Best ecommerce software plugin for wordpress? If you are looking for best ecommerce software there are several things you should consider. This can make your decision easier and choosing the right plugin a less time consuming task.
If you are currently looking for the best ecommerce software plugin for wordpress, stop looking and get WP eCommerce. If you don’t like it, then I’ll give you your money back. There are plenty of ecommerce plugins for WordPress, but only WP eCommerce offers the best of both worlds. For example, if you plan on selling digital products or access to an online service, you’re going to be better off using something like Easy Digital Downloads or Paypal. But if you want to sell actual physical goods from your website, then you’re going to want to use a dedicated shopping cart plugin like WooCommerce or Jigoshop.
If you’re going to build an eCommerce store, you’re probably wondering what the best eCommerce software plugin for WordPress is. There are a lot of eCommerce plugins and not all of them are equal, some are better than others; but there is one that rises above the rest.
If you are looking for the best ecommerce software plugin for WordPress, your quest ends here. Are you selling digital products and services on your website? If yes, then it is time to set up an eCommerce solution in your WordPress site. There are many eCommerce Plugins for WordPress that allow you to integrate WooCommerce (our favorite E-Commerce platform plugin), Easy Digital Downloads, and Shopify on your WordPress site.
Considerations Before Installing a Shopify App
Shopify apps are a great way to improve your ecommerce store and automate tasks so you can spend more time on other things. But you can run into some problems if you start using more apps. These include:
- Reduced site speed: Each time your website loads so must the apps being used on it. Depending on how many apps you have installed and how taxing they can be to your website, your site speed can be negatively affected. Before installing an app ask yourself if you really need it, and maybe you can delete an old app instead.
- Non-compatibility: Sometimes one app does not work with another one. It is unfortunate but it can happen. Research if other Shopify users have tried the two apps, or reach out to the app developers before installing so you don’t run into any problems. Installing apps without checking compatibility can mean a loss in sales, conversions, and traffic so it is worth the time to look into it.
- Increase in site noise: Apps are brilliant for small businesses and dropshippers but sometimes we are too inspired and include too many apps on our websites. Before long we notice that we have three popup apps, two live chat apps, and an app that is no longer relevant to the site. Before installing an app check that none of your already installed apps can provide the features you are looking for.
- Depreciated apps: Apps serve a purpose and, like with everything in tech, the solution they provide can become outdated and not needed after a while. Do a regular checkup of your apps to make sure they are all up-to-date and supported to make sure nothing negatively affects your website unnecessarily.
Thinking about launching an online store with WordPress? You’ve picked the right platform — now you need the right WordPress eCommerce plugin.
Whether you want to sell physical products, digital goods, or even services, WordPress provides a solid foundation on top of which you can build a flourishing store.
Since WordPress doesn’t come with built-in eCommerce functionality, you’ll need to add an eCommerce plugin. Fortunately, there are several excellent options available that can add everything that’s required to sell online, from product pages and shopping carts to checkouts and payment processing.
In this post, we’ll cover the best WordPress eCommerce plugins available in 2020, with the goal of helping you decide which option best suits you and your online business.
1. WooCommerce
With 4+ million active installs, WooCommerce is the most popular, flexible and customizable WordPress eCommerce plugin.
Originally launched in 2011 as a fork of Jigoshop and acquired by Automattic (owner of WordPress.com) in 2015, WooCommerce has grown to become the world’s most popular eCommerce technology. It now powers 22% of the world’s top 1 million websites.
With WooCommerce, you can sell anything, including physical and digital goods. It’s hugely scalable — you can sell one product or thousands of products — and there’s a plugin that can let you extend WordPress to do just about anything.
Pros:
- Easy to extend. There are hundreds of WooCommerce extensions (aka plugins) available, which you can use to add just about any functionality to your store, from marketing and shipping to social media and subscriptions.
- Hundreds of WooCommerce themes. There are also hundreds of WooCommerce-compatible themes available, which you can use to make the most of WooCommerce’s full feature set.
- Supports physical and digital products. With WooCommerce, you can sell anything, from healthy meal subscriptions to t-shirt printing and designer dog collars.
- Payment and shipping options. WooCommerce comes with built-in payment processing support for Stripe and PayPal. You can also accept credit cards, direct bank transfer, checks or cash on delivery. You can add other payment options using extensions, and also calculate shipping and taxes.
- Inventory management. Track stock levels, hold stock after an order is canceled, get notifications for low and out-of-stock items, hide out-of-stock items and more.
