Ready to set up or expand your eCommerce store and wondering which plugins are the best eCommerce plugins for WordPress?
WordPress makes setting up and running an eCommerce store a pretty awesome experience. After you choose your primary eCommerce plugin, there are so many other plugins in the marketplace that you can add to do everything from sending emails from your store to making it run faster.
In this article, we’ll focus on the best eCommerce plugins for WordPress that’ll be the basis of your store. After that, we’ll list a few extras that you can use to add some essential features to your store, no matter which eCommerce plugin you choose.
Best eCommerce Plugins: Our Picks
You probably won’t be surprised to see that WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads are the first two eCommerce plugins on our list. They’re probably the top two on just about any list of the best eCommerce plugins for WordPress! They’re at the top for good reason, with their long lists of great features, integrations, and extensions/add-ons.
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WooCommerce is the gold standard for selling physical products with WordPress. Because of its reigning popularity, tons of themes and extensions are created exclusively for WooCommerce, and many other plugins have WooCommerce integrations.
We like WooCommerce for a lot of reasons. First, it’s easy to install and set up. WooCommerce onboards many new users every day, so they’ve got the whole process dialed in. The necessary cart pages are created for you when you install the plugin, and you get a pretty straightforward walkthrough inside your dashboard:
WooCommerce adds several new tabs inside your WordPress dashboard to create a complete eCommerce store. You’ll find settings pages, payment options, a list of orders, a database of your customers, an extensions marketplace, built-in analytics, and a lot more.
In short, WooCommerce is easy to use and extremely customizable. Of course, even though it’s easy to use, it can definitely be overwhelming when you’re first getting started. There are SO many settings, themes, extensions, and integrations; it can be hard to know how to start (and when to stop and publish your store). The setup walkthrough does help with that, but it’s quite a bit to learn.
How much does WooCommerce cost? You might be surprised to learn that the base plugin is completely free. You can control your costs pretty well by choosing your theme, extensions, and payment options with a budget in mind.
Although using WooCommerce to sell digital items is possible, we recommend going with the next plugin on our list (Easy Digital Downloads) for that.
Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is the best eCommerce plugin for WordPress for selling digital products. Use it to sell your eBooks, software, courses, PDF documents, or any other digital products easily.
We love Easy Digital Downloads because, like WooCommerce, it’s highly customizable and user-friendly. It has a marketplace of add-ons that you can use to add payment gateways, email marketing tools, reviews, coupons/discounts, and a lot more. Its onboarding process is even more straightforward than WooCommerce — just follow the simple steps to get set up and running:
Need a great-looking theme? EDD offers a free download of its eCommerce theme, Themedd. Or, use one of the suggested third-party themes in their themes marketplace (or just about any theme out there).
Like WooCommerce, you can get started with Easy Digital Downloads completely for free. You’ll get unlimited products, unlimited transactions, and no hidden listing fees. You’re in control of how much you spend on your store based on the extra features you need to sell your products effectively.
Top Easy Digital Downloads features:
Free to start with unlimited products and unlimited transactions
Customizable, clean checkout experience with the included WordPress block
Customer management database
Secure file protection
Recurring payments
Automatic billing
Free trials
Built-in reporting
Custom discount codes
Tons of available add-ons with all the features you might need
Pricing: Easy Digital Downloads is free to get started, then starts at $89.55/year.
WP Simple Pay is a lightweight option for selling basic digital products and collecting payments without tons of eCommerce features that you don’t really need. Use it to create conversion-focused payment forms of any kind and accept payments on your website.
Although WP Simple Pay is simple to use and has “simple” right in the name, it still includes all the features you need to create a fantastic eCommerce site and flawless checkout experience. There are even one-step payment forms that your users won’t have any issues filling out quickly.
WP Simple Pay makes selling on WordPress incredibly quick and easy. Just spin up your payment form, connect a payment gateway, and start collecting payments. It’s that easy! Use it to collect donations or sell digital products without any hassle or extra features you don’t really need.
Like the first two eCommerce plugins, you can start with WP Simple Pay for free. Create basic Stripe payment forms for free to get started! Of course, there are a lot of awesome features in the paid versions of WP Simplay Pay, too, like custom landing pages, the ability to activate buy now/pay later, accept recurring payments, and more.
We love WP Simple Pay because it really does make selling digital products or accepting other payments in WordPress simple. Setup takes 5 minutes, so you can get going really quickly.
Ecwid is an eCommerce plugin for WordPress that’s an alternative to WooCommerce. It starts free, then really grows with you. It’s not as customizable as WooCommerce, but it does have a user-friendly interface and is quick to set up. For that reason, it’s great for beginners.
Setup with Ecwid is also done using an onboarding process that’s pretty straightforward and easy to follow.
