If you run a WordPress website and want to start selling online, there are many different eCommerce plugins that can help. To help you choose the best eCommerce plugin for your WordPress website, I’ve taken some of the top eCommerce plugins for a test drive to find out which is the best eCommerce plugin for WordPress.
There are many ways to create an ecommerce store, but which is the best one? In this article I will show you the best ecommerce plugin for wordpress platform.
What to Look for in a WordPress eCommerce Plugin for Your Site?
There are plenty of WordPress eCommerce plugins in the market. But not all of them have the right set of features for your use-case.
For example, some eCommerce plugins are made for selling digital goods like eBooks, photos, music, etc. Others are better suited for selling physical products that need shipping.
If you want to run a drop-shipping business, then you’ll need an eCommerce solution that provides better support for drop-shipping.
Basically, you need to consider what you will be selling and what kind of features you would need to efficiently run your online store.
Apart from that, following are some of the most important factors you need to look for when choosing an eCommerce platform.
- Payment solutions – Your eCommerce plugin should have support for your preferred payment gateways by default or through an extension.
- Design and customization – Your store’s design is your customer’s first interaction with your business. Make sure there are plenty of templates and easy customization options available
- Apps and integrations – Check out integrations available for third-party apps like email marketing services, CRM software, accounting software, etc. You’ll need those tools to manage and grow your eCommerce business more efficiently.
- Support options – Make sure that there are support options available. Good support can save you a lot of money in the long run.
What Do You Need to Run an eCommerce Website?
Ecommerce websites are resource intensive, so the first thing you will need is the best WordPress hosting that you can afford.
If you’re on a budget, then you can start with SiteGround or Bluehost. The Ecommerce plan comes with SSL Certificate which you need to collect payments securely, dedicated IP, and a dedicated support line. They also install WooCommerce by default, which is the most powerful WordPress Ecommerce plugin (as you’ll find out later in this article).
If budget is not an issue, and you want the best performance, then we recommend using a managed WordPress hosting provider like WPEngine.
Next, you will need to choose a domain name for your website. Here is our guide on how to pick the right domain name for your eCommerce site.
Lastly, you will need to choose essential business plugins that you will need such as OptinMonster which help you reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase sales.
Having that said, let’s take a look at the best WordPress eCommerce plugins.
Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins – The Contenders
Now that you know what to look for in an eCommerce platform and what you need to get started, here are our top picks for the best eCommerce platform for WordPress users.
Let’s take a look at each one of them and compare their pros and cons.
1. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin. It is also the most popular eCommerce platform in the world. WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com blog hosting service) in 2015.
There is a large number of addons and themes available for WooCommerce. They also have a passionate developer community behind it. Recently several hosting companies have started creating specialized WooCommerce hosting solutions.
Pros of Using WooCommerce
Here are some of the advantages of using WooCommerce as your WordPress eCommerce plugin:
Extensions and Themes – There are hundreds of extensions and themes available for WooCommerce, which makes it easy for you to add new features to your eCommerce site. Large collection of themes means you have tons of options when choosing your site’s design and layout.
Supports Both Digital and Physical Goods – With WooCommerce, you can sell physical as well as digital downloads (such as ebooks, music, software, and more).
Sell Affiliate or External Products – Using WooCommerce, you can add affiliate or external products to your site. Affiliate marketers can create product sites and provide users a better experience.
Complete Inventory Management – WooCommerce comes equipped with tools to easily manage your inventory or even assign it to a store manager.
Payment and Shipping Options – WooCommerce has built-in support for popular payment gateways, and you can add many other payment options using extensions. It can also calculate shipping and taxes.
Support and Documentation – There is excellent documentation available online for WooCommerce. Apart from documentation, there is knowledge base, help desk, and community forums available.
Cons of Using WooCommerce
Too Many Options – WooCommerce is very easy to use, but the number of options available on the settings page can be quite intimidating for a new user.
Finding Addons – There are lots of addons available for WooCommerce, sometimes a user may not find the right addon for features that they need.
Theme Support – WooCommerce works with any WordPress theme, but it is not always as easy to setup or good looking with all themes. You need a WooCommerce ready theme to take full advantage of its features without too much hassle.
Scalability – As your store gets larger, you will need to move to a managed hosting provider like WP Engine to scale your WooCommerce store.
WooCommerce is the perfect choice for any kind of eCommerce website. It has a large community of developers and users, a lot of addons and themes, excellent support for multilingual websites, and best free and paid support options.
2. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads allows you to easily sell digital downloads online using WordPress. It is very easy to use and comes with powerful features to create beautiful and functional digital goods store.
