Ecommerce is the process of selling goods or services online. It is a very popular business model, but it can be challenging to get started. This blog post will help you get your e-commerce store off the ground and running smoothly.
There are many different types of e-commerce plugins available. Some are free, while others require payment. In this article, we’ll focus on the best free WordPress plugins for ecommerce.
We’ll start by explaining what makes an e-commerce plugin good, then we’ll look at some popular options that might work for you. Finally, we’ll wrap things up with some tips on how to evaluate whether or not a particular plugin is right for your needs.
Free WordPress Plugin For Ecommerce
Are you looking to build an online store? Want to know which is the best WordPress eCommerce plugin?
Choosing the right eCommerce plugin is crucial for your business because a better platform means more opportunity for growth. Often users end up losing money because they didn’t do proper research when choosing the eCommerce platform to start their store.
In this article, we will compare the 5 best WordPress eCommerce plugins. We will also explain their pros and cons to help you find which eCommerce plugin is right for your business.
What to Look for in a WordPress eCommerce Plugin for Your Site?
There are plenty of WordPress eCommerce plugins in the market. But not all of them have the right set of features for your use-case.
For example, some eCommerce plugins are made for selling digital goods like eBooks, photos, music, etc. Others are better suited for selling physical products that need shipping.
If you want to run a drop-shipping business, then you’ll need an eCommerce solution that provides better support for drop-shipping.
Basically, you need to consider what you will be selling and what kind of features you would need to efficiently run your online store.
Apart from that, following are some of the most important factors you need to look for when choosing an eCommerce platform.
- Payment solutions – Your eCommerce plugin should have support for your preferred payment gateways by default or through an extension.
- Design and customization – Your store’s design is your customer’s first interaction with your business. Make sure there are plenty of templates and easy customization options available
- Apps and integrations – Check out integrations available for third-party apps like email marketing services, CRM software, accounting software, etc. You’ll need those tools to manage and grow your eCommerce business more efficiently.
- Support options – Make sure that there are support options available. Good support can save you a lot of money in the long run.
What Do You Need to Run an eCommerce Website?
Ecommerce websites are resource intensive, so the first thing you will need is the best WordPress hosting that you can afford.
If you’re on a budget, then you can start with SiteGround or Bluehost. The Ecommerce plan comes with SSL Certificate which you need to collect payments securely, dedicated IP, and a dedicated support line. They also install WooCommerce by default, which is the most powerful WordPress Ecommerce plugin (as you’ll find out later in this article).
If budget is not an issue, and you want the best performance, then we recommend using a managed WordPress hosting provider like WPEngine.
Next, you will need to choose a domain name for your website. Here is our guide on how to pick the right domain name for your eCommerce site.
Lastly, you will need to choose essential business plugins that you will need such as OptinMonster which help you reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase sales.
Having that said, let’s take a look at the best WordPress eCommerce plugins.
Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins – The Contenders
Now that you know what to look for in an eCommerce platform and what you need to get started, here are our top picks for the best eCommerce platform for WordPress users.
Let’s take a look at each one of them and compare their pros and cons.
1. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin. It is also the most popular eCommerce platform in the world. WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com blog hosting service) in 2015.
There is a large number of addons and themes available for WooCommerce. They also have a passionate developer community behind it. Recently several hosting companies have started creating specialized WooCommerce hosting solutions.
Pros of Using WooCommerce
Here are some of the advantages of using WooCommerce as your WordPress eCommerce plugin:
Extensions and Themes – There are hundreds of extensions and themes available for WooCommerce, which makes it easy for you to add new features to your eCommerce site. Large collection of themes means you have tons of options when choosing your site’s design and layout.
Supports Both Digital and Physical Goods – With WooCommerce, you can sell physical as well as digital downloads (such as ebooks, music, software, and more).
Sell Affiliate or External Products – Using WooCommerce, you can add affiliate or external products to your site. Affiliate marketers can create product sites and provide users a better experience.
Complete Inventory Management – WooCommerce comes equipped with tools to easily manage your inventory or even assign it to a store manager.
Payment and Shipping Options – WooCommerce has built-in support for popular payment gateways, and you can add many other payment options using extensions. It can also calculate shipping and taxes.
