Table of Contents
Ecommerce Plugins for WordPress: The Ultimate Guide
Do you have a WordPress website and want to turn it into an ecommerce site? You’ll need some plugins for that. But how to choose the right ones when there are so many of them? That’s where we come in. We’ve looked into every nook and cranny to compile the only list of WordPress ecommerce plugins you’ll ever need. We cover the plugins that give your website the ecommerce functionality in the first place and those that will help you make the most of your online store.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Choosing the Right Ecommerce Plugin for WordPress
- The Top Ecommerce Plugins for WordPress
- Other Essential WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
- Choosing the Right Plugin for Your WordPress Store
- Conclusion
Introduction
If you’re not that interested in ecommerce plugins for WordPress, check these articles instead:
- 12 Essential Apps for Your Online Business
- A Comparison of Two Major Ecommerce Platforms
To choose the right ecommerce plugin for a WordPress website you need to first define what’s important for your business and what kind of plugin you actually need. Is it a shopping cart or something to help you with the payment methods? Maybe you want to make your store more secure or add shipping options or improve your customer service?
The first five plugins on our list are the ones that let you turn an otherwise ordinary WordPress website into a fully functional ecommerce store. These WordPress shopping plugins are the foundation you can build upon. You’ll need to set one of them up before you choose any other plugins for your online business.
Choosing the Right Ecommerce Plugin for WordPress
WooCommerce
Rating: (5+ million installations)
This WordPress shopping plugin is the most popular open-source ecommerce solution in the world. It’s easy to use for beginners and helps you set up your online store step by step. There are many add-ons available to extend its functionality, and great support for easy onboarding. With this software, you can add an unlimited number of products and images, accept payments by debit and credit card, and manage orders on the go. On top of that, this ecommerce WordPress plugin lets you sell physical and digital products. It also lets you sort your product pages and show ratings on them.
Main features:
- Customizable design with themes and templates
- Inventory management
- Secure and customizable payment options
- Shipping options and rate calculation
- Marketing and promotional tools
Click here to learn more about WooCommerce
WP Shopify
Rating: (6,000+ installations)
Shopify is an ecommerce platform for selling your goods but it doesn’t have a native plugin for WordPress. To fill that gap, WP Shopify was created. It allows you to sync your Shopify products and sell them on your WordPress site. And you get great support during the setup if you come across any issues. This is one of the best ecommerce plugins for WordPress sites that lets you embed and sell your Shopify products on your website. There is a single buy button or a whole list of products provided for easy use. It also creates a seamless checkout and cart experience for your users.
Main features:
- Real-time product syncing
- Customizable buy buttons
- Embed products anywhere on your site
- Mobile responsive design
- SEO optimization
Click here to learn more about WP Shopify
BigCommerce for WordPress
Rating: (1,000+ installations)
BigCommerce for WordPress is a plugin that allows you to sell across multiple channels and marketplaces from a single location. But you need a BigCommerce account to start using this plugin effectively. You don’t need to worry about compliance and customer security. This ecommerce WordPress plugin is PCI compliant to ensure your store will be as well. It also lets you build catalogs and manage large volumes of traffic and orders. On top of that, it helps you keep track of your store’s performance with analytics.
Main features:
- Inventory management
- PCI compliance
- Seamless checkout experience
- Sell across multiple channels
- Analytics and reporting
Click here to learn more about BigCommerce for WordPress
Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart
Rating: (30,000+ installations)
Ecwid ecommerce shopping cart is the number one ecommerce app for Facebook. So, if you are a business owner who wants to integrate your WordPress store with Facebook, this is a plugin for you. And it comes with great customer support to get you started. It is also easy to use and has many payment options like PayPal and Stripe. This is one of the top WordPress ecommerce plugins with unlimited storage and regular backups. To help with that, Ecwid hosts your online store’s data on a secure server.
Main features:
- Seamless Facebook integration
- Mobile responsive design
- Secure payment options
- Unlimited storage and backups
- Multichannel selling
Click here to learn more about Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart
Easy Digital Downloads
Rating: (6,000+ installations)
You can sell physical goods, subscriptions, digital products, gift cards, donations, services, and more with this ecommerce plugin for WordPress. It is an international ecommerce cart for easier cross-border selling of your products. This means that you can manage orders, deal with taxes, and collect payments with this WordPress shop plugin. You can also add shipping notes and view order information—all in one location.
