Skip to main content
WordPress made easy with the drag & drop Total WordPress Theme!Learn More

5 Best WordPress eCommerce Plugins

Last updated on:
Best eCommerce WordPress Plugins

If you’re looking for a way to earn money online, opening your own e-commerce store is a great option. The flexibility alone is a solid reason, but the savings and improved brand visibility over a physical location also make it a smart choice. However, the process of creating a store can seem overwhelming, and you may be unsure about what tools to use.

Fortunately, when you use WordPress as your platform you have access to dozens of e-commerce plugins. These plugins can add shopping carts, review platforms, and so much more to your site – providing just about everything you need to run a successful online storefront.

In this post, we’ll discuss why you might want to build your own online store, and touch on why you should consider WordPress as your platform. Then we’ll introduce you to five tools for building your online store in WordPress, and explain what makes each unique. Let’s get started!

Why You Should Consider Building an Online Store with WordPress

If you’re looking to start up a new store, it can be challenging to decide between a brick-and-mortar or online venue. However, e-commerce stores offer a number of benefits over their traditional counterparts:

  • Reduced overhead costs: Without a physical storefront, you can keep operating costs to a minimum.
  • Expanded geographic reach: An online presence enables you to expand your brand’s reach, which results in more potential customers for your store.
  • Lowered marketing costs: Online marketing is usually cheaper than physical marketing tactics.

In addition, you can easily sell a variety of product types through an online store. These include physical products, digital goods, and even memberships and services.

Of course, even when you know you want to go the online route, it can still be difficult to know where to begin. We recommend building your store with WordPress, because of its built-in flexibility, extensive functionality thanks to themes and plugins, and top-notch security.

If you create your site with WordPress, you’ll get access to many excellent tools dedicated solely to helping you build an online store. In fact, there are so many that it can be a little overwhelming. However, the official Plugin Directory makes it simple to find most of what you’ll need. Next, we’ll check out a few of the best options.

While there are many e-commerce plugins available for WordPress, we believe that these five are the some of the best choices. This is due to their features, high ratings, and the consistent support they receive from their developers. Let’s check them out!

Disclaimer: WPExplorer is an affiliate for one or more products listed below. If you click a link and complete a purchase we could make a commission.

1. WooCommerce

WooCommerce eCommerce Plugin

With over 5 million downloads, WooCommerce is the plugin you need to build and run your online business. If you’re looking for both simplicity and flexibility, this is the e-commerce plugin for you.

With WooCommerce, you can sell physical and digital products, as well as memberships, service bookings, and even recurring subscriptions. This is one of the most popular e-commerce plugins, and for good reason! One major feature is the plugin’s seemingly endless list of WooCommerce addons and extensions. These extensions enable you to connect with many popular storefront management brands and tools.

This WordPress e-commerce plugin also offers an intuitive dashboard with widgets and detailed reports to help you keep track of sales, stock, store performance and statistics, compatibility with many WordPress themes, multiple checkout options (including PayPal, credit cards, cash on delivery and check), Mijireh checkout to secure all payments and more. But best of all, the base plugin is free. Even without the premium extensions, you can still create a beautiful online store. That is why 42% of online stores run on WooCommerce.

2. Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads is a targeted e-commerce solution. It’s a great choice if you sell only digital products on your site – such as e-books, PDFs, or music – and it’s free to use and customize as you like. So if your e-store is all about selling digital products (i.e. you don’t sell physical products), Easy Digital Downloads is the best e-commerce plugin for you.

While other e-commerce plugins – such as WooCommerce – enable the sale of digital downloads, that usually isn’t the main focus. With Easy Digital Downloads, you get more customization options specific to sell digital products online, enabling you to tailor each display to your customers’ needs.

With the base plugin, you’ll be able to use PayPal and Amazon as your payment gateways. Plus, there are paid extensions that enable the use of Stripe, Braintree, and much more. As opposed to having all the e-commerce features under the sun, Easy Digital Downloads offers just the features you need to take the challenge out of selling digital products. But there are other premium add-ons include analytics tracking, accounting software, and even email marketing. You can also purchase add-on packages, making it easier to get started.

While I did mention the features are toned down, the plugin is still very powerful and elegant at the same time.

3. Ecwid eCommerce Shopping Cart

Ecwid eCommerce Shopping Cart

Ecwid eCommerce Shopping Cart is a plugin that offers much for its small price tag. Not only can you completely customize the plugin’s features to fit your shoppers’ needs, you can also manage your store on the go (thanks to the mobile Point of Sale (POS) application).

This is one of the more flexible options on our list, as it provides a number of native features that other e-commerce plugins don’t include by default. For example, this plugin enables you to accept 40 international payment options – both online and in-person – and offers unlimited storage and scheduled backups of product listings.

Additionally, you can add a shopping cart directly to your Facebook business page. This further expands your reach, and can help you to convert followers into customers. The plugin is free for up to 10 products, and premium plans begin at just $15 per month.

