WordPress eCommerce plugins have the capability to integrate with an existing WordPress site. It gives room for extension; for example, if a person runs a blog and wants to start selling eBooks or merchandise, WordPress eCommerce plugins make it possible.
And WordPress has a lot of plugins, each with its own unique features. These features distinguish it from others and, as such, stand it out among others.
WordPress Ecommerce Plugins: The Best Free WordPress E-commerce Plugins
If you are looking for the best WordPress eCommerce plugins, you need to consider their capabilities. And the free solutions we looked at were far better than any paid ones. Meanwhile, because the solutions are free, it will not be part of the yardstick to judge these plugins, but rather the availability of themes and extensions. In all the sampled solutions, WooCommerce came out as the best free plugin, with Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) and Ecwid ranking right behind.
Woocommerce Plugin
- WooCommerce has superior integration tools and beautiful potential layouts, although EDD has better tools for digital goods, while Ecwid looks to be the simplest for beginners.
- Along with existing sites, these plugins integrate with new WordPress installs, and some reputable hosting companies offer one-click eCommerce installations with WooCommerce included. Upon installing an eCommerce plugin, your WordPress blog or business site immediately gains functionality for selling digital and physical products.
- WooCommerce is completely free for making a pretty substantial online store, and the market is catered around WooCommerce, with developers making all sorts of extensions and themes that integrate with the plugin. The reason for this is that WooCommere is open source, giving users the benefit of open and active development and a supportive community.
- WooCommerce has various free themes and plugins for the whole open-source community. The options are limitless for an organization with a budget.
- Real, digital, and subscription products can all be sold through WooCommerce, and it’s one of the few plugins that allows you to scale up quickly as your company grows. Along with several marketing extensions (email marketing and social media), dozens of the top payment gateways, and extensive product pages with variants, groups, and affiliates, the feature set defeats all other offerings from free eCommerce plugins.
- As for the other solutions, some individuals and companies are bound to find them more suitable in certain cases. For instance, some of them are more useful when a company is only selling digital downloads. Others are insanely easy to set up and manage on a simple blog, making them more ideal for beginners. Not to mention, a few of the plugins integrate with other CMSs (content management systems), offering a little versatility to bloggers who aren’t on WordPress.
- A great example is comparing WooCommerce to Ecwid. Although the overall feature set for WooCommerce beats out Ecwid, you’re more likely to choose Ecwid if you’re trying to integrate with Weebly, Wix, or Joomla. On the other hand, WooCommerce only combines with WordPress.
- WooCommerce has support for digital products, but you’re better off going with EDD if that’s all you sell. WooCommerce is for those companies that sell both physical and digital products since you get a combination of tools.
- WooCommerce has the most useful selection of themes and extensions, whether free or cheap. Many of the themes and plugins are made by the WooCommerce company (such as the Boutique theme and Woo Sidebars), while others come from all corners of the internet, opening up chances for you to develop a full online store without the need to destroy your wallet.
- WooCommerce even recently launched a Facebook for WooCommerce extension that allows you to quickly create sponsored Facebook ads based on the products in your store. After that, it lets you find more customers with Facebook, measures the results, and creates a complete Facebook store without having to punch in any extra details that aren’t already on your WooCommerce site.
- The WooCommerce plugin comes with five installed payment gateways. For example, you can accept payments through direct bank transfers, cash on delivery, and check payments. Besides, it allows for credit card payments through Simplify Commerce and PayPal.
- You can also improve the number of payment methods accepted because Apple Pay is now accepted through WooCommerce.
- There’s also a shipping calculator built into WooCommerce. Flexible shipping destinations can be activated, and you can reveal multiple shipping methods right in the shopping cart. The good part is that all of these options are shown before the last page. You can hide the shipping calculator, too.
- WooCommerce provides custom tax calculations for both you and the customer. Not only that, but the geo-location tax calculator pulls information from mobile device GPSs to identify exactly where the person is located (for checking in on their tax rates).
- WooCommerce has top-of-the-line product variables, and they’re all managed in the product creation pages. This means that you always remember to set a product variable while constructing a product. The variables can be utilized for both digital and physical products.
Social media: Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and Pinterest