Main features:
- Sell digital products
- Manage customer files and discounts
- PayPal and Amazon Payments integration
- Full shopping cart functionality
- Extensive reporting
Click here to learn more about Easy Digital Downloads
Other Essential WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
Yoast SEO
Rating: (5+ million installations)
This is the number one SEO plugin for your ecommerce WordPress site. It dates back to 2008 and helped millions of users in their SEO efforts. Yoast SEO also provides courses to improve your knowledge about SEO and your site’s content. It helps you rank higher in search engines and keep your content easy to read for visitors. This WordPress store plugin helps you beat the competition and ensures search engines can understand your website better.
Main features:
- Content analysis tools
- XML sitemap functionality
- Title and meta description templates
- Internal linking suggestions
- Readability analysis
Click here to learn more about Yoast SEO
Tidio Live Chat
Rating: (100,000+ installations)
Tidio is an easy-to-use live chat plugin for your WordPress website. It has a drag-and-drop visual editor to customize your live chat widget without any coding. It lets you offer customer support with a pop-up widget and actively engage visitors to increase conversion rates and sales from your site. You can choose from over a dozen chatbots that will perform specific tasks like providing answers to frequently asked questions, giving discounts to returning customers, and automatically collecting qualified leads. You can also find out who is visiting your website, see what they are currently viewing, and easily engage them to increase the chances of conversion.
Main features:
- Live chat with visitors
- Chatbot automation
- Visitor monitoring
- Real-time typing preview
- Email campaigns
Click here to learn more about Tidio Live Chat
WP ERP
Rating: (10,000+ installations)
This is the first full-fledged ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system to manage your WordPress site and online business from a single platform. It is simple and intuitive, with an easy-to-use interface to help you get started on keeping track of your finances. It also helps you with organizing the process of converting leads to customers. On top of that, it enables you to create an HR system for your company that fits your needs. Beyond doubt, this is one of the best WordPress ecommerce plugins for bookkeeping and accounting.
Main features:
- HR management
- Accounting and CRM tools
- Deals and lead management
- Advanced reports and analytics
- Document management
Click here to learn more about WP ERP
Mailchimp for WordPress
Rating: (2+ million installations)
This WP ecommerce plugin helps you create user-friendly sign-up forms in no time. It will make it easier for your website visitors to subscribe and consequently for you to generate more leads. Moreover, this is one of the free WordPress ecommerce plugins that help you grow your Mailchimp lists. It assists you in writing better newsletters and creating good-looking opt-in forms. You can then integrate the opt-in forms with any existing form on your site, like your comment, contact, or checkout form.
Main features:
- Drag-and-drop form builder
- Mailchimp integration
- GDPR compliant forms
- Analytics and reporting
- Gutenberg block available
Click here to learn more about Mailchimp for WordPress
Wordfence Security
Rating: (5+ million installations)
Hands down, this is the most popular WordPress plugin for ecommerce businesses’ security. But it’s not just security that you can use it for. Performance, marketing, and design are the tools integrated into this plugin. This WordPress store plugin helps to make your site safer, faster, and help you grow your traffic. It is easy to use and includes site security features like real-time auto backups, easy restores, malware scans, and spam protection. One of the essential features of this plugin is brute force protection to keep your store’s login page protected.
Main features:
- Firewall and malware scan
- Brute force protection
- Two-factor authentication
- Real-time traffic monitoring
- Login security
Click here to learn more about Wordfence Security
Flexible Shipping
Rating: (20,000+ installations)
You don’t have to worry about cost estimation forms anymore. This is the best ecommerce plugin for WordPress to help you with it and other cost calculations. It provides your customers with information about your services and products costs. You can fully customize the forms with colors, fonts, and various backgrounds to create the desired look for your storefront. This WordPress store plugin helps you configure any type of estimation form with a drag-and-drop builder. You can also create as many calculation forms as you like and insert them on any of your pages or posts.
Main features:
- Advanced price calculation rules
- Conditional logic
- Dynamic shipping methods
- Multilingual support
- Mobile-friendly design
Click here to learn more about Flexible Shipping
Elementor
Rating: (20,000+ installations)
If you want to set up a responsive blog page with your website this one is for you. With this ecommerce plugin for WordPress, you can design and manage your blog’s content and appearance. It provides a variety of templates to set up your blog easier and faster. You can modify the layout and design to fit your needs. In addition, this WP ecommerce plugin lets you integrate your social media buttons and increase the number of your followers. You can use it in any language thanks to its multilingual feature.
Main features:
- Drag-and-drop builder
- Responsive design
- Social media integration
- SEO optimization
- Multilingual support
Click here to learn more about Elementor
Advanced Custom Fields
Rating: (2+ million installations)
This WordPress ecommerce plugin lets you take control of your edit screens and custom fields data. You can add fields anywhere on your site with a field builder quickly and easily. There’s also great help from the customer support team if you come across any troubles. Moreover, it lets you create field groups and define location rules. There are over 30 field types included—if that’s not enough you can create hundreds more to match your needs. Also, there are free resources, such as code examples, tutorials, and guides to help you use this ecommerce plugin to its full potential. You can learn more about fields, functions, actions, and filters from the resources provided.