- Support and documentation. The official WooCommerce site provides extensive documentation on how to set up and use WooCommerce. You can also find help in the WordPress.org support forums.
Cons:
- Can be overwhelming. When you install WooCommerce for the first time, there’s a wizard that can help you set-up the basics. But it can still be quite intimidating for beginners.
- Theme customization can be tricky. If you don’t have a theme that supports WooCommerce, it will be tricky trying to make your store look good on the front-end for your customers.
- The extension you need might not be available. There are hundreds of add-ons available, but if you can’t find something that provides the specific functionality you need, you may need to hire a developer (aka WooExpert) to build it for you.
Pricing: WooCommerce is free, but you’ll need to pay for any premium extensions you use, which can cost as much as $299 a year.
Best suited to: Whether you want to sell one PDF file or thousands of t-shirts, you can do it with WooCommerce. If you want maximum control, flexibility, and features, then this WordPress ecommerce plugins if the best solution for you.
2. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads markets itself as the easy way to sell digital products with WooCommerce.
EDD (as it’s often abbreviated to) was first released in 2012 by Pippins Plugins and now powers .21% of the world’s top 1 million websites. While it might not seem like an impressive figure, EDD has proven to be hugely popular in the WordPress community as the go-to plugin for selling digital goods.
EDD has built to handle digital products — music, videos, ebooks, plugins, PDF files, and more. The core plugin is free to use and there are hundreds of extensions available that can add all kinds of functionality, from recurring payments and Stripe support to software licensing (for selling license keys) and commissions tracking.
Pros:
- Supports digital products. If you want to sell digital goods, you can do it easily with EDD. Unlike other ecommerce plugins, EDD has been built specifically to sell all kinds of digital goods.
- Intuitive and easy-to-use. Whether you’re setting up an online store for the first time or you’re a seasoned pro, it’s easy to figure out how to get your store up and running. Ideal for beginners.
- Hundreds of extensions. There are hundreds of free and premium extensions available to extend you store your way.
- Works with any theme. You can integrate EDD with almost any theme. If you’re just getting started setting up your store, there are EDD themes available.
- Developer-friendly. A complete RESTful API provides easy access to sales and product information in either jSON or XML format.
- Support and documentation. EDD comes with comprehensive documentation. There’s an active community of users and developers, and priority support is available.
Cons:
- Supports digital products. You can sell physical products with EDD, but it was built from the ground up for non-physical things. So selling physical goods is not its main focus.
Pricing: Easy Digital Downloads is free, but you’ll need to pay for any premium extensions you use. A Personal Pass that includes everything you need to get started cost $99 a year, and the top-range All Access pass costs $499 a year.
Best suited to: If you want to sell digital goods, it’s worth checking out Easy Digital Downloads. It’s built specifically to handle digital products and it’s easy to get your store up and running quickly with its intuitive interface.
3. Ecwid
Ecwid is an ecommerce solution designed for small businesses that want to add store functionality to an existing WordPress site.
Ecwid was first launched in 2009 by Ruslan Fazlyev, who co-founded X-Cart. Ruslan recognized that many small businesses already had websites and simply wanted to add store functionality on top. So he built Ecwid, which has grown to become the world’s most popular “add-on” store builder for SMBs.
Here’s how it works:
- You sign up for Ecwid and create your store.
- Add the Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart plugin to your WordPress site.
- Use shortcodes to add store functionality to your site.
Pros:
- Easy integration with WordPress. After installing the Ecwid plugin, you can start adding shortcodes to your sites and display products for sale on your site in minutes.
- Get started for free. With Ecwid’s Free plan, you can sell up to 10 products for free.
- Updates are taken care of for you. Unlike plugins like WooCommerce, Ecwid updates are taken care of for you so you don’t have to run tests or update the software that powers your store.
- Sell anywhere. You can sell products on your WordPress site, your Facebook page — anywhere you can display some shortcode.
- Well-supported. There’s documentation for free users, and chat, phone, and priority support for paid users.
Cons:
- Lack of control over SEO. As far as I can tell, you can’t manually change the URL of a product — you have to stick with what’s auto-generated for you.
Pricing: Free for 10 products, $15 per month for 100 products, $35 a month for 2500 products, and $99 a month for unlimited products.
Best suited to: Small business owners who have an existing WordPress site and want to get a store up and running quickly and easily, or want to share their products on sites like Facebook.