4. WP EasyCart

WP EasyCart WordPress plugin

WP EasyCart is a customizable e-commerce plugin with all the trimmings. Of course, you get access to the usual e-commerce features, but this plugin has a few extra tricks up its sleeve.

One handy feature is the integrated Google Analytics tracking. All you need to do is add your Google Analytics ID in the Basic Settings page after installing the plugin. From there, you’ll be able to keep an eye on product conversions, and see which sales strategies are working best.

Unfortunately, the free version of WP EasyCart has somewhat limited features. However, you can upgrade to a premium account, and get access to all the plugin’s functionality, for as little as $50 (this is a one-time fee).

5. WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart

WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart

WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart is a plugin that does exactly what its name implies. If PayPal is your preferred method of payment, this plugin offers a ton of useful features. It’s also easy to use, as all you’ll need to do is copy and paste developer-built shortcodes.

While many other e-commerce plugins incorporate PayPal, they also include a number of other gateways. If PayPal is your one and only payment option, this plugin will cut down on complexity while providing more targeted functionality.

Perhaps the best thing about this plugin is that it’s absolutely free. All advertised features are included within the base version, and the developers won’t try to sell you premium add-ons. That’s just one more way this plugin adds simplicity to your online business.

Which eCommerce Plugin Will You Choose?

Armed with one of these plugins, you are now ready to take over the world of online business and build a nice brand for yourself. But we want to know – did you chose any of the above plugins? If so, how has been your experience with the plugin? Or if you favor something else, which WordPress e-commerce plugins do you use? Let us know in the comment section below!

Article by Freddy WPExplorer.com guest author
Subscribe to the Newsletter

Get our latest news, tutorials, guides, tips & deals delivered to your inbox.

77 Comments

  1. Lee Blue (@leehblue)

    Thank you for mentioning Cart66 Lite & Pro. It would be great to see our newest product Cart66 Cloud in the line-up. It makes it really easy to sell physical products, digital products, and subscriptions. You can even attach subscription to any digital or physical product. Like sell a WP theme and include a year of support or sell printer ink on a monthly subscription. The ability to sell all these types of things with one system makes Cart66 Cloud unique. Thanks again!

    • Freddy

      The Cart66 Cloud sounds like a great ecommerce plugin. I will check it out, and thanks for your comment!

  2. lamberbee

    Thanks for the summary.

    I mainly work with Woocommerce. Numbers tell me that about 10% of all webshops worldwide run on the combination WordPress & Woocommerce.

    Missing some other (free) plugins also I think, like Yith Compare, Wishlist & Zoom for wwoocommerce … or maybe this is to specific.

    Just wondering about connecting these plugins with invoicing / accounting software. Are there any interesting interface plug-ins to connect (import/export) to other software?

    Thanks
    Lambert

    • AJ Clarke

      Hi Lambert,

      This post is regarding 20 E-Commerce plugins, the plugins you mention are add-ons and are useless on their own 😉 I’ve seen extensions for WooCommerce for Quickbooks and Intuit (that I can think of off the top of my head as I’ve never needed one) try doing a quick G-Search I’m sure you’ll find something! Most likely it’s going to be a premium add-on though that you’ll need to purchase.

    • Tania

      I just came across this new plugin but I haven’t tried yet. You can take a look at the features at https://wordpress.org/plugins/erp/

  3. Ioan Mihai

    Good article!

    • Freddy

      Thanks Mihai for the compliment. You’re very welcome 😉

  4. Andy

    Great list!!! Here, we will have a look at 5 E-commerce wordpress themes that we – the designers collected, gathered and combined into the second-to-none collection. These 5 E-commerce templates are all beautiful, stylish and charge you no money.

    • Freddy

      Thanks for passing by Andy 🙂

  5. Bruna

    I am deploying woo-commerce SEO on several eCommerce websites. It really works for optimizing website according product category most of user appreciate this woo-commerce SEO. Also Bootstrap introduce as life saver for web designers to design responsive websites.

  6. nikcree

    I know you can’t list them all, but one that is well worth inclusion is Tribulant.com Shopping cart which has arguable as many features as WooCommerce (without the price tag), a dedicated team of developers and A1 support (No, it is not my plugin – i am an avid user and have deployed it over 50 sites now).

    • AJ Clarke

      Thanks for sharing. Generally our authors list only items they have personally used. We don’t like promoting products that no one from our team has used (to avoid promoting crap). I took a look and the demo and I see some bugs, but overall it doesn’t look too bad by default (WooCommerce looks pretty bad by default).

      • Tobin Bland

        Hi AJ,
        I recommended you plugin for WordPress sites. I used it for my site and it gave me very good results.
        So If you would like to engage the user on website and want more sale, must try latest plugin for WordPress named “TabUtility”

    • contridAntonie

      Thanks for sharing pur plugin, we appreciate it.

  7. Yolanda Shoshana

    Great information! Thanks! You saved me a lot of time.

    • Freddy

      My pleasure Yolanda. I’m glad I could help 🙂

  8. Michael Griggs

    I know not all plugins can reach the article, but we have been using EasyCart and have tremendous success primarily due to the extremely low cost of the plugin. It’s not a modular system that can add up in costs like the others here.

