The WordPress platform makes it easy to set up an online store, either as your primary business or to complement your physical small business. In addition to thousands of templates, there is a massive library of plugins designed to simplify and automate your online sales.
Below are ten of the best WordPress plugins for eCommerce that you can use to enhance your website and create a smooth, hassle-free online shopping experience for your customers.
WordPress Plugins for eCommerce
WP e-Commerce
A popular and long-standing plugin that was one of the first eCommerce options offered by WordPress, WP e-Commerce comes with a wide variety of functions and features. The fully-featured free download works great out of the box and comes with flexible coupon codes, discounts and free shipping options, cross-page promotion, a New Products widget, single-page checkout, integration with popular e-commerce payment and third-party platforms and much more.
You can also purchase add-ons and upgrades to customize this plugin and add even more functionality, like extra payment gateways, slider carousels and additional shipping options.
WooCommerce
A fully functional free plugin with a vast library of premium upgrades available, WooCommerce is easy to use for both vendors and customers. Free features for this plugin include complex coupon campaigns, product and inventory management, order management, sales reports, a customer account area, control over shipping and tax charges and more.
Jigoshop
With detailed reporting, widgets and shortcodes, one-page checkout, inventory tracking, product imports/exports, related product displays and more, Jigoshop has everything you need to run an eCommerce store. It’s free, with a nice library of free extensions, and you can also purchase premium themes and extensions for added functionality.
eShop
More than half a million people have downloaded the free eShop plugin, an easy-to-install shopping cart that is fully compatible with WordPress and can create product pages from WordPress pages, posts or custom posts. Features include customer accounts, multiple options for products, selling downloadable content, sales data, sales tax, stock control, discount options and more.
Quick Shop
A super-simple, “fast and dirty” eCommerce plugin with a surprising level of functionality, Quick Shop comes with built-in support for PayPal and email, and uses WordPress sidebar widgets to continuously show shoppers what’s in their carts. With this plugin, you can add products instantly with a TinyMCE button, create drop-down lists with product options and more.
Cart66
This plugin offers a professional, paid version at $25 per month and a slimmer, free version called Cart66 Lite. Billing itself as the only WordPress eCommerce solution with PCI compliance built in, the Cart66 professional version includes everything you need to run a clean, richly featured WordPress store with no additional plugins or add-ons.
With the free version, you get basic eCommerce features that include promotions, tax and shipping charge control, order management, support for multiple currencies, customizable reports and more. You can use either version to sell products from any page or post on your WordPress site.
Shopp
This popular premium plugin works out of the box with any WordPress theme and comes packed with features. Shopp is built to work with WordPress and includes things like short codes, dashboard widgets for quick views of sales and product histories and theme widgets that let you easily drop products and elements into pages.
Additional features include standard eCommerce tools plus multiple product/variation images, multi-category inventory management, promotional tools, native and plugin support for a wide variety of payment gateways, email notifications, a shipping calculator and more.
Ecwid
A free, full-featured shopping cart, Ecwid is incredibly user-friendly and can be set up in five minutes or less. You can add this plugin to your WordPress site or your Facebook page, and even set it up for use on mobile devices – and the mirror function lets you manage the cart on many sites from one central dashboard.
In addition to free plans with all the standard eCommerce features, Ecwid offers premium plans starting at $15 a month that come with volume discounts, coupon codes, inventory management and more.
Easy Digital Downloads
If your eCommerce store sells digital content like eBooks, audio, video or images, Easy Digital Downloads is the best WordPress solution. It’s also the cheapest at the low price of free.
Features of this simple, powerful plugin include discount codes, sales reports, user purchase history, file download logs, a wide selection of payment gateways and more. There are also nearly 200 extensions to improve the functionality of your download storefront.
WPdeposit
Offering a unique alternative to traditional eCommerce plugins, WPdeposit lets you set up a credit system, similar to stock image marketplaces like Shutterstock and iStockPhoto. With WPdeposit, shoppers buy prepaid credits, which they can use to make purchases on your site.
The plugin supports multiple gateways, with the option to add your own. Widgets and shortcodes show users their balances on your site, and add-ons let users subscribe to or advertise on your site in exchange for credits.
eCommerce Photo via Shutterstock
Thanks for this, Megan! I didn’t know all this was available. It’s sparked off a couple of ideas in my head, which is interesting because I didn’t think I had a need for an ecommerce plugin. I’m starting to think that perhaps I do. Really like the sound of Ecwid, Easy Digital Downloads and Quick Shop.
Megan Totka
Glad you found it helpful, Edele! Good luck with trying out those plug-ins.
Victoria
Thank you for such a detailed review – I had to choose the platform for my ecommerce store recently and also chose WordPress and on of the most flexible and quick to set up and woocommerce, because seems to be one of the best plugins for it with vast free and premium enhancement options
Megan Totka
My pleasure, Victoria! I agree – it’s hard to beat WordPress in terms of ease of use and flexibility. I’ve heard great things about woo commerce as well. Best of luck to you!