Support and Documentation – There is excellent documentation available online for WooCommerce. Apart from documentation, there is knowledge base, help desk, and community forums available.
Cons of Using WooCommerce
Too Many Options – WooCommerce is very easy to use, but the number of options available on the settings page can be quite intimidating for a new user.
Finding Addons – There are lots of addons available for WooCommerce, sometimes a user may not find the right addon for features that they need.
Theme Support – WooCommerce works with any WordPress theme, but it is not always as easy to setup or good looking with all themes. You need a WooCommerce ready theme to take full advantage of its features without too much hassle.
Scalability – As your store gets larger, you will need to move to a managed hosting provider like WP Engine to scale your WooCommerce store.
WooCommerce is the perfect choice for any kind of eCommerce website. It has a large community of developers and users, a lot of addons and themes, excellent support for multilingual websites, and best free and paid support options.
2. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads allows you to easily sell digital downloads online using WordPress. It is very easy to use and comes with powerful features to create beautiful and functional digital goods store.
We use Easy Digital Downloads to sell our software like WPForms and MonsterInsights.
Pros of Using Easy Digital Downloads
Designed To Sell Digital Goods – Easy Digital Downloads is built from the ground up to sell digital downloads. Unlike eCommerce plugins that can be used to sell all kind of products, EDD provides a far better experience for selling digital goods.
Easy To Use – Easy digital downloads is very easy to use, from the start you would instantly figure out how to add products and display them. This is really useful for the first timers.
Extensions – There are hundreds of extensions available for Easy Digital Downloads including addons for payment gateways, marketing platforms and services.
Themes – Easy Digital Downloads works with almost any WordPress theme, however if you have not choosen a theme yet, then Easy Digital Downloads has themes built specifically for the plugin.
Awesome Support – The plugin is very well documented, and you have free support forums, videos, tutorials, and even an IRC chatroom. There is also a priority support option for premium users.
Cons of Using Easy Digital Downloads
Digital Downloads Only – As the name suggests, Easy Digital Downloads makes it easier to create eCommerce sites for digital goods. But if you want to sell non-digital goods along with digital downloads then it will become quite complicated.
Selling External Products – If you want to add an external product or an affiliate product to your EDD store, then you will need to install a third-party add on for it.
When it comes to selling digital products online, we believe that Easy Digital Downloads is the best plugin to do that. We have used Easy Digital Downloads with great success, not only on client sites but also on a few of our own projects.
3. MemberPress
MemberPress allows you to sell subscription based digital products and services. It is the best WordPress membership plugin with tons of integration options. It can even integrate with WooCommerce.
Let’s take a look at pros and cons MemberPress.
Pros of Using MemberPress
Sell Subscription Based Products – Allows you to easily sell subscription based products, membership plans, pay per view content, and more.
Powerful Access Rules – Powerful access control allows you to define user access levels and content restrictions. Only users with permissions will be able to access restricted content.
Built-in Course Builder – MemberPress comes with a course builder that allows you to create & sell courses by offering your users an immersive online learning platform.
Content Dripping – MemberPress allows you to release paid content over time similar to episodes on Amazon Prime shows or other platforms.
Powerful Extensions – You can integrate it to your WooCommerce store or LearnDash LMS. There are tons of extensions to connect MemberPress with third-party services.
Cons of Using MemberPress
Limited Payment Options – MemberPress only supports PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net.
Yearly Pricing – Pricing plans are available on yearly terms alone.
MemberPress is the perfect eCommerce plugin to sell subscription based products, sell courses, or build a membership website. It is beginner friendly and can be easily extended with addons which allows you to take your eCommerce website in any direction you want.
4. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a fully hosted eCommerce platform that offers seamless integration with WordPress. This allows you to use a scalable eCommerce platform while using WordPress to manage your content and run your website.
It has a powerful integration plugin for WordPress which makes it very easy to embed your products in WordPress. It automatically creates the sign in, cart, account, and other important pages for you.
Let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of using BigCommerce as your WordPress eCommerce platform.
Pros of Using BigCommerce
- High scalability – It includes all the features you will need with enterprise grade security, high performance, and easy scalability.
