The many benefits people enjoy when they build their website with WordPress rapidly make people veer towards it for their business growth. WordPress websites are best set up with the right set of ecommerce plug-ins. Plug-ins allow you to add new features to your WordPress website to improve its functionality and meet your specific business needs. However, without using the appropriate ecommerce plug-ins that meet your business-specific needs, then the website’s success might not be assured. It is essential to be very meticulous when selecting the right ecommerce plug-ins for your business because it is always hard to change once it’s already running.
There are thousands of plug-ins in the WordPress repository to select from. Hence, choosing the best ecommerce plug-ins might be tasking. However, it is worthwhile to carefully understand the things to look out for to choose the best plug-in and also know the list of best ecommerce plug-ins. This will save you unnecessary stress and money to change plug-in after initially selecting one that is inappropriate for your business. This article contains vital hints about the major things to consider before selecting the right plug-ins for your website. Then we will outline the best ecommerce plug-ins for your website. After carefully reading this article, you should be able to select the most appropriate plug-in for your WordPress site.
What do I consider before settling for an ecommerce plug-in for my website?
Many factors determine the right plug-in for you. These are some of the essentials to consider:
- Your Business need:
Various plug-ins are available to meet different specific business needs; the first thing to look out for is how the features of the plug-in meet your business needs accurately. Some plug-ins are best for selling digital goods, while some are ideal for physical goods. Some plug-ins are best for drop-shipping business, while some are best for wholesale business. You need to consider what you will be selling on your online store and how before selecting a plug-in. Also, there are some custom functions that some certain online stores require, for instance, membership, subscription, recurring sales, user categorization, and others. You need to create a platform that can enable these functions on your online store.
- The Plug-in Easy of Use
Consider if the plug-in is user-friendly before choosing it. The ideal plug-in should be easy for adding new features and performing any other task. Both developers with adequate tech skill and beginners with little tech skills love to work with plug-in with ease of you.
- Support and Popularity
Be sure if a plug-in has a strong 24/7 customer support system before choosing it. You need customer support services to overcome certain issues if need be. The popularity of a plug-in also means that it has a vast community of users that can help you quickly troubleshoot issues not properly addressed in the plug-in user’s guide.
- Effect on Page Speed
Avoid plug-ins that slow down your page speed. Carefully read plug-ins reviews to discover what users have to say about their impact on page speed. Avoid plug-in that slows down your page speed.
- Integrations opportunities
Take time to discover to know if the plug-in you want to choose can be integrated into third-party apps like CRM software, email marketing service, accounting software, and many others. These massively influence your business growth
- Payment Options Support
Find out if the plug-in supports the payment gateway you are using. This won’t make you have any reason to source alternative solutions for payment issues. This will also have a positive effect on your sales.
- Add-on Options
It’s always smart to select an ecommerce plug-in that provides you many add-on options. This will enable you to create a well-customized website that suits your fancy and meet your business needs.
Now that you know the essential things out for in a plug-in, we will take a comparative look at the best ecommerce plug-ins for WordPress.
Here are the best ecommerce plug–ins:
- WooCommerce
- BigCommerce
- MemberPress
- Easy Digital Downloads
- Shopify
- WP
1. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is owned by Automattic, who also owns WordPress.com, a blog hosting platform. This makes WooCommerce plug-in is the best plug-in for WordPress websites, making it the most used WordPress ecommerce plug-in. WooCommerce has a wide repository of themes and add-ons for your unique design pleasure. It has great support and a large community of users. WooCommerce ecommerce plug-in tick all the boxes of factors to look out for before selecting an ecommerce plug-in. This, therefore, makes it top the list of best plug-in for WordPress.
Benefits of using WooCommerce as your WordPress ecommerce plug–in
- WooCommerce comes with many themes, add-ons, extensions, and other features for the easy creation of a website. These features also make it possible to create a customized website that meets your needs.
- WooCommerce supports sales of both digital and physical goods. The plug-in allows you to add all kinds of products and sells easily
- WooCommerce comes with excellent tools for the efficient management of inventory.
- You won’t have a problem with payment when using WooCommerce. It works with popular payment gateways, and you can even select other payment options from its extension.
- WooCommerce supports affiliate marketing. You can add affiliate products to your website to make more money.
- WooCommerce is the most popular ecommerce platform, So, it has the largest ecommerce user forum. The vast community of users provides the necessary supports to help you solve problems if there is a need for any.
Drawbacks of WooCommerce
- WooCommerce has the issue of scalability; as the store gets bigger, you will need to move it to WP Engine, a well-managed hosting provider
- The many themes and add-ons that comes with WooCommerce may overwhelm user sometime when setting up a site.