4. Ninja Shop (formerly iThemes Exchange)
Ninja Shop is a relatively new WordPress eCommerce plugin that promises to help you get an online store up and running in under 5 minutes.
It’s the new kid on the block as far as WordPress eCommerce plugins go, while at the same time having been around for a while. Ninja Shop started out as iThemes Exchange back in 2013 and was acquired by ExchangeWP.com in 2017. It’s since been rebranded as Ninja Shop.
After installing and activating the Ninja Shop plugin, a wizard guides you through setting up the basics — whether you want to sell physical or digital products, payments gateways, etc — and then you can start adding products to your store.
Pros:
- Easy to use. Ninja Shop’s user-friendly wizard makes setting up your store and adding your first product really easy.
- Sell memberships. With Ninja Shop, you can create a membership site that offers exclusive access to content. Access to content can be granted on a custom schedule and time frame, including delayed access, drip content, and more.
- Customize your store with add-ons. There are add-ons for just about everything — payment gateways, email marketing, recurring payments, SEO, and event memberships,
- All-inclusive pricing. Since you get access to all Ninja Shop add-ons, you can go crazy customizing your store without worrying about the cost.
- Support and documentation. There’s extensive documentation available, as well as email support.
Cons:
- Limited add-on functionality. Compared to other more well-established options like WooCommerce, Ninja Shop doesn’t offer as many add-ons. However, this is likely to change in coming years, with talk that Ninja Shop has its sights set on competing head-on with WooCommerce.
Pricing: Pricing starts at $9 per month, which includes access to all Ninja Shop’s add-ons. When your store revenue hits $500 per month, Ninja Shop starts charging 0.9%, with monthly fees capped at $99.
Best suited to: If you want a quick setup and ease of use, then Ninja Shop is the best eCommerce solution for you.
Shopify Buy Button
Shopify is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce platforms, with over 1.7M merchants using it to sell online. Shopify is a standalone platform, but it’s also an all-in-one solution that you can use to turn your WordPress site into an online store with the Shopify Buy Button.
Pros:
- Easy-to-use for beginners: Shopify handles all the work for you, including setting up an SSL certificate, handling shipping, integrating payment gateways, and calculating taxes.
- Allows selling both digital and physical products from t-shirts to digital downloads
- Complete Inventory Management: Shopify has an inventory editor and bulk importer
- Payment and shipping options: Allows accepting credit cards both online and in person. The shipping system comes with direct integration with providers like USPS.
- Facebook and Pinterest: Shopify can integrate with Facebook Store or create buyable Pins for you.
- Shopify has its own app store with a wide range of Shopify apps.
Shopify SEO Checklist to Rank Your Store #1
Cons:
- Monthly payments: The platform charges a monthly fee.
- Shopify payments: Shopify encourages using their own payment platform, powered by Stripe. If you want to use another, they charge a fee.
- Shopify doesn’t have a direct integration to WordPress, unlike BigCommerce.
Pricing: Shopify Buy Button is $9 per month.
6. Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)
Easy Digital Downloads enables WordPress site owners to sell digital downloads online. It comes with powerful out-of-the-box features to create a digital goods store.
WooCommerce also has this fun function, but EDD offers more features with a sharp focus on digital sales. Moreover, its interface is much cleaner and better suited for digital goods.
So, if you plan to sell Ebooks, audio clips, or PDF files and nothing physical, you should definitely consider EDD.
What makes EDD one of the best WordPress e-commerce plugins?
- The EDD core plugin is free, and all plans cover full customer support, updates, and site licenses.
- Provides an Extension Library full of add-ons so you can create advanced digital stores by including software licensing or allowing frontend submissions.
- EDD has a large community of developers, bloggers, and enthusiasts, making it easier to find solutions to solve any issues related to EDD.
- Its main features include a full shopping cart, discount codes, data reporting, and customer management. Additionally, you get tools for affiliate marketing, mailing lists, refund tracking, and more.
Pricing: The core plugin is entirely free. But if you want to upgrade your version, the subscriptions start at $199 per year and go up to $899 per year.
7. MemberPress
MemberPress is designed to let you sell subscription-based digital products and services. It is the best WordPress membership plugin with various integration options, including WooCommerce.
Pros:
- Sell subscription-based products, pay-per-view content, membership plans, and more easily.
- Have Powerful Access Control to define user access levels and content restrictions
- Release paid content over time similar to episodes on Amazon Prime shows etc., with Content Dripping.