Comprehensive List. WooCommerce is my favorite.
Megan Totka
Thanks, Kelsey! I’ve heard lots of great things about woocommerce. Best of luck to you!
Aira Bongco
Out of the bunch, I am mostly familiar with WooCommerce. I find it easier to use that and upload items. You know how it is. It is the same way with using WordPress. You learn one and you stick with it for the rest of your life.
Megan Totka
I know what you mean, Aira – we tend to gravitate toward what’s familiar. I do try to step outside my comfort zone every now and then — sometimes it pays off! 🙂
Martin Lindeskog
How safe are these plug-ins?
I’ve actually been looking at selling a few ebooks and products on my wordpress site but figured it would be to costly. But the way its looking it might be possible. I think I am going to consider it a little more. Thanks for the plugin suggestions.
Megan Totka
You’re welcome! I hope it all works out for you!
David Olivares
Does wordpress have virtueamart?
A perfect plugin for an eCommerce site would generate traffic and keep customers hooked on your company through good content and constant interaction. Benchmark Email has a new easy to use plugin called Benchmark Email Lite that combines your WordPress site with the benefits of email marketing. You can install an email sign-up form onto any page (it actually scans the colors of your page and adjusts itself so that it blends harmoniously into your theme), track down analytics, and even send email-friendly version of your blogs posts straight into your readers’ inboxes. And all straight off your WordPress dashboard.
And you can create unique content for your customers (newsletters, industry updates, etc) so that your customers will find value in your blogs, therefore continue to seek your service and products.
Definitely a two-in-one program that will save your time, let you exercise your creative, and increase engagement with your followers 🙂
sivani
Full explained review.Another good point towards WooCommerce: is quite well supported by WPML , meaning that it’s pretty easy to build a multi language, multi country and multi currency eCommerce
Joe Boon
Nice list Megan! Similar to yourself we’ve been trying to push outside of our comfort zone and use Magento as our alternative platform of choice for ecommerce. We still get to play with these plug ins though and generally tend towards WooCommerce. We developed our own list and have a few extra plugins that move away from the all-in-one out of the box approach towards more specific applications. Check it out and let me know what you think 🙂
http://www.zeta.net/10-of-the-best-e-commerce-plugins-for-wordpress/
Michael Griggs
We have been using WP EasyCart as a solution, I know they are fairly new to the game. but we found the price of woo fairly expensive when we started adding up the modules, while this plugin was only like $80 dollars and had all the live shipping calculators, payment gateways, everything included.
I was sold when I started looking at their comparison chart with woocommerce, cart66, and others.
since we used them, we had a couple support questions, but they answered in about 1 hour. just my two cents worth.
Amrish
Thanks for the useful information. Though I have not worked much on ecommerce sites but as I have worked on wordpress sites, I’am familiar with the All in One SEO Pack, Contact Form 7, Google XML Sitemaps and Comment Luv plugins. Bookmarked this for future, its handy.
Hi Megan,
Would have to say that WooCommerce is by far the best of this list.
Cheers for the info.
vissequ
Cart66 Lite is terrible. Do NOT use it. The notifications don’t work for the customer and the admins. I haven’t been able to figure out how to change order status after using it for years, and they offer no support. I’m having to switch two of my websites that use Cart66 Lite to a new plugin entirely, which is going to take a long time. Save yourself the headache and don’t use Cart66!
Hi Megan, great article!
I don’t mean to hijack your WP-centered discussion, but I stumbled upon this when looking for more general chit-chat about eCommerce platforms. I thought I’d plug the company I work for incase anyone would like to try something new.
We’re called SellBeing and our platform is designed to be incredibly easy to use for sellers of all experience levels. We have a 14-day, no obligation free trial available directly from our website 🙂
http://sellbeing.com
We’d love to hear from you all!
Thanks,
Justin
Jenifer
Nice post with great collection of the WordPress eCommerce plugins. I really like your collection as you’ve enlisted a useful plugins. I also would like to add some more WordPress plugins to your list http://bit.ly/1RlISC0. It explains three most usable plugins.
Personally I prefer WooCommerce because of its simplicity and ease of use for customers and owners. It gives one control over shipping and managing coupons and orders.A load truck of WooCommerce themes helps in creating a more attractive and fully featured online store.
Benny
Hey guys! I’d like to recommend you the Reviews plugin I’m using for my website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/review-builder/
Bobbie
AlternativePayments.com WooCommerce Plugin is something that you must have if selling cross-border!
Hello,
The plugins that you have mentioned are really helpful. Thanks for sharing this amazing list of plugins.
John Bauer
Great list of plugins, I just want to add a couple of more plugins that I am using, WooCommerce MailChimp Newsletter Discount and Checkout Address Autofill for WooCommerce are two excellent plugins for increasing subscribers and increasing sales. Please have a look at it and if you can add it on your list, that would be amazing.
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