- Less Maintainence – Keeping your eCommerce engine separate from other content makes it easier to run your WordPress site.
- Sell across Multiple Channels – You can use it to sell not only on your website but also on other channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon.
- No transaction charges – Unlike some other eCommerce platforms, it does not charge you on each transaction. You can choose from dozens of top payment gateways and only pay the payment service provider.
Cons of Using BigCommerce
- Limited Integrations – BigCommerce integrates with all the top third-party apps and tools. However, its app store is still growing, and you may not find an integration for some less popular apps.
- Yearly Sales Threshold – They have a yearly threshold on sales for each plan. If you reach that threshold then you are upgraded to the next plan. This may increase costs as your business grows.
BigCommerce is an incredibly powerful yet very easy to use eCommerce platform. It is a SaaS eCommerce platform, but with their BigCommerce WordPress plugin you can have the best of both worlds.
It takes away the pains of scaling your hosting requirements as your business grows. At the same time, you don’t have to worry about security, performance, or finding extensions for SEO and caching.
BigCommerce is a rising contender in WordPress for headless eCommerce. It takes care of technology infrastructure, so you can focus on growing your business.
5. Shopify
Shopify is a fast growing eCommerce platform that handles everything for you. Shopify isn’t a plugin but it’s an all in one solution that’s completely hassle free. See our guide on Shopify vs WooCommerce for detailed side-by-side comparison of the two platforms.
Let’s look at the Pros and Cons of Shopify.
Pros of Using Shopify
Super Easy for Beginners – No need to worry about the technical aspects of an eCommerce store such as setting up SSL, integrating with different payment gateways, handling shipping, worrying about taxes, etc. Shopify handles it all.
Supports Both Digital and Physical Goods – Whether you’re selling physical goods like shirts or digital downloads like music, Shopify can handle it all.
Complete Inventory Management – Shopify comes with an inventory editor and bulk importer combined with an order tracker which makes managing inventory a breeze.
Payment and Shipping Options – Shopify makes it easy for you to accept credit card both online and in person. Their shipping system streamline your fulfillment process with direct integration with popular providers like USPS.
Facebook Store and Buyable Pins – Shopify integrates with everything. Whether you want to create a Facebook store or create buyable Pins on Pinterest, you can do it all with Shopify.
Cons of Using Shopify
Monthly Platform Fee – Shopify charges you a monthly fee to use their platform which is comparable to purchasing hosting and individual addons using the other plugins in this list.
Shopify Payments – Shopify encourages you to use their payment platform which is powered by Stripe and is a very good option for beginners. However if you want to overcomplicate things and use external systems, then Shopify charges you an additional fee.
If you want to have a powerful platform without having to deal with technical issues, then Shopify is the solution for you. While the monthly fee sounds bad at first, the hassle-free approach and peace of mind are definitely worth it because it allows you to focus on what you do best, your business!
Shopify does not have a native integration with WordPress. BigCommerce in our list gives you everything Shopify offers while offering a seamless integration with your WordPress site.
Conclusion – The Best WordPress eCommerce Plugin is:
If you want maximum control, flexibility, and features, then WooCommerce is the best solution for you.
If you are just selling digital goods, then Easy Digital Downloads is the best WordPress eCommerce plugin for you.
If you don’t want to manage all the technical stuff of building an online store, then BigCommerce is the best option for you. It allows you to use a SaaS eCommerce platform side by side with WordPress as your content management system.
That’s all we hope this article helped you find the best WordPress eCommerce plugins for your site. You may also want to see our comparison of best drag and drop WordPress page builders, and our expert pick of the best business phone services for small businesses.
best free wordpress plugins for ecommerce
What are the best Free WordPress E-commerce plugins? Seeing that about 19% of existing websites around the world get to run on WordPress, it becomes essential to help users navigate their way around the use of WordPress and help you see how to maximize the engine in the achievement of your set business goals.
WordPress hosts different websites ranging from personal, to freelance, blogging, and professional websites. The flexible and easy-to-use website is suited to meet the different peculiar needs of website owners.
In the bid to improve flexibility and scale the customizability of the website, a large market of plugins are available to enhance the functionality of your website.
