It’s no secret that selling online is a simple, yet powerful way to make money. E-commerce allows you to reach a huge audience, to scale with growth, and to avoid needing to purchase a brick-and-mortar location. Ecommerce plugins allow you to sell anything on the system of your choosing.
If you have a WordPress website, you’ll need a plugin to integrate eCommerce functionality into the site.
When you search the internet, you’ll see that there are dozens of them out there, which can be a bit overwhelming.
In this post we’re going to suggest some great options for adding eCommerce to your WordPress site. By the end, you should know the plugins that will suit your needs.
What To Look For
When it comes to choosing a WordPress eCommerce plugin, you have numerous options to choose from. However, not all of them will be an ideal fit for your particular eCommerce site.
Some plugins are perfect for selling digital goods, such as ebooks, photos, and music. Other plugins are more effective for selling physical goods that actually require inventory management and shipping. Finally, there are plugins that allow you to manage both.
When choosing your eCommerce plugin, you need to determine which one works best for your store given your technical expertise, the items you are selling, and the flexibility you need.
You’ll also need to evaluate the different payment gateways accepted by each plugin and choose a plugin that supports your payment gateway of choice.
Additionally, you need to evaluate how well each plugin fits in with your WordPress theme. Plugins usually don’t come with their own themes and need to be properly integrated into yours.
Finally, you’ll need to evaluate the level of support provided for each plugin. If your plugin stops functioning, you immediately begin losing revenue. You want a plugin with outstanding developer support. The last thing you want is to have a broken plugin and an unresponsive developer.
WooCommerce
This is the most popular eCommerce plugins for WordPress.
It integrates with just about everything without any hassle. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting using this on your site. With just a few clicks you are quickly up and selling, and as your store grows, the plugin can scale with you.
It can handle physical or digital products, allow you to monitor inventory, calculate taxes automatically, and a lot more.
Whether you are new to eCommerce or an experienced vet, this plugin should be able to handle your needs.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- Amazon
- PayPal
- Stripe
- 2Checkout
- Mijireh
- And more
Easy Digital Downloads
If you sell primarily or exclusively digital downloads, this plugin is perfect for you.
It allows you to easily sell your music, ebooks, photos, and other digital goods directly from your WordPress eCommerce site.
With just a few clicks you can quickly set up a gorgeous store for selling your products.
Easy Digital downloads also has outstanding support, ensuring that you won’t be stuck with a broken plugin.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- ePay
- Netbanx
- Stripe
- Authorize.net
- PayPal
- PayPlug
- And more
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This plugin was created by the same group who created the Backup Buddy plugin which is both popular and powerful. They clearly have experience creating plugins and absolutely know what they’re doing.
The plugin supports digital downloads, physical goods, memberships, and subscriptions.
It’s super simple to set up using their Setup Wizard, and it allows you to add products with just a few clicks.
If you don’t want to spend lots of time setting up a plugin, this is perfect for you.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- Paypal
- Stripe
Shopify
When you want a robust, all-in-one eCommerce platform that literally handles everything for you, this is your ticket.
It should be noted that Shopify is a stand-alone service, but it does have a WordPress integration for your website.
Shopify is a secure plugin with SSL integrated directly into it. It’s easy to set up, allows you to sell both physical and digital products, and makes creating inventory incredibly easy.
They even have shipping system that can integrate directly with the US Postal Service. Finally they have many social media Integrations with services like Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook.
This is everything you need in an eCommerce store.
Supported Payment Gateways:
- Shopify (through Stripe)
- Paypal
- Stripe
- Authorize.net
- 2Checkout
- Amazon Payments
- And more
The 5 Minute Guide to Scaling Your Shopify Shipping Strategy
Automate Your Fulfillment & Shipping
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This is a premium solution for WordPress eCommerce with a powerful set of features.
It’s very easy to both install and manage, and will work with almost every WordPress theme. It supports both physical and digital products, maintains and order history, allows for easy product search, handles shipping rate calculations, and easily allows you to offer discount and promo codes.
The free version does not have support but for a one-time fee of $75 you get a single license with support.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- 2Checkout.com
- PayPal
- Google Checkout
- Authorize.net (add-on)
- PayJunction (add-on)
- FirstData/LinkPoint (add-on)
- HSBC ePayments
- eWay Payments (add-on)
Wp eCommerce
Claiming to be the original WordPress eCommerce plugin, this plugin has a long history in the eCommerce world.
However, there are mixed reviews on this plugin. While some people say it is only for selling a handful of products, others seem to indicate that it can handle a large inventory.
