It was a long time ago when WordPress was just a tool for creating nice blogs for your business, or just doing some content creation for it. Now, WordPress is much, much more. You can do professional stuff using this platform, and create some truly amazing websites and web pages that both look and feel great. However, WordPress can also be used for eCommerce, and you can do that by installing various plugins for WordPress, which may or may not be free.
Running an eCommerce website is a great way to make money using WordPress. Today we are going to discuss more about some of the eCommerce plugins you can use to set up such a website.
What is an eCommerce Plugin for WordPress?
An eCommerce plugin can be many things for your WordPress website. For example, the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce, does everything for you. From inventory management to payments, everything is handled by the plugin.
But, this may not be the case with every eCommerce plugin you come across. Some of them provides simple functionalities such as a cart page, while others are more advanced. So, any plugin that helps you run an eCommerce website based on WordPress can be considered as an eCommerce plugin.
Most Popular WordPress Plugins for eCommerce
eCommerce is something like a digital shop, that you can use for many things. Now, with this info on your mind, let’s check the 10 best WordPress plugins for eCommerce.
1. WooCommerce
At this moment, WooCommerce might be the most popular plugin for eCommerce websites, counting more than ten million downloads. The best of all is that it’s also free to download from the WordPress repository. Feature-wise, WooCommerce allows for quick and easy upload of all of your products on a website, whether it’s a physical or a digital product like a picture or MP3 audio.
After that, you can completely customize your products by adding pictures, videos, descriptions, and similar, and visitors can immediately make a purchase, after viewing your product, using PayPal or any other option you can provide.
2. Cart66 Lite
Cart66 Lite isn’t free of charge, and it comes at $95, a year… BUT, there are tons of features. This plugin works a little differently, connecting your website to Cart66 Cloud, which means that you don’t need to worry about data encryption and security scans. You’ll still need to host your own website, though. Aside from that, Cart66 Lite offers free storage from Amazon Web Services and will give you access to almost a 100 payment gateways, which is great for you and your customers.
3. iThemes Exchange
Another free eCommerce plugin is iThemes Exchange, and I like it because it’s quite simple to use. It offers a similar experience to the first entry on our list, allowing the users to create their own digital markets and sell products. You can then add various descriptions and product variants, and even customize your BUY button, which is cool, but some of these features are available in a premium version which is $199 a year. For a start, I would go with the free version.
4. MarketPress eCommerce
MarketPress eCommerce is a great plugin, that you can download for free, but I would recommend going premium, and here’s why. WPMU Dev’s will offer you this plugin for $24.50 a month, but not only that; you’ll get access to more than 130 free plugins that you can download, and can help you in your business. Here, you can sell anything that comes to your mind, from digital products to real products in just a matter of seconds, and with around 16 gateways built-in, you aren’t limited just to PayPal.
5. WP E-commerce
WP E-commerce was one of the most important plugins for WordPress at the time it came out, and now, although it isn’t that popular, it’s still a great solution. Aside from adding the product to your website, WP E-commerce allows adding a shopping cart function to your site, but it’s limited to PayPal and PayPal Pro when it comes to paying. The main downside here is that you can add only one image per product, so you’ll need to buy a premium version, which isn’t that cheap.
6. Easy Digital Downloads
As its name says, if you are looking to sell some digital stuff on the internet, then Easy Digital Downloads is just for you. It looks and feels really well, and I like how elegant it is, with attention to detail. This plugin will let you set multiple payment gateways, add shopping cart functionality to your website, add the ability to re-download files, and much more.
In my opinion, if you are highly focused on digital goods, then you can just get this one for free. No need to pay for less capable plugins, as Easy Digital Downloads will do everything to satisfy your needs from an eCommerce plugin for WordPress.
7. Jigoshop
Jigoshop will offer you a unique eCommerce experience, and it’s developed by very experienced developers that worked with many big brands. This means that you can find anything you need here, from digital to variable, grouped, and affiliate products, and they can easily be bought or sold. If you are a seller, you can sell your goods by choosing multiple gateways for Payment, along with many shipping methods. It’s simple and highly customizable, and that’s all I need for a great eCommerce experience.
8. Shopp
I’m amazed by how Shopp looks and works. It’s a highly-professional plugin that will let you set up your shopping cart within minutes, which is secure and doesn’t require any other plugins. Customers can now even create their own accounts and receive various discounts upon buying some of the products. You can sell both digital and physical goods, and if you decide on digital, you can also take advantage of the resumable downloads feature. A fine piece of eCommerce plugin, that I’ve used for a couple of times.
9. eShop
We’ve come near the end of our list, so we’ve listed eShop as a solid performer, offering nothing new for us. It works simply and allows adding various products, along with creating a shopping cart and then customizing those products, and adding multiple payment gateways. I also like it because it’s SEO-friendly, which is a key feature for WordPress. Products can also be sold around the world, so you have to choose some of the shipping methods, which I’m glad are here. This plugin is temporarily unavailable.
10. Kissherder
Kissherder is for those that already created their digital stores, and want to take care of their visitors. This plugin will let you see everything you want to know about your website; when was it visited, who visited it, and when? This will allow you to add so-called KISSmetrics to be able to get info about the website’s traffic, tweets, shares, comments, etc.
But, it’s so expensive and costs $5 a day, which comes at $150 a month and nearly $2000 a year. This WordPress eCommerce plugin hasn’t been updated for a long time. So only use after confirming with the KiSSmetrics support.
WordPress eCommerce Plugin FAQs
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about WordPress eCommerce plugins.
WooCommerce is the best eCommerce plugin you can use to create, manage, and earn from an eCommerce website based on WordPress. It comes with almost everything you would require in the free version itself.
Most of the payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net are supported by the popular eCommerce plugins. You can easily integrate them by following the documentations provided by each plugin developer.
If you choose any eCommerce plugin with positive reviews, like the ones listed in this article, you are good to go. Just don’t use any unknown plugins with little to no reviews.
Some eCommerce plugins such as WooCommerce also supports selling digital products. You can configure almost every setting for letting users buy digital assets from your websites. Buyers can even directly download the products after making the payment.