We use Easy Digital Downloads to sell our software like WPForms and MonsterInsights.
Pros of Using Easy Digital Downloads
Designed To Sell Digital Goods – Easy Digital Downloads is built from the ground up to sell digital downloads. Unlike eCommerce plugins that can be used to sell all kind of products, EDD provides a far better experience for selling digital goods.
Easy To Use – Easy digital downloads is very easy to use, from the start you would instantly figure out how to add products and display them. This is really useful for the first timers.
Extensions – There are hundreds of extensions available for Easy Digital Downloads including addons for payment gateways, marketing platforms and services.
Themes – Easy Digital Downloads works with almost any WordPress theme, however if you have not choosen a theme yet, then Easy Digital Downloads has themes built specifically for the plugin.
Awesome Support – The plugin is very well documented, and you have free support forums, videos, tutorials, and even an IRC chatroom. There is also a priority support option for premium users.
Cons of Using Easy Digital Downloads
Digital Downloads Only – As the name suggests, Easy Digital Downloads makes it easier to create eCommerce sites for digital goods. But if you want to sell non-digital goods along with digital downloads then it will become quite complicated.
Selling External Products – If you want to add an external product or an affiliate product to your EDD store, then you will need to install a third-party add on for it.
When it comes to selling digital products online, we believe that Easy Digital Downloads is the best plugin to do that. We have used Easy Digital Downloads with great success, not only on client sites but also on a few of our own projects.
3. MemberPress
MemberPress allows you to sell subscription based digital products and services. It is the best WordPress membership plugin with tons of integration options. It can even integrate with WooCommerce.
Let’s take a look at pros and cons MemberPress.
Pros of Using MemberPress
Sell Subscription Based Products – Allows you to easily sell subscription based products, membership plans, pay per view content, and more.
Powerful Access Rules – Powerful access control allows you to define user access levels and content restrictions. Only users with permissions will be able to access restricted content.
Built-in Course Builder – MemberPress comes with a course builder that allows you to create & sell courses by offering your users an immersive online learning platform.
Content Dripping – MemberPress allows you to release paid content over time similar to episodes on Amazon Prime shows or other platforms.
Powerful Extensions – You can integrate it to your WooCommerce store or LearnDash LMS. There are tons of extensions to connect MemberPress with third-party services.
Cons of Using MemberPress
Limited Payment Options – MemberPress only supports PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net.
Yearly Pricing – Pricing plans are available on yearly terms alone.
MemberPress is the perfect eCommerce plugin to sell subscription based products, sell courses, or build a membership website. It is beginner friendly and can be easily extended with addons which allows you to take your eCommerce website in any direction you want.
4. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a fully hosted eCommerce platform that offers seamless integration with WordPress. This allows you to use a scalable eCommerce platform while using WordPress to manage your content and run your website.
It has a powerful integration plugin for WordPress which makes it very easy to embed your products in WordPress. It automatically creates the sign in, cart, account, and other important pages for you.
Let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of using BigCommerce as your WordPress eCommerce platform.
Pros of Using BigCommerce
- High scalability – It includes all the features you will need with enterprise grade security, high performance, and easy scalability.
- Less Maintainence – Keeping your eCommerce engine separate from other content makes it easier to run your WordPress site.
- Sell across Multiple Channels – You can use it to sell not only on your website but also on other channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon.
- No transaction charges – Unlike some other eCommerce platforms, it does not charge you on each transaction. You can choose from dozens of top payment gateways and only pay the payment service provider.
Cons of Using BigCommerce
- Limited Integrations – BigCommerce integrates with all the top third-party apps and tools. However, its app store is still growing, and you may not find an integration for some less popular apps.
- Yearly Sales Threshold – They have a yearly threshold on sales for each plan. If you reach that threshold then you are upgraded to the next plan. This may increase costs as your business grows.
BigCommerce is an incredibly powerful yet very easy to use eCommerce platform. It is a SaaS eCommerce platform, but with their BigCommerce WordPress plugin you can have the best of both worlds.
It takes away the pains of scaling your hosting requirements as your business grows. At the same time, you don’t have to worry about security, performance, or finding extensions for SEO and caching.
BigCommerce is a rising contender in WordPress for headless eCommerce. It takes care of technology infrastructure, so you can focus on growing your business.
5. Shopify
Shopify is a fast growing eCommerce platform that handles everything for you. Shopify isn’t a plugin but it’s an all in one solution that’s completely hassle free. See our guide on Shopify vs WooCommerce for detailed side-by-side comparison of the two platforms.
Let’s look at the Pros and Cons of Shopify.