2. BigCommerce
As an alternative to WooCommerce, BigCommerce is more scalable. The ecommerce plug-in creates a headless commerce solution for smooth and easy integration with WordPress. It enables you to manage your content and run your website efficiently. It also assures your site security. And doesn’t limit your page speed. Though new to the ecommerce Plug-in market
Benefits of BigCommerce
- BigCommerce is a highly scalable platform. It many features that can help your business grows rapidly and also accommodate your business growth.
- BigCommerce plug-in is easy to run on your WordPress site. Also, the BigCommerce plug-in doesn’t slow down your page’s overall speed.
- BigCommerce comes with many discounting and segmentation tools making it easy for you to offer promotions and discounts for your products.
Drawbacks of BigCommerce Plugin
- BigCommerce, unlike WooCommerce, has limited integration with third-party apps and tools. Its app store doesn’t have less popular apps, perhaps because its app store is still growing.
- BigCommerce yearly sales threshold upgrade may become too expensive for some businesses as they grow.
3. MemberPress
This is the best ecommerce plug-in to sell subscription-based products and the best membership plug-in to create a membership website. Choosing MemberPress comes with a lot of benefits for your WordPress site. It enables you to charge your users to access your digital goods to generate your website’s recurring income. It accepts various payment gateways and allows you to integrate your website with WooCommerce. It is great for selling digital products.
Benefits of MemberPress
- It allows you to make recurring income for your online store with the subscription-based product, pay per view content, and membership plans
- MemberPress benefits online learning platforms massively. It comes with a built-in course builder that allows the platform to create and sell courses to users.
- MemberPress offers many extension that allows integration to other platforms like WooCommerce or learns dash. Similarly, MemberPress can all be integrated with many email marketing services to drive sales.
Drawbacks of MemberPress
The product subscription it offers may also be seen as a drawback to some product sales or business services. The annual pricing plan of MemberPress is also a drawback; some users prefer a monthly plan.
4. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy digital download ecommerce plug-in offers many features for fast, easy, and seamless digital product sales. It has many themes and extensions to support your storefront’s capability and customize it to meet your desired outlook. AS the name suggests, it is perfect for selling digital downloads.
Benefits of Easy Digital Downloads
- EDD is very easy to use. It allows you to add products and improve your site functionality easily. EDD is compatible with any WordPress theme
- EDD has hundreds of extensions for many purposes, such as add-ons for payment gateway and marketing platforms. It is an ecommerce plug-in that provides many features for easy sales of digital product
- EED has a well-documented support guide; free support forums, chatrooms, videos, and tutorials are available to ensure easy use of the plug-in.
Drawbacks of Easy Digital Downloads
It allows easy creation of a site for digital product sales. It is strenuous to create a site for both digital and non-digital products on the platform. You need a third-party add-on to add affiliate products on Easy Digital Downloads.
5. Shopify
Shopify offers great ecommerce service for both digital and non-digital products. Shopify gives you the opportunity to sell your products on any website, including WordPress. Shopify is the best cloud-based ecommerce platform, allowing you to run your ecommerce platform from anywhere. Shopify is very easy to use than most conventional WordPress plug-ins. Also, it doesn’t negatively affect your website speed.
Benefits of Shopify
- Shopify is very easy to use; you can get your site running very fast with Shopify. It is best for sales of both physical and digital products. This is one of the competitive edges it has above other ecommerce platforms.
- Shopify allows selling both your digital and physical products
- Shopify makes it easy for you to integrate your site with social media and sell your product on platforms like Facebook store. It also allows you to create buyable pins on Pinterest.
- Shopify also enables you to perform efficient and excellent product management. This includes management of product description, image, and pricing as well as back-end product management like inventory, shipping, and delivery.
Drawbacks of Shopify
One major drawback of Shopify is that it charges additional transaction fees. If you’re using another payment gateway different from Stripe, you will have to pay fees on every transaction made.
6. WP eCommerce
WP eCommerce is not so popular as WooCommerce, but it is the oldest and the most traditional WordPress ecommerce plug-in. That is why it is often called ‘the original WordPress ecommerce plug-in.’ It has many out-of-the-box features that enable you to create an attractive online store. It also allows integration to many payment gateways. It easily configures taxes and shopping. It also allows easy addition of products to your catalog.
Key Benefits of WP eCommerce
- It offers many features as well as a free and paid add-on for the creation of your online store and extends its functionality
- It comes with tons of themes and extensions for your store design. This, therefore, gives you some freedom to create a well-customized wordpress site that satisfies your business needs
- It can be integrated into many payment gateways with ease. This thus eliminates the issue of payment solutions on your online stores.
Drawbacks of WP eCommerce
WP eCommerce has fewer extensions compared to WooCommerce, which makes WooCommerce more preferred to it.
After careful reading of this article, it is expected that you should now have a clear idea of the best ecommerce plug-in you need to build a fully functional ecommerce site on WordPress.