Shopping Cart is PCI-DSS Level 1 certified. So you don’t need to worry about PCI compliance.
Price: Free plugin. Ecwid subscription starts from $12.50/month.
3. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is one of the best WordPress ecommerce plugins for selling digital goods. It offers a simple yet intuitive interface that covers all basic plugin needs for digital products.
You get cart functionality, checkout, payment forms, customer management, discount codes, and file protection. EDD supports most WordPress themes and even provides developers with access to its API to extend its capabilities.
Price: Free, paid plans start from $99.50/year.
4. WP EasyCart
WP EasyCart is the best alternative to WooCommerce. It gives you all the basic features and adds unique ones like image swatches for product variations and price changes with conditional logic.
WP EasyCart’s order management lets you print receipts, email customers, and manage orders from the admin panel. It also includes table rate shipping calculation based on price, weight, percentage, and quantity.
Price: Free plugin, but WP EasyCart levies a 2% charge per transaction for those on the free plan. The paid plugin pricing starts at $69/year.
5. BigCommerce for WordPress
BigCommerce for WordPress is one of the best ecommerce solutions for B2B businesses. It offers an all-in-one solution that simplifies logistics, order, payments, and catalog management.
You can leverage WordPress’s frontend design flexibility while using BigCommerce for powerful POS, PIM, and ERP integrations. That is important because Google found that over 37% of holiday shoppers want retailers to do a better job of sharing inventory.
BigCommerce makes inventory management effortless and even handles PCI compliance for you.
Price: Free. BigCommerce subscription starts from $29.95/month.
Final Thoughts: The Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins for 2024
WooCommerce might be the most popular plugin on this list, but plugins like Ecwid and WP EasyCart offer some truly unique features. We hope our list of the best WordPress ecommerce plugins helps you find the right one for your online business.
No matter which you choose, make sure you back it up with reliable WordPress hosting. Managed WooCommerce hosting by Nexcess helps you win at online commerce with performance-optimized servers.
Our plans include free performance monitoring, cart abandonment technology, advanced analytics, and round-the-clock support and security. Get all that and more backed by our 30-day money-back guarantee.
For additional resources, consult our other blog posts for information on the best WordPress security plugins to protect your site, or contact us to learn more about our managed WordPress hosting plans.
This blog was originally published in February 2015. It has since been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