Pros of Using Shopify
6. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is a lightweight WordPress eCommerce plugin that comes with all the features you need to easily sell your digital products.
Other eCommerce plugins help you sell digital products from your WordPress store, but they come bundled with many features for selling physical products that you’ll likely never need.
Easy Digital Downloads gives you everything you need to sell your digital product–and nothing more.
Key Features:
- Easy to use, even for first-timers
- Hundreds of extensions available for everything from payment gateways to marketing platforms
- Works with almost any WordPress theme, but also has themes built specifically for the plugin
- Has excellent support with forums, videos, tutorials, and an IRC chatroom
7. WP Simple Pay
WP Simple Pay is the easiest way to accept one-time and recurring payments on your WordPress site without needing to set up a complex shopping cart system.
It’s perfect for selling single products, collecting payments for services, and accepting donations.
WP Simple Pay comes with built-in support for credit card payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH debit payments, and more. It also offers multi-language and currency support.
Key Features:
- Simple payment collection for beginners
- Easy drag and drop payment form builder with custom fields
- Accept one-time payments or recurring payments like installment plans, subscriptions, or trial periods
- Offer discounts with coupon codes
Need a WordPress theme? Here’s a great resource for that: 22 Best Responsive eCommerce Themes and Templates (Free and Paid).
Best Ecommerce Plugins for WordPress to Grow Your List
8. SeedProd
SeedProd is the best landing page builder for WordPress. With SeedProd, you can easily create beautiful landing pages using a visual drag and drop builder. And since everything is done on the frontend, there’s no coding required.
Using its landing page templates, you can add email optins, countdown timers, and social share buttons to your eCommerce page.
There are even custom WooCommerce blocks like add to cart, checkout, shopping cart, products grid, and more. This makes it easy to create product pages and customize the WooCommerce checkout flow.
SeedProd also handles coming soon pages, launch pages, under construction pages, and maintenance mode pages for your WordPress site.
And the best part is that SeedProd is a powerful tool for capturing leads before your WordPress site even goes live.
When you have a course or product launch coming up, you can create a Coming Soon Page that captures your audience’s email address. This lets you stay in contact with your target buyer before, during, and after your product launch.
In the end, you’re able to make more sales because you’ve got your leads ready to buy.
Key Features:
- Built-in email autoresponder
- WooCommerce integration
- Search engine optimized
- Social follow and share
Having a pre-launch marketing page really helps build excitement about your brand and can jumpstart your site’s SEO.
But when you add that optin form integration to start building your email list can really give your online business a big advantage. Imagine already having a mailing list of hundreds–or even thousands–of customers when you’re ready to announce your grand opening!
Even if you’re not new to the game, you can use SeedProd to create custom maintenance mode and 404 pages that will delight your visitors and get you leads.
9. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is a user-friendly marketing tool that can cover all your marketing needs.
You can use Constant Contact as an email service provider to send targeted email campaigns to your audience.
They have an easy-to-use campaign builder, tons of analytics to get the highest open rates possible, and loads of other features to help you grow your email list.
They’re one of the most popular Mailchimp alternatives, and the perfect email solution for businesses of all sizes.
Key Features
- Pre-designed templates to help you send branded emails
- List segmentation
- A/B testing
- Marketing automation
- And much more
Constant Contact is an excellent option for business owners who want to use email marketing to increase their profits.
Get started with Constant Contact today!
10. Sendinblue
Sendinblue is another email service provider that we highly recommend.
In fact, Sendinblue can help you with your email marketing but also launch SMS campaigns. It’s loaded with useful sales and marketing features.
They even have a customer relationship management system (CRM) to help your marketing and sales teams work together.
Plus, Sendinblue integrates seamlessly with WordPress. That means you can track conversions and automate your campaigns to boost sales across your site.
Key Features:
- User friendly
- Drag and drop email campaign builder
- Marketing automation tools
- Audience segmentation
- A/B testing
- And much more
Best Ecommerce Plugins to Increase Your Sales
11. TrustPulse
TrustPulse is the best social proof notification plugin on the market. It can help you leverage the power of social proof to increase your conversions by up to 15%.
How does it work? TrustPulse will show a notification anytime someone positively interacts with your site.
So if someone makes a purchase, for example, you can have TrustPulse show a notification to your site’s visitors. This makes your brand appear more trustworthy and creates a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out).
In the end, your site’s visitors see other people benefiting from your product, and they want those same benefits.
Key Features:
- Smart targeting using advanced rules and timing controls to show your campaign at the right time to boost conversions
- Flexible design options to match the look and feel of your website
- Actionable analytics show you at a glance which pages deliver the highest conversions
- Works seamlessly with all popular website platforms
Ready for the best part? You can start TrustPulse totally FREE.