These plugins differ in the scope of function, usage, price, and applicability. This piece will, therefore, hinge on the several WordPress plugin options that concentrate on aiding the e-commerce functionality of a website. And not just any eCommerce plugin but free plugins that stand out among the rest.
Running an e-commerce business had never been easier. With the right e-commerce solution in place and features like shipping support, checkout, cataloging, and a long list of others catered for, E-commerce on WordPress become a child’s play.
An important note to take is the fact that not all available WordPress e-commerce plugin is right for you; in fact, not all best options will turn out best for your WordPress website. The high-level of customization with WordPress makes it difficult for one plugin to rank best for all users.
What this means is that you have to consider the particular features of your website, know your exact need and reach out for a free e-commerce WordPress plugin whose performance stands out in the area of your needed feature.
It’s also a good idea to know how to find a WordPress developer – in case you need something completely custom, or you want to customize a certain aspect of the e-commerce plugin you’ve chosen. As we mentioned, not every plugin is perfect for everyone, and tailoring them to your needs might improve how they fit within your website.
Below, check out our 7 best free E-commerce WordPress plugins.
Best Free e-commerce WordPress Plugins
Our selection of these seven best free E-commerce WordPress plugins is the result of a thoroughly conducted research.
And our research revealed the following seven free E-commerce plugins as the best:
WooCommerce
Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)
HubSpot
ECommerce Product Catalog
SendinBlue
Cart66 Cloud
WP e-commerce
While the WooCommerce plugin stood out on all grounds, especially for its excellent integration tools and beautiful potential layouts, our other six selected options are such that stood out from the rest in some particular features.
EDD, for instance, came second for the superiority of its digital goods management tools, and HubSpot for its marketing power.
Sit back, read through, and from our list, make a pick of the option that suits the peculiarity of your E-commerce website the most.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce
WooCommerce
The WooCommerce plugin is a free WordPress plugin that integrates with both new and existing WordPress installs. The plugin runs on WordPress and hence, doesn’t integrate with anything besides WordPress. It is easy to use, one-click e-commerce installation. The fact that it is an open-source digital platform is another thing that stands it out. There is the continuous development of and an active support community with developers continuously making all sorts of extensions and themes that integrate with the plugin.
The plugin deals with physical products, digital, and subscription products. And it is one of the few plugins that allow you to scale up quickly as your company grows. Along with several marketing extensions (email marketing and social media,) dozens of the top payment gateways, and excellent product pages with variants, groups, and affiliates, the feature-set defeats all other offerings from free e-commerce plugins.
The WooCommerce plugin comes with five installed payment gateways. Additional free and paid extensions for options like Amazon Payments, Stripe, Authorize.Net, PayPal Pro/Advanced/Express, FirstData, and Braintree are available. You can also improve the number of payment methods accepted because Apple Pay accepted through WooCommerce.
Another fantastic feature of WooCommerce that I should mention is the shipping and tax calculator tool. The digital company just launched a feature for WooCommerce extension to allows for quick creation of sponsored Facebook ads.
With the tool, you can keep track of shipping details and reveal multiple shipping methods in the shopping cart. The tax calculator provides custom calculation of tax for both you and the customer considering geo-location disparity and how it affects tax.
Related: WooCommerce vs Shopify in 2021: Who Comes Out On Top?
Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)
Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads
EDD is second on the list. It is a suite of several set of extensions. Just like WooCommerce, the plugin strictly integrates with only WordPress and hence, can not be used on other hosting platforms.
Easy Digital Downloads is a bang-up of a variety of extensions ranging from basic to advanced. It is best suited for the sales of digital products, although it is not limited to the sale of just digital products. The only itch is the fact that the extension required for the sales of physical products is not free. It comes at a price.
The extension library of the plugin also stands it out. The plugin offers extensions for discounts, codes, and virtually everything needed to get e-commerce running smoothly. The plugin is just beyond basic. It offers so much more beyond basic core features. Its interface is handy and user-friendly, making it suitable for beginners. Below is a list of some of its enabling extensions:
Secured payment gateways
The plugin integrates with highly secured processing payments. So by default, it cuts out security issues that are tied to payment and transactions generally. EDD integrates with Stripe. Braintree, Authorize.net, PayPal, Bitpay, and a host of others.