- Create and sell courses with the built-in course builder
- Integrate MemberPress with your WooCommerce store or tons of third-party extensions
Cons:
- Yearly pricing alone
- MemberPress has limited payment options, supporting only PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net.
Pricing: MemberPress’s pricing starts at $279 per year.
8. WP Product Review
WP Product Review lets you add product reviews easily and choose how you want to manage and display them on your site. After selecting the product review option when writing a blog post, the plugin displays all the settings to write a review.
Features:
- Import features from reviews you’ve already built and Amazon info
- Automatically generate comparison tables
- Three view layouts
- Users can rate different product specifications when posting comments
- Sidebar widgets to showcase reviews
- All reviews are built-in schema.org rich snippet format for SEO
9. WP EasyCart Shopping Cart and eCommerce Store
WP EasyCart is a simple WordPress e-commerce plugin for people who want to launch an e-commerce store without spending a lot of time or money. It has integration options with MailChimp, Quickbooks, and more.
You can use WP EasCart to sell both digital and physical goods.
Pricing: It has a free plan available, but you need to upgrade to access all extensions for $99/year.
10. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is also one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there, and there’s a good reason for that. It may not be a direct e-commerce plugin, but it will help your store comply more with Google’s ranking factors.
Yoast SEO enables WordPress sites with essential onsite SEO elements and technical SEO maintenance, which are necessary to generate organic traffic for your store.
This plugin is free, but it also offers premium versions to unlock additional functionality. Its premium plans start at $89 for one site license.
Note: There’s also a Yoast SEO plugin for WooCommerce.
11. CookieYes
You will need to comply with GDPR, which applies to all websites worldwide collecting data related to people in the European Union. Having a GDPR-ready badge on your e-commerce store builds trust in your customers and shows your respect for consumer data.
There are a lot of WordPress GDPR plugins to help you with that. CookieYes is one of them with over 1 million active installments.
Pricing: The core version is free. Premium plans start at $49 per year.
12. SeedProd
SeedProdis a WordPress coming soon plugin. Again, it is not a direct e-commerce solution, but if you want to hype up your customers about your store launch, it’s a perfect choice.
Coming soon plugins help you display a coming soon and maintenance page to amplify your SEO earlier.
SeedProd Features:
- GDPR-compliant
- Add full video backgrounds
- Countdown timer
- Drag and drop builder
- Build landing pages
- Builtin photo library
Pricing: Price plans start at $79 per year.
Choosing the Right WordPress Ecommerce Plugin for You
So which WordPress eCommerce plugin is the best solution for your site?
If you want control, flexibility, features, and scalability, then WooCommerce is the best WordPress eCommerce plugin for you.
If you want to sell digital products, check out Easy Digital Downloads — it’s been built specifically to handle digital goods.
If you run a small business, already have a WordPress site, and would like to share your products on sites like Facebook, then Ecwid is the best solution for you.
If you want a simple solution that easy to set up so you can get your store up and running quickly, you can’t go wrong with Ninja Shop.
Essential Factors to Consider When Picking a WordPress Ecommerce Plugin
The Impact on Page Speed
Some plugins can slow down WordPress websites because of high CPU usage. Therefore, it’s best to check out the plugin reviews and stars before installing and choose lightweight ones instead.
The Current Supported WordPress Version
Since new WordPress versions are constantly released, some plugin developers can’t keep up and update their plugins. This creates compatibility issues and causes possible website breakdowns.
Additionally, WordPress warns users attempting to download outdated plugins (that aren’t updated within two years.)
Backend Support
Plugins crash, payment systems fail, and caches don’t cache—it happens every once in a while. The important thing is that the available plugin support should be enough for your needs.
Community
Many WordPress plugins have communities full of users that are more than willing to help troubleshoots. A community can be an excellent source to understand how to deal with uncommon issues that aren’t addressed in the support documentation.
Conclusion
There is a wide variety of eCommerce plugins available to sell your product and services via WordPress. But not all of them have a strong support team or easy integration with popular payment gateways or shopping carts. One of the most powerful wordpress ecommerce platforms is WooCommerce.
There are many benefits to using a WordPress ecommerce plugin. From the beginning, it is easy to set up and easy to customize. Even if you haven’t shopped for an ecommerce plugin before, you can be up-and-running fast without knowing too much about coding. Plus, it has everything you need to run a successful store from an admin dashboard.