TrustPulse lets you use its software for 500 sessions for free. After that, the paid plans begin at just $4/month. That’s roughly the cost of your morning cup of coffee.
This makes TrustPulse easily one of the best eCommerce plugins for WordPress with little or no investment.
Head over to get your free TrustPulse account today!
12. PushEngage
PushEngage is the best push notification software on the market. With push notifications, you can drive users back to your website by sending personalized messages right to their desktop or mobile browsers.
You can send new blog post announcements, abandoned cart reminders, new product announcements, alert customers to a price drop, and much more.
Plus, you can take advantage of powerful features like triggered notifications and dynamic segmentation to send the right notifications at exactly the right time.
And getting users to opt-in to your push notifications is easy with PushEngage. You can create custom opt-ins and trigger them to appear based on time on page, scroll percentage, or by the click of a link, button, or image.
It’s compatible with WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, and many other popular platforms.
Key Features:
- Custom domains and branding
- Personalization features
- A/B testing
- Goal tracking and analytics
- Offline notifications
- And more
You can try out PushEngage for free and start sending 30 campaigns/month to up to 500 subscribers.
Get started with PushEngage today!
13. Cart Recovery for WordPress
Cart Recovery for WordPress is a WordPress eCommerce plugin that works with WooCommerce, WP eCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and Restrict Content Pro right out of the box.
You can use this plugin to easily track abandoned carts, view stats in your WordPress dashboard, and configure automatic recovery email sending. Plus, it integrates with WordPress’ GDPR compliance tools for data access and data removal requests.
Key Features:
- Captures customers name, and email address as soon as they’re entered at checkout
- Capture and engage new customers who never reach checkout with “Save to Cart”
- Trigger abandoned cart email campaigns automatically
- Track in-progress carts, abandoned carts, and recovered carts easily within your WordPress dashboard
Cart Recovery for WordPress is one of your best options for reducing shopping cart abandonment with your online store.
14. WP Product Review
WP Product Review is the best WordPress plugin for eCommerce on the market for product reviews. Adding a product review is easy, and you get to choose how you want to manage and display reviews on your website.
You simply select the product review option when writing a blog post, and the plugin shows you all the settings you need to write your review. You can even break down your review into features, add images, pros and cons, and more.
Key Features:
- Save time by importing features from reviews you’ve already built (and Amazon info!)
- 3 review layouts let you choose a layout that appeals to your visitors
- When posting comments, users can rate the different product specifications
- Automatically generate comparison tables from existing reviews
WP Product Review comes with sidebar widgets that let you showcase your reviews. And, you can use it to collect user-submitted reviews or let your users add their own rating and reviews in the comments.
All reviews use schema.org rich snippet format for maximum SEO benefit.
WordPress eCommerce Plugins for Better UX
15. WPForms
One of the best ways to create a great user experience is to ask users what they want and expect from your brand or site. And WPForms is the best way to get that valuable feedback from your site’s visitors.
Not only is WPForms the best WordPress form builder plugin available, but it’s also the best online survey tool you can get!
Key Features:
- Create a form in just a few minutes without writing any code using the drag and drop builder
- Smart survey fields: Likert scale, ratings, multiple-choice
- Create polls and display real-time results on your site
- Real-time insights offer beautiful reports with the best visualization
- Integrations for PayPal and Stripe
- Authorize.net addon now available
On top of all that, WPForms includes multi-page forms, email integration, conditional logic, and tons of other features, plus addons to extend its functionality even more.
There’s a free plan available, though pricing for paid plans starts at only $39.50/year.
Get started with WPForms today!
16. Wholesale Suite
Wholesale Suite is a suite of three plugins that make it easy to add wholesale features to your eCommerce site.
If you run your store with WooCommerce, there’s no option to add wholesale pricing in the same product listing. You would need to duplicate your product pages and create separate prices. This can lead to a confusing and poor shopping experience for visitors.
But, with Wholesale Suite, you can easily add wholesale pricing to your product pages for bulk buyers, while continuing to display regular prices for retail customers.
This plugin also lets you create responsive wholesale order forms and automate the recruiting and registration process for wholesale customers.
Key Features:
- Tons of wholesale pricing options
- Set minimum purchase amounts
- Control shipping and tax separately from retail customers
- Manage product visibility by user role
- And much more
Get started with Wholesale Suite today!
17. SearchWP
SearchWP significantly improves the WordPress search function. With this WordPress eCommerce plugin, you can customize your search to include pretty much every bit of content on your site.
This includes eCommerce product details, categories, tags, custom fields, document content, and much more.
