Things to Do Before Choosing an Ecommerce Plugin for WordPress
Since plugins are not always fully reliable and secure, there are things you should do before picking a plugin for your store. You must strengthen the foundation of your WordPress website first. Here are the must-have elements:
A Powerful WordPress Web Host
Yes, you can pick a cheap plan and get away with it. But Google and other search engines prioritize page speed as a vital ranking factor. Page load time is also critical for better e-commerce user experiences.
So, if you want your store to show up in SERP (search engine results page), then you should find a reputable web host. A premium-tier service is worth your investment.
An SSL Certificate
Since e-commerce stores process both personal and transactional information, you can’t jeopardize your WordPress security.
By installing an SSL certificate, you keep user data secure, verify the ownership of your website, and prevent hackers from creating a fake version of your site. It redirects URLs from HTTP to HTTPS.
Plus, HTTPS is also a Google search ranking signal.
Review of The Top WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
Here we will provide a list of the best e-commerce plugins for WordPress as well as a tool that requires no plugin installation.
1. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is currently the most popular WordPress plugin, so you might have already heard of it. When it comes to turning WordPress sites into e-commerce stores, the top choice is often WooCommerce.
What makes WooCommerce one of the best WordPress e-commerce plugins?
- WooCommerce is also free, which makes it perfect for small to medium businesses.
- You can sell pretty much anything with WooCommerce, including subscriptions, appointments, and digital goods.
- Since WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce solution for WordPress, most of the WordPress e-commerce themes are built around it. These include shopping carts and beautiful product galleries.
- WooCommerce has its own extension store, where you can find a variety of third-party tools. Extension prices depend on what you need.
Out of the box WooCommerce Features
- Add unlimited products and images.
- Embed products and checkout on any page
- Customize store currency, location, and measurement units
- Show product ratings and reviews and ‘Verified Owner’ label
- Guest checkout, one-click refunds
- Add categories, tags, and attributes
If you’d like to boost your WooCommerce store’s organic traffic, we have a complete WooCommerce SEO guide for you.
2. Popupsmart (popups without plugins)
There are many direct WordPress exit popup plugins but loading up your website with plugins of all kinds is not a great idea for its speed and security. Popupsmart popup builder is a fast and advanced solution for modern popup designs with smart triggers. Plus, it has a free version.
Integrating Popupsmart into your WordPress or WooCommerce store is very easy. You just need to copy and paste a provided single-line code; no coding, no plugin installations, or unending updates.
Using popups is a big plus to drive email leads, promote products, and offer discounts and coupons.
Smart Features:
- Mobile-compliant popups
- A wide range of design options with pre-built templates
- Advanced audience targeting options like exit-intent, geo-location, and scroll-based targeting
- Video popups
- Excellent customer support
Pricing: Popupsmart has a free plan. Premium plans start at $29/mo.
3. BigCommerce for WordPress
BigCommerce is, in fact, one of the largest managed e-commerce platforms today, being on the same list of leading e-commerce platforms like Shopify. It has recently launched an e-commerce plugin for WordPress that helps create a headless commerce solution, incorporating the WordPress CMS.
What makes BigCommerce one of the best WordPress e-commerce plugins:
- Fast page load speed: AMP-enabled
- Change the default editor to Gutenberg
- A Separate backend system: Save hosting costs with its separate system for e-commerce
- Competitive card rates with PayPal by Braintree: Enable Apple Pay and Visa Checkout
- Manage multiple sites in one control panel
- Catalog management, processing payments, managing fulfillment logistics
Cons:
- Support can be improved.
- The plugin still needs improvements.
Pricing: BigCommerce price plans start at $29.95/mo.
4. SureCart
SureCart is a game-changing e-commerce solution that simplifies online shopping like never before. With its user-friendly interface and cutting-edge features, SureCart transforms the way you browse and buy products online.
Seamlessly blending convenience and security, it offers a personalized shopping experience, efficient checkout, and comprehensive product search. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or a fashionista, SureCart's intuitive design ensures a hassle-free shopping journey.
