5 Plugins That Make WordPress eCommerce easy
WordPress always has a solution to our needs. Its plugin repository seems a magic lamp that when you explore, you surely get a solution to your need, be the need is big or small. Owing to the plugins, one can make any type of website and can add any custom functionality in the website. If you want to make an eCommerce website for you, then WordPress is of course a good platform to choose. Though there are several dedicated eCommerce platforms around us, yet WordPress has a very big share of eCommerce websites.
Making an eCommerce website with ecommerce website builder or WordPress theme builder is not a big deal owing to eCommerce plugins. But, it comes confusing while selecting one among the several plugins. Therefore, we decided to review you the best five WordPress eCommerce plugins.
Feature Comparison Chart of WordPress eCommerce plugins
Features | WooCommerce | Easy Digital Downloads | WP eCommerce | MarketPress | iThemes Exchange |
Order tracking | Yes | ||||
Coupon Management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Sales Report/ Sales Chart | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Product Reviews | Yes | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add On) | Yes(Add On) | |
Product Comparison | Yes (Add On) | ||||
Shipment Tracking | Yes (Add On) | Yes(Add On)) | |||
Address validation | Yes (Add On) | ||||
Recurring Payments | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add On) | |
Downloadable Products | Yes (Add On) | Yes | Yes (Add On) | Yes | |
Selling license keys | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add On) | |||
PDF invoices | Yes (Add On) | Yes(Add On) | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add On) | |
Cross Sell/Upsell | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add On) | |||
Related Products Suggestion | Yes(Add On) | Yes | |||
Manual purchasing | Yes | Yes (Add On) | Yes | Yes | Yes(Add On) |
Standard PayPal | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
PayPal Express | Yes(Add On) | Yes(Add On) | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add On) | Yes(Add On) |
Email Integration | Yes | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add On) | |
Wishlist | Yes( Add On) | Yes (Add On) | |||
Points and Reward System | Yes (Add On) | Yes (Add on) | |||
Customer Preferred delivery date and time | Yes (Add On) |
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most acclaimed WordPress plugin for eCommerce. It is richer in eCommerce features and at the same time it is very easy to integrate with a website. The free version is pretty good. For advanced features, there are many add-ons.
WooCommerce allows order tracking, discount coupon management, to up-sell & Cross sell the products, to incorporate related products section, to compare products, shipping tracking, and to add a wishlist in a shopping website. Though, most of the mentioned features can only be enjoyed with the add-ons.
In fact, WooCommerce add-ons make it possible for the merchant (e-shop owner) to use all major payment gateways, like PayPal (standard and Express) WorldPay, 2Checkout, SagePay, First Data, Amazon Payments, Braintree, Stripe and more. Aside from physical goods, a merchant can even sell digital products. WooCommerce also allows newsletter subscription with GetReponse, MailChimp, Aweber, Constant Contact, Mad Mimi, and Campaign Monitor with the help of add-ons. A merchant can even take the benefit of PDF invoice with the help of paid add-on. All in all, the WooCommerce can be a firm anchorage for an online-shopping website with the help of add-ons.
Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Active Installs: 1+ million
Easy Digital Downloads
The Easy digital download is primarily developed for selling software products. But, the folks have also developed a premium add-on for selling physical goods. Hence, this plugin is a complete WordPress eCommerce solution. It supports all the major payment gateways, including Stripe, Coinbase, WorldPay, and Recurly. This plugin stores the payment history and customers’ purchasing history, and shows it off to the merchant. A merchant can also integrate newsletter subscription with the help of add-ons. The newsletter/email marketing add-ons for EDD include GetReponse, MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Campaign Monitor, Mad Mimi, Aweber. In shorthand, EDD is a very nice plugin for selling anything together with premium add-ons, which are there for almost every eCommerce functionality.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars
Active Installs: 40,000+
WP eCommerce
WP eCommerce provides all necessary and basic facilities to manage an e-shop, like adding new products to catalog, configure tax and shipping settings and monitoring sales. The plugins offers quirky “marketing settings” to do, which allow to add Facebook ‘Like’ button, ‘how did you find us’ checkbox, ’share this link’ button, and ‘who else bought this’ information on the items.
This plugin provides UPS and USPS shipping modules in its free version, for which the above plugins require add-ons in case of above plugins; add-ons are available for the FedEx and Amazon S3 shipping. Talking about payment gateways: there are add-ons for all major ones. Campaign Monitor and Mail Chimp add-on can be used for integrating the newsletter services with the website.
Rating: 3.4 out of 5 stars
Active Installs: 70,000+
MarketPress
MarketPress is yet another a fair WordPress eCommerce plugin. With the help of an add-on, one can sell the digital products as well. It is very simple to configure with the website, a merchant can quickly create new products, new categories, and can manage the orders. Displaying related products feature is available in its free version, under the presentation settings. Freemium features are just as expected from a basic eCommerce plugin, but, it can be extended to the advanced level with the help of add-ons. With the help of add-ons, a merchant can leverage major payment gateways: PayPal Express, Stripe, Authorize.net, and 2Checkout. MarketPress is short on some features, yet is good for the merchants when in case their expectations are not so much.
Rating: 3.4 out of 5 stars
Active Installs: 7,000+
iThemes Exchange
iThemes can be configured for physical as well as downloadable software products. A dozen of add-ons are offered to the merchant by the plugin that has to be enabled for making particular settings for the store. Two payment gateways are supported in the freemium version: PayPal Standard and Stripe. If the merchant wants PayPal Express and 2Checkout support with iThemes, respective add-on will has to be used. A merchant wouldn’t find support for shipping services, which cause this plugin lagging behind from its competitors.
Rating: 3.9 out of 5 stars
Active Installs: 3,000+
Conclusion
After going through a big line of WordPress eCommerce plugins, we found the best five solutions that we described here. Though, all of the five are very advanced. Be you choose any of these, you can easily establish your shop. But, the winner has to be decided at the end.
Seeing the comparison chart, WooCommerce and Easy digital downloads pop up as the richer eCommerce solutions that provide more features and facilities to a merchant. Also, both the plugins have big user communities. The size of the community often signals that the software is very successful in keeping their promises with the users. Even, between both of these plugin, the WooCommerce wins the race of providing the eCommerce features. So, we may suggest you to use the WooCommerce. Check out TempalteToaster to create your own website and get free WordPress themes.
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Good post. Most people don’t know that wordpress can be a good choice for the ecommerce store development. This post can help people to understand that WordPress too has potential for becoming a good ecommerce store platform. Specially when wordpress offers good SEO benefit.
What about Jigoshop? https://wordpress.org/plugins/jigoshop/
It would be great if you could mention cart66
Cart66 really does make WordPress ecommerce easy because not only do you get a plugin that can
– sell digital & physical products
– recurring billing
– monthly & one-time donations
– sell event tickets / registrations
– sell access to premium content on your site
You also get a hosted payment page that has built-in support for over 100 payment gateways. So you don’t even need your own SSL certificate. With Cart66 you literally just install the plugin and start selling your products. I’m the founder of Cart66, and if you have any questions or if I can help in any way, please let me know.
Hello Lee, Welcome and thanks for sharing, we’ll definitely evaluate it for our future article.
Awesome! Thanks so much 🙂