We found that Ecwid is a good choice for selling your products on Facebook and Instagram. It integrates directly with those social media channels so you can sell your products there to grow your store. Besides Facebook and Instagram, it also integrates with eBay, Amazon, Google Shopping, and TikTok, so you can really expand your store to other platforms.
The store integrates with whatever theme you have, and layouts can be changed using the block editor.
Although there’s a free version of Ecwid, you can only use it for up to 5 products. It’s really more of a free trial than something you’d probably use long-term. You get a lot more products, features, and integrations with a paid account, starting at $14.08 per month.
Top features:
Quick and easy setup
Integrates with numerous other platforms to expand your store
Has Android and iOS apps to easily manage your store on-the-go
Integrates with major shipping carriers to calculate shipping rates
Automated tax rate calculations
Hosted (your store is on their servers, not yours)
Many extensions to expand your store
Pricing: You can start with Ecwid for free for 5 products. Get more products and features starting at $14.08 per month, billed yearly.
BigCommerce is different from the other plugins on our list because it’s a separate, hosted platform with a WordPress integration. It’s not a store that you build directly on your WordPress site. Instead, you set up your store through BigCommerce, and then connect it to your WordPress website.
We believe this may be a good solution if you have already set up your store in BigCommerce but want the flexibility of a WordPress store, or you like the features and pricepoint of BigCommerce but don’t love their website designs. Or, if you have a large product catalog with many product options, BigCommerce might be better suited to handle your product catalog.
Whatever your reasoning, the BigCommerce for WordPress plugin helps you seamlessly connect your WordPress site and your BigCommerce store. Your product catalog will remain stored in BigCommerce, but your eCommerce website will be on WordPress.
Because of the more complex setup and the need to work with two different systems, this isn’t a solution we recommend for beginners. However, if you’re already a BigCommerce user, expanding to WordPress is a good way to grow your store.
Top BigCommerce for WordPress features:
Sell across eBay, Amazon, Google Shopping, Facebook, and more
Use any WordPress theme
PCI compliance done for you
All payment gateways, taxation, and other features come standard, not as add-ons
Over 65 payment gateway integrations
Works with Gutenberg or classic editor
Pricing: The BigCommerce for WordPress plugin is free, but BigCommerce itself starts at $29 per month, billed yearly.
If it’s memberships you want to sell, MemberPress is the eCommerce plugin you need. This plugin is at the top of its class for membership sales and management!
What makes MemberPress so awesome? We love it because it includes all the features you’re going to need, so you don’t have to search for additional plugins to make your membership site exactly how you need it to be. For example, if you’re selling courses, it includes a course creator right inside its dashboard, so you don’t have to use a separate plugin or tool to create your courses.
Or, if it’s a community you’re building, you can use MemberPress to lock a forum behind a paywall. The content access rules are super easy to set up, but advanced to lock whatever portions of your site you need.
The Shopify buy button for WordPress is the last eCommerce plugin on our list because it’s only recommended in certain circumstances. If you’ve already set up a Shopify store and you need a way to integrate it with a WordPress site, then adding a “Buy Now” button that links to the product in your Shopify store is what you’ll need to do.
The Shopify buy button for WordPress doesn’t have a ton of features, but it’s very easy to use that way. Just change the look of it to match your WordPress site, then embed a code snippet to make the button appear.
Top Shopify buy button for WordPress features:
Let visitors shop your products from your WordPress site
Easy setup and management from Shopify dashboard
Design the button to match your site
Pricing: The Shopify buy button for WordPress costs $5 per month.
While these two eCommerce plugins for WordPress didn’t make our list, they’re worth checking out if none of the plugins so far have piqued your interest.
eCommerce Product Catalog – Free product catalog plugin for WordPress eCommerce or a simple product catalog website with a request for a quote functionality
More WordPress Plugins for eCommerce Stores
Depending on the eCommerce plugin you chose, you might need a few more to really create the store that works perfectly for you. So, we’re making a list here of some that’ll add much-needed features to your store!
The Necessities
ExactMetrics – Easily install Google Analytics on your store and set up eCommerce tracking with a couple of clicks
WPForms – The best drag & drop WordPress form builder plugin
All in One SEO– Optimize your site so it can be found by search engines
WP Mail SMTP – Make sure those important transaction emails get sent out
Marketing Plugins for eCommerce Sites
PushEngage– Send reminders and updates to your customers on their desktops – reduce cart abandonment
OptinMonster– Create popups that target the right visitors at the right time to increase your sales
Smash Balloon – Integrate your social media feeds with your site to increase engagement
UserFeedback– Run surveys on your site to find out what customers really think
Website Improvement Plugins for eCommerce Sites
WP Rocket– Keep your store running fast, no matter how many products and images you add to it
SeedProd – Build awesome landing pages, or even your own WordPress theme
That’s it! We hope you found a plugin or two to help you make your eCommerce store awesome.