Plus, its commitment to data protection and privacy guarantees peace of mind for every shopper. Explore a world of effortless online shopping with SureCart, where your satisfaction is the ultimate goal.
What makes SureCart one of the best WordPress e-commerce plugins:
- Provides a wide range of customization options
- Strong emphasis on security and payments
- Seamlessly integrates with popular payment gateways, shipping solutions, and other essential e-commerce tools
- Built-in SEO features
- Optimized for speed and performance
Cons:
- Free option has limited product selling option
- Newcomers to e-commerce may still find it challenging to set up and configure
Pricing: SureCart price plans start at $99/ year.
5. Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart
The Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart has excellent ratings, allowing users to turn their WordPress site into a fully functioning e-commerce store. This plugin is designed to help you sell from multiple sales channels.
It looks pretty similar to WooCommerce, but they have some differences.
One major difference is that Ecwid can be used on any website. For example, if you own a Drupal website, you can still use Ecwid to turn it into an e-commerce store.
The list goes further than Drupal, and alike, it includes Facebook, Tumblr, and many more, while WooCommerce is only a WordPress plugin.
Ecwid offers a reasonable and cost-effective monthly payment plan. The core plugin is completely free and covers more built-in features than WooCommerce, in contrast to a library of add-ons.
An e-commerce store with fewer than 100 products get some of the following features:
- Google shopping support
- Facebook pixel
- Automated tax calculations
- A free site
- A mobile point of sale
- Abandoned cart saver
- Discount coupons
- A Facebook shop
Pricing:
- The free plan has a limit of 10 products.
- After that, you can receive support for100 products for $15/mo, 2,500 products for $35/mo, or unlimited products for $99/mo.
When compared to WooCommerce, Ecwid might seem costly at first glance but keep in mind that WooCommerce may require expensive add ons to cover your needs.
6. Shopify Buy Button
Shopify is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce platforms, with over 1.7M merchants using it to sell online. Shopify is a standalone platform, but it’s also an all-in-one solution that you can use to turn your WordPress site into an online store with the Shopify Buy Button.
Pros:
- Easy-to-use for beginners: Shopify handles all the work for you, including setting up an SSL certificate, handling shipping, integrating payment gateways, and calculating taxes.
- Allows selling both digital and physical products from t-shirts to digital downloads
- Complete Inventory Management: Shopify has an inventory editor and bulk importer
- Payment and shipping options: Allows accepting credit cards both online and in person. The shipping system comes with direct integration with providers like USPS.
- Facebook and Pinterest: Shopify can integrate with Facebook Store or create buyable Pins for you.
- Shopify has its own app store with a wide range of Shopify apps.
Shopify SEO Checklist to Rank Your Store #1
Cons:
- Monthly payments: The platform charges a monthly fee.
- Shopify payments: Shopify encourages using their own payment platform, powered by Stripe. If you want to use another, they charge a fee.
- Shopify doesn’t have a direct integration to WordPress, unlike BigCommerce.
Pricing: Shopify Buy Button is $9 per month.
7. Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)
Easy Digital Downloads enables WordPress site owners to sell digital downloads online. It comes with powerful out-of-the-box features to create a digital goods store.
WooCommerce also has this fun function, but EDD offers more features with a sharp focus on digital sales. Moreover, its interface is much cleaner and better suited for digital goods.
So, if you plan to sell Ebooks, audio clips, or PDF files and nothing physical, you should definitely consider EDD.
What makes EDD one of the best WordPress e-commerce plugins?
- The EDD core plugin is free, and all plans cover full customer support, updates, and site licenses.
- Provides an Extension Library full of add-ons so you can create advanced digital stores by including software licensing or allowing frontend submissions.
- EDD has a large community of developers, bloggers, and enthusiasts, making it easier to find solutions to solve any issues related to EDD.
- Its main features include a full shopping cart, discount codes, data reporting, and customer management. Additionally, you get tools for affiliate marketing, mailing lists, refund tracking, and more.
Pricing: The core plugin is entirely free. But if you want to upgrade your version, the subscriptions start at $199 per year and go up to $899 per year.