Advanced Selling features
EDD offers features that set you above the competition. For instance, extensions that enable your customers or visitors to make wishlists, save a cart or even create a profile. What this does is to collect relevant information that will boost your customer service and aid customer experience too.
Marketing tools
EDD also offers tools for marketing your products via email marketing and affiliate methods. Extension options like MailChimp and AWeber for newsletter distribution and even more for social media marketing, SEO and landing pages to increase visibility and marketing rewards are available.
Customer management
Customer management becomes an easy cake with EDD. With EDD, each customer has a separate file with the information on past purchases, preferences, and other necessary details needed for decision making. It becomes easier to make decisions concerning your customers with EDD in place.
Shipping and tax calculators
Get your shipping and tax figures right with EDD’s shipping extension. With it, you can understand your shipping processes and determine your charges for shipping costs.
HubSpot
HubSpot
HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing plugin from the HubSpot Digital platform. The tool is a growth catalyst. It maximizes the means of marketing in effecting growth in business. Over 100,000 businesses use HubSpot to attract, engage, and delight their prospects and customers. The WordPress e-commerce plugin improves sales, marketing, and services. It is integrated with more than 200 tools, including Shopify, Stripe, Zapier, and sign forms and email marketing software.
The plugin aids engagement tracking as you receive notifications every time your email is visited or clicks hit your link. Hubspot plugin offers features that make site-building easy and fast. With its drag and drop builder feature, you can build and add beautiful forms and popups to your website in no time.
It also aids CRM with its autos segmentation feature that categorizes contacts into lists and sees each interaction they’ve had with your website. The plugin also provides live chat and automated chatbots features for timely responses to your visitors’ questions. Automated emails are not left out when someone fills out a form or sends you a live chat message, allowing you to be in constant conversation with your potential customers. All emails get automatically logged into your CRM.
The built-in analytics help you improve your overall marketing efforts.
eCommerce Product Catalog
eCommerce product catalogue
eCommerce product catalog
ECommerce Product Catalog is an easy-to-use, free plugin for WordPress e-commerce. Although free, the plugin comes in both free and paid versions. It integrates with any theme and works well with most WordPress plugins. It is known for its high customizability and simplicity. The plugin option offers full WordPress e-commerce functionality for creating online shops and stores. It organizes products into multi-level categories, tags, and multiple product catalogs to aid product searches and improve customer experience.
The CSS feature of the plugin makes for high-quality code and beautiful designs. It offers two different product page models- the simple template, and tabular template. The plugin provides a catalog feature for an unlimited number of products. So the catalog can display over 100,000 products without doing the performance enhancement or speed of the site.
The SEO feature of the plugin gives WordPress site visibility with search engines. The plugin has several extensions for Product Reviews, Product Gallery Advanced extension, Quote Form, Order Form, Shopping Cart, Upload PDF, and a long list of others.
SendinBlue
SendInBlue
SendInBlue
SendinBlue made a list on account of its dashboard layout and Reporting feature.
SendinBlue helps you improve your customer-centric capacity. Its effect is felt more in connecting with your clients.
Truthfully, the SendinBlue e-commerce plugin doesn’t seem like the regular WordPress e-commerce plugin. To start with, it lacks inventory management features and some other essential features that are generic to other WordPress e-commerce plugins.
Still, nonetheless, it is instrumental in the running of your store. You’ll soon find out how.
It is your best bet if you aim to build long-lasting relationships with your target audience and improve the rate of returning customers and regular sales.
Its highlight features include improved user experience, real-time reports, and creation of custom subscription forms. Its segmentation feature is also topnotch. It segments customers according to personas, to enhance unique experiences, send automated newsletters, improve presence on the search engine result pages, and lots of other tools that enhance the customer experience.
The drag-and-drop tool for WordPress comes at no cost until you send more than 300 emails per day, and this attracts a reasonable price of around $25 per month.
Cart66 Cloud
Cart66 Cloud
Cart66 Cloud
If your need for a WordPress e-commerce plugin is to accept donations or publish digital magazines, then Cart66 is your go-to.