There are some significant bonuses, such as many free and premium themes built using its code, integrations with Google Analytics, automated marketing, customer surveys, and many more.
It’s a well-rounded plugin that offers features some others don’t. You certainly want to evaluate it as you determine which plugin to use.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- Authorize.net
- DPS
- Chronopay
- Paypal
- And more
WordPress eStore
If you’re a blogger who wants to sell digital products, this is a great solution.
Featuring secure downloads (protects against pirating), encrypted download links, a fast shopping cart, email integration (for autoresponders), and numerous free add-ons, this really is a great digital products solution.
If you want to sell subscriptions, music, ebooks, or any other digital products, this could be your ticket.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- PayPal
- 2Checkout
- Google Wallet
- Authorize.net
- BitCoin
- Braintree
- Offline (payment via check, cash or bank transfer) and a premium module to add more if needed.
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This is an all-in-one, right out of the box solution.
It allows you to sell services, memberships, digital products, physical products, and just about everything else. It has loads of features on top of that, including the ability to print shipping labels, time delay content for members, creating variations of your products, getting real-time shipping quotes, and much more.
It really can handle whatever you throw at it.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- 2Checkout, Authorize.net
- eWay
- PayPal
- Stripe
- Offline payments
- And more
ShopperPress
This open-source plugin is perfect for selling a wide variety of products, digital downloads, or services.
In addition to the standard eCommerce features, it also has some extras not offered by other plugins, including integration with Google Adsense, and importing from Amazon, eBay, a CSV file, or Datafeedr.
It’s open-source, meaning you can edit things to your heart’s delight, and keeps your store fully search engine optimized.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- PayPal
- PayWeb.ca
- PayFast
- Google Checkout
- Sage Pay
- And more
WordPress Shopping Cart
This plugin makes it easy to create a variety of options for your products, which is ideal if you have products in different sizes, colors, etc.
You don’t want to spend hours having to create an individual product for each variation!
It also allows you to create affiliate products, integrates with various shipping companies, supports multiple languages, and allows you to easily send out personalized templates.
It’s a fairly robust turnkey solution that will allow you to get up and running in no time.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- PayPal (Standard)
- 2CheckOut
- MoneyBookers
- First Data (Linkpoint & YourPay)
- Realex Payments (redirect)
- eMatters (HTTPS)
- Ogone PSP (Basic)
- Authorize.net (AIM)
- eWay (Shared)
- Credit card (POS)
- Wire transfer
- And more
JigoShop
JigoShop’s original developer helped design the Woocommerce plugin, so there are some similarities between the two.
Nevertheless, it’s a robust plugin that allows you to set up a fully functional eCommerce store on your WordPress site. It was recently redesigned to feature increased speed, modern design, a thorough reporting system, a host of extensions, SEO optimization, and more.
Clearly, they pride themselves on the technical excellence behind their plugin.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- WorldPay
- FuturePay
- Bank Transfer
- Check Payment
- PayPal standard
- And more
Ecwid
This plugin is massive, used by over 900,000 stores.
Part of its success is due to it’s powerful social media integrations. It allows you to sell on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, a WordPress site, eBay and more.
It features mobile responsive design, language translation, inventory management, promotional options, and many more features.
This really is a great option, especially if you want to focus heavily on social media.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- PayPal
- 2Checkout
- Authorize.net
- ClickAndBuy
- iDEAL, Payleap
- iPayment
- Stripe
- And more
MarketPress eCommerce
This is a complete eCommerce solution for your WordPress site.
It allows you to sell both digital and physical goods, integrates with Google Analytics, supports promotions and coupons, allows for a variety of products, and more.
It also allows you to create an Etsy-like network of stores, which can be useful if you’re selling different types of products that need their own stores.
Payment Gateways Supported:
- 2Checkout
- Authorize.net AIM
- Bitpay
- eWay shared payments
- eWay Rapid 3.0 Payments
- iDEAL, Manual Payments
- Skrill Moneybookers
- PayPal Payflow Pro
- Paymill
- PayPal Chained Payments
- And more
Conclusion
You’re certainly not lacking options when it comes to WordPress plugins for eCommerce.
Ultimately, it comes down to what works best for you.
- What kinds of products will you be selling?
- How much flexibility do you need?
- Will you have a large inventory?
By answering these types of questions, you should be able to choose the one that works best for you.
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- 6 Social Commerce Trends You Absolutely Must Know
- How to Plan Your Ecommerce Social Media Strategy
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