8. MemberPress
MemberPress is designed to let you sell subscription-based digital products and services. It is the best WordPress membership plugin with various integration options, including WooCommerce.
Pros:
- Sell subscription-based products, pay-per-view content, membership plans, and more easily.
- Have Powerful Access Control to define user access levels and content restrictions
- Release paid content over time similar to episodes on Amazon Prime shows etc., with Content Dripping.
- Create and sell courses with the built-in course builder
- Integrate MemberPress with your WooCommerce store or tons of third-party extensions
Cons:
- Yearly pricing alone
- MemberPress has limited payment options, supporting only PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net.
Pricing: MemberPress’s pricing starts at $279 per year.
9. WP Product Review
WP Product Review lets you add product reviews easily and choose how you want to manage and display them on your site. After selecting the product review option when writing a blog post, the plugin displays all the settings to write a review.
Features:
- Import features from reviews you’ve already built and Amazon info
- Automatically generate comparison tables
- Three view layouts
- Users can rate different product specifications when posting comments
- Sidebar widgets to showcase reviews
- All reviews are built-in schema.org rich snippet format for SEO
10. WP EasyCart Shopping Cart and eCommerce Store
WP EasyCart is a simple WordPress e-commerce plugin for people who want to launch an e-commerce store without spending a lot of time or money. It has integration options with MailChimp, Quickbooks, and more.
You can use WP EasCart to sell both digital and physical goods.
Pricing: It has a free plan available, but you need to upgrade to access all extensions for $99/year.
11. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is also one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there, and there’s a good reason for that. It may not be a direct e-commerce plugin, but it will help your store comply more with Google’s ranking factors.
Yoast SEO enables WordPress sites with essential onsite SEO elements and technical SEO maintenance, which are necessary to generate organic traffic for your store.
This plugin is free, but it also offers premium versions to unlock additional functionality. Its premium plans start at $89 for one site license.
Note: There’s also a Yoast SEO plugin for WooCommerce.
12. CookieYes
You will need to comply with GDPR, which applies to all websites worldwide collecting data related to people in the European Union. Having a GDPR-ready badge on your e-commerce store builds trust in your customers and shows your respect for consumer data.
There are a lot of WordPress GDPR plugins to help you with that. CookieYes is one of them with over 1 million active installments.
Pricing: The core version is free. Premium plans start at $49 per year.
13. SeedProd
SeedProdis a WordPress coming soon plugin. Again, it is not a direct e-commerce solution, but if you want to hype up your customers about your store launch, it’s a perfect choice.
Coming soon plugins help you display a coming soon and maintenance page to amplify your SEO earlier.
SeedProd Features:
- GDPR-compliant
- Add full video backgrounds
- Countdown timer
- Drag and drop builder
- Build landing pages
- Builtin photo library
Pricing: Price plans start at $79 per year.
Essential Factors to Consider When Picking a WordPress Ecommerce Plugin
The Impact on Page Speed
Some plugins can slow down WordPress websites because of high CPU usage. Therefore, it’s best to check out the plugin reviews and stars before installing and choose lightweight ones instead.
The Current Supported WordPress Version
Since new WordPress versions are constantly released, some plugin developers can’t keep up and update their plugins. This creates compatibility issues and causes possible website breakdowns.
Additionally, WordPress warns users attempting to download outdated plugins (that aren’t updated within two years.)
Backend Support
Plugins crash, payment systems fail, and caches don’t cache—it happens every once in a while. The important thing is that the available plugin support should be enough for your needs.
Community
Many WordPress plugins have communities full of users that are more than willing to help troubleshoots. A community can be an excellent source to understand how to deal with uncommon issues that aren’t addressed in the support documentation.
Wrap-up
The best WordPress e-commerce plugin is indisputably WooCommerce, but there are more plugins that serve different business needs as well. WordPress users typically go for WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads. However, that doesn’t mean they are the right ones for your goals.
For example, if you want to sell on many channels, Ecwid is a great choice.
Do you have another plugin that we forgot to mention? Share with us below!
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