This search feature can help your customers find the products they’re looking for and greatly improve your user experience (UX).
Key Features:
- Easily control your WordPress search algorithm
- Show better search results by using keyword stems instead of exact search terms
- Detailed search metrics to see what visitors are searching for
- Integrates with popular plugins like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, bbPress, and more
Visitors will bounce from your site if they can’t quickly find what they need. The increased search functionality offered by SearchWP gives you the chance to improve user experience and reduce bounce rates.
WordPress Plugins to Maintain and Protect Your Site
18. Sucuri Firewall
Sucuri Firewall can protect your WordPress eCommerce website from just about any type of attack, including brute force attacks, malware, DDoS attacks, and more.
Key Features:
- Unlimited malware and hack cleanup
- A comprehensive 5-step process ensures that your site’s protected
Sucuri blocks attacks before they even reach your server, keeping your site and users’ information safe.
The scanning functionality monitors your site every 3 hours to check for malware, malicious JavaScript, malicious iframes, suspicious redirections, spammy link injections, and other harmful attacks on your site.
19. Redirection
Redirection is the most popular redirect manager for WordPress and helps you efficiently manage 301 redirects and keep track of 404 errors.
With this WordPress eCommerce plugin, you can do straight URL matching, as well as use conditional redirects. And, Redirection makes it easy to redirect based on things like a user’s login status, browser, referring site, cookies, and more.
Key Features:
- Conditional redirects in addition to straightforward URL matching
- Track 404 errors so you can fix them
- View logs of all redirects including user and browser information
Redirects are good for your site’s SEO because it lets the search engine know that the page it’s looking for is no longer there. That means your old page’s traffic and backlink strength gets pushed to the new page.
These are the types of features that make Redirection perfect for maintaining your WordPress site.
20. Broken Link Checker
Broken Link Checker lets you check your eCommerce site for broken links so you can fix them before you start seeing your bounce rates shoot up. Plus, it makes sure that you fix broken links before they hurt your UX.
This plugin monitors links in pages, posts, comments, and even custom fields.
Key Features:
- Monitors links wherever you want: posts, pages, comments, blogroll, and custom fields
- Edit links right from the plugin dashboard
- Get notifications via plugin dashboard or email of links that don’t work, missing images, and redirects
Broken links can do a lot of damage to your SEO and rankings. Plus, they’re super annoying to visitors. Even checking for broken links a couple of times a year can help you reduce bounce rates and increase page views.
Best Ecommerce Plugins for WordPress Performance
Super Easy for Beginners – No need to worry about the technical aspects of an eCommerce store such as setting up SSL, integrating with different payment gateways, handling shipping, worrying about taxes, etc. Shopify handles it all.
Supports Both Digital and Physical Goods – Whether you’re selling physical goods like shirts or digital downloads like music, Shopify can handle it all.
Complete Inventory Management – Shopify comes with an inventory editor and bulk importer combined with an order tracker which makes managing inventory a breeze.
Payment and Shipping Options – Shopify makes it easy for you to accept credit card both online and in person. Their shipping system streamline your fulfillment process with direct integration with popular providers like USPS.
Facebook Store and Buyable Pins – Shopify integrates with everything. Whether you want to create a Facebook store or create buyable Pins on Pinterest, you can do it all with Shopify.
Cons of Using Shopify
Monthly Platform Fee – Shopify charges you a monthly fee to use their platform which is comparable to purchasing hosting and individual addons using the other plugins in this list.
Shopify Payments – Shopify encourages you to use their payment platform which is powered by Stripe and is a very good option for beginners. However if you want to overcomplicate things and use external systems, then Shopify charges you an additional fee.
If you want to have a powerful platform without having to deal with technical issues, then Shopify is the solution for you. While the monthly fee sounds bad at first, the hassle-free approach and peace of mind are definitely worth it because it allows you to focus on what you do best, your business!
Shopify does not have a native integration with WordPress. BigCommerce in our list gives you everything Shopify offers while offering a seamless integration with your WordPress site.
Conclusion – The Best WordPress eCommerce Plugin is:
If you want maximum control, flexibility, and features, then WooCommerce is the best solution for you.
If you are just selling digital goods, then Easy Digital Downloads is the best WordPress eCommerce plugin for you.
If you don’t want to manage all the technical stuff of building an online store, then BigCommerce is the best option for you. It allows you to use a SaaS eCommerce platform side by side with WordPress as your content management system.
That’s all we hope this article helped you find the best WordPress eCommerce plugins for your site. You may also want to see our comparison of best drag and drop WordPress page builders, and our expert pick of the best business phone services for small businesses.
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