The plugin supports the sale of both digital and physical products and comes with over 100 built-in payment gateways. Cart66 is what you will call a composite plugin. It has an in-build of all the necessary features needed to sell online. So, with Cart66, you do not need extra plugins like Automattic and other e-commerce business tools.
The WordPress E-commerce plugin doesn’t cause too much weight to your site, so if the issue of site weight is a concern, Cart66 should help out. It keeps the site lightweight and straightforward. It offers excellent customer support features that make launching quite easier than it would be.
Although the plugin is free, it has a paid version; the premium version which comes at a $49 price per month.
WP eCommerce
WP eCommerce
WP eCommerce
WP eCommerce was the original eCommerce plugin for WordPress. They have been around for a very long time and had unrivaled experience in open source e-commerce business management. The plugin features tools that configure taxes and shipping details, manage and update product catalogs, monitor sales and reporting, provide reliable customer support, and integrates with several industry-leading payment gateways. Over 36,186 stores around the world depend on the plugin for optimized e-commerce business earnings.
Unlike many other WordPress e-commerce platforms, WP eCommerce is not product-limited. It allows for the sale of just about any type of product, digital goods, physical goods, and even the combination of both.
The plugin ensures secure payment with available free gateways such as ProPay, PayPal, and WorldPay to choose from. It also offers premium payment gateways such as Stripe, Authorize.net, and others.
Talking about its tax management feature, it is bliss. WP e-commerce has one of the most advanced tax management systems of any eCommerce platform.
The plugin offers multiple tax classes, exclusions, and tax bands. Its reporting system is another highlight feature. You can print packing slips, invoices, update your order statuses. The management of your entire inventory online becomes seamless with WP eCommerce.
The easy-to-setup plugin runs an automated marketing feature. Its integration with Google Base, Google Analytics, Share This, and some other extensions make marketing quite simple.
WP eCommerce is famous for its excellent customer support service. On this feature, it even beats our overall best: Woocommerce. The plugin has an extensive and rich store of information in the form of articles and how-to videos, to help users get started and seamlessly run their site. Asides the free support, the plugin offers a 30-day paid access to premium support at a $49 cost and $499 for annual access to premium support.
Considering the dashboard interface, and even the pricing plan, you will conclude that WP Ecommerce is a very similar product to Woocommerce, in fact for some people, both plugins are direct substitutes of one another.
Take, for instance, in terms of price, the only difference with the pricing plan of both plugins is WPecommerce’s Gold cart extension- its Premium version. Given their striking similarities, for most people, it becomes challenging to choose between both WordPress plugins.
Although this shouldn’t be a problem, categorically, the choice of plugins to choose for your website should generally depend on the need which the plugin is to meet.
The needed functionality on your WordPress site should inform your decision of the plugin to choose from. That established, although Woocommerce and WP e-commerce are similar in interface and pricing, their functionality differs a great deal. So, that should be an excellent point to note.
A noticeable difference between both plugins is the product review feature. On Woocommerce, the product review feature is free, while WP eCommerce requires that you pay for an add-on to enable the feature. Another difference in functionality is the advanced shipping feature on WP eCommerce. For WP Ecommerce, the shipping feature is advanced and free while it comes as a paid add-on on WooCommerce.
Conclusively, as I had already mentioned, not all ‘best’ plugins will turn out best for you. For instance, some of these plugins work better if you are selling just digital downloads. (Like in the case of WooCommerce and EDD. WooCommerce is a better option for companies that sell both physical and digital products, while if the company deals strictly with Digital products, EDD stands as a better option.) And for some others the highlight of their service is their easy setup.
So basically, know your need, then simply go on to sieve through available options and find the one that suits the particular need of your website.
Every of the listed WordPress e-commerce plugins all integrates with the existing WordPress site. So just in case your site is not a new one, and you are only looking to convert an already existing website into an E-commerce website, then you have no worries, each of these plugins will suffice.
That there is one of the benefits of using WordPress with these Best Free WordPress E-commerce plugins. There is room for expansion and transformation of website features and functions. With WordPress being an open-source community, there is always a tool for every need, from third-party themes to plugins that expand the functionality of your site.
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Check out other publications to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource.
Also contact us today to optimize your business(s)/Brand(s) for Search Engines