Main features:
- Field builder
- Flexible and intuitive UI
- Localization support
- Field groups and location rules
- Rest API integration
Click here to learn more about Advanced Custom Fields
Site Reviews
Rating: (30,000+ installations)
Site Reviews allows your visitors to submit reviews with a 1-5 star rating on your website, just like you would on TripAdvisor or Yelp. The plugin provides blocks, shortcodes, and widgets, along with full documentation. You can pin your best reviews so that they are always shown first, require approval before new review submissions are published, require visitors to be logged-in in order to write a review, send custom notifications on a new submission, and a whole lot more!
Main features:
- Review submission forms
- Customizable rating criteria
- Rich snippets and schema.org support
- Anti-spam features
- Display reviews in a widget or a reviews page
Click here to learn more about Site Reviews
Choosing the Right Plugin for Your WordPress Store
Let’s move on to the popular WordPress ecommerce plugins that help you run, protect, and customize your online store. Here are the plugins you should consider for your WordPress store:
- WooCommerce
- WP Shopify
- BigCommerce for WordPress
- Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart
- Easy Digital Downloads
- Yoast SEO
- Tidio Live Chat
- WP ERP
- Mailchimp for WordPress
- Wordfence Security
- Flexible Shipping
- Elementor
- Advanced Custom Fields
- Site Reviews
Do you have your favorite now? You can make use of the free versions or a free trial to play around with the plugin and make sure it’s the right option for you. Check out some of the best WordPress ecommerce plugins for your online store.
Now, let’s see what you should look out for when embedding ecommerce plugins onto your WordPress site.
Choosing the Right Plugin for Your WordPress Store
Let’s now look at what you need to pay attention to when choosing a plugin for your WordPress store. The three most important aspects include speed, support, and regular updates. The rest of the features depend solely on the type of business you have and its needs.
It’s not about the number of plugins but about their quality. Some of them can slow down your website by as much as 50%, decrease your site’s performance, and decrease the user experience. Plugins will add additional code that a browser has to load, and this can slow it down. To explain it simply: a website with a simple codebase will (most of the time) load faster than the one with a complicated codebase. But some plugins have simpler code than others and don’t slow down your site. That’s why it’s important to choose the right ones and test your WordPress ecommerce plugins from time to time:
- Read through the process more in detail and use the P3 Plugin Performance Profiler to find out if any of your WordPress ecommerce plugins are slowing down your page.
- You can also check this list of the most common WordPress performance issues to see what to avoid and the alternatives.
You may run into issues once you install a new WordPress plugin. Don’t get discouraged — you’re not the only one. But that’s why it’s important that the plugin you choose has good customer support and a community to help you out. The people on the forum and in the community can be great resources for troubleshooting uncommon issues because chances are they already experienced them. So, check the reviews and the number of active installations to see the size of the group of people you can reach out to with problems. Also, check what the reviewers are saying about the customer service. Is it quick in responding? Do they fix issues? And do developers respond to bad reviews to try to turn them around? You need to be sure that customer support will solve your issues in a timely manner if your plugin crashes or your payment system fails. You can also see if you can pay extra for personalized support if that’s what your needs are.
WordPress changes quickly. And new versions are released constantly. In fact, WordPress 5.7 was updated alone. This can create compatibility issues for the WordPress ecommerce plugins that don’t keep up. Good plugins are frequently updated. And it is important for them to stay up to date with the latest WordPress version to avoid compatibility issues. It’s important because these issues can end up breaking your website. So, when choosing your new ecommerce plugin for WordPress, make sure that it has a recent update and that it works well. Also, look at the reviews and updates log to find out how often it is updated and if developers do a good job at fixing bugs.
These are the top three aspects you need to watch out for. The rest? It depends purely on your business and what you’ll be selling. If you want to create a store with physical products, then you’ll need a WordPress eCommerce plugin that has features like shipping and inventory management. If you plan on selling digital goods, then you should focus on your SEO efforts for clients to find you. So, go through what’s important for your store and find your perfect match from our list above.
Conclusion
For starters, get one that will turn your website into an ecommerce store, one that will keep it safe and secure, one that will help you with SEO activities, and one for customer support. All the others are optional and depend on the type of business you want to conduct.
That’s all for today. Go ahead and explore the plugins from the list for yourself to choose your perfect fit.
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