    With EasyCart, everything is included (all live payment gateways, live shipping systems, promotions, etc.) and not to mention they have really good support.

    I believe there is a comparison on their home page that shows the difference between EasyCart, WooCommerce, and a couple others.

    Might be worth checking out by others as well.

    • Kyla

      That plugin looks really nice – thanks for the recommendation!

  9. egaleoj

    I’ve noticed that WP-Ecommerce has had a lot of problems and hardly any support from its developer(s). That’s kind of a big thing to worry about when choosing which plugin to use I think. I haven’t used any of the others yet, about to switch a site from WP-Ecommerce to WooCommerce though.

    • Freddy

      Thank you Egaleoj for your input. I tried WooCommerce and loved how easy it was to setup and use. Other than that, it comes with so many options that make setting up an online store fun. Give it a try and please come back and share your findings 🙂

  10. Web Guy

    I came in off the Bing and wanted to take a moment to say “Hey man, nice work!”. I am about to start a new Ecommerce site using Word Press and your post helped me find the solution. Keep up the good work.

    • Freddy

      My pleasure Web Guy 😉

  11. Ron

    Saw a link that said WP-Ecommerce was no longer supported and developers retired it. I am looking for an ecommerce software now.. I did not see a rating here… 1-thru 20. Any bets on who is going to be around in 2yrs? Woo?

    • AJ Clarke

      WooCommerce is probably one of your best bets. Either way as long as it’s a plugin you’ll always be able to find a freelance developer if you have to update or fix the plugin and the company is no longer around 😉

      • Ron

        AJ, you make a good point. What do you know about WIX? When I think of websites somehow in my mind a BLOG is not a serious website for a e-store. Albiet ours will be smaller one. I am use to building in iWeb on Mac and have 6 sites still in that I need to evolve out of. I am a visual layout guy not a numbers programer. Must rather cut/paste/arrange then code this or that.

        • AJ Clarke

          Hi Ron, I have no experience with WIX so I’m not really the guy to ask.

  12. Sławomir StarzecSlawomir

    Thank you. I’ve found this article very useful.

    • Freddy

      You’re very much welcome Slawomir. I’m honored you found it useful 🙂

  13. Jeremie

    Hello,
    Do you have an opinion on Ecwid?
    It pops up at the top of Google’s search results for a “wordpress ecommerce plugin” search.

  14. Roze

    What about Shopify?

    • AJ Clarke

      Shopify is great, we are actually planning a little review of it soon 😉

    • Lambert

      Shopify is not a WP plug-in as far as I know. It’s an online webstore engine/framework

      • AJ Clarke

        Correct, but they have created a plugin where you can insert your store onto a WordPress site. So you would manage your products via their dashboard but you can still use WordPress for showcasing them.

  15. Tiago

    Great list. First time i heard about the digital download plugin, thank you.

    • Freddy

      Thank you Tiago for passing by!

  16. sejal

    Great article, will son be using woocommerce…just a confusion …which payment gateway is better to be used in India as well as other countries…

    • Freddy

      PayPal has well-established infrastructure that serves a number of countries effectively. It would be your best bet. Thank you for passing by!

  17. Dan Zarzycki

    Simply awesome article and in-depth too! Our team uses nothing but WooCommerce at this point as we find it the most effective and extensible plugin for WordPress.

    Thanks for the article!

    • Freddy

      Awesome! Thanks for passing by Dan 🙂

  18. Bappy

    I want’s any plugin that when any member download file/image down credit, member credit-50$ and file/Image prize-21$, when member download that member balance 29$. help me pls

  19. Maahi

    I would like to say, personally I like the ultimate SEO but Yoast plugin is very good and I think it’s the best SEO plugins for WordPress blogs.

  20. 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!

    • AJ Clarke

      Sorry you had a bad experience with the plugin 🙁 Thank you for sharing though!

  21. Lifeszu

    Thank’s man

  22. Paul Preston

    The description of Jigoshop is out of date – it’s got a lot more functions + it’s optimized for google well with minified css and javascripts.

  23. Terry Cliffe

    I think a lot of these ecommerce solutions are the older way to do things and a lot more complicated. I would like have like to see you include salescart and ecwid.

  24. Jean

    good info, but your name dropping (CocaCola) is fake, CocaCola don’t use WordPress

    • Kyla

      Oh, it looks like they changed it. If memory servers, their “Unbottled” blog used to use WordPress which was pretty cool 🙂

    • DrupalArt

      Still… I have much more trust to dedicated e-commerce systems. Plugings are good but… they’re only plugins.

  25. rasool

    I think easy digital download is the best for digital dowload shop
    Thanks

    • Kyla

      EDD is a great option!

  26. Small Batch Design Co

    Thanks so much, I just learnt so much in a matter of 15 mins, Very helpful for someone like me who is attemping to build their own wordpress site with little to no prior knowledge. Quick question though, If i have a woocommerce plug in with up to 5 extensions, is this all managed in the one dashboard? Also, If and when the various plug ins i use have updates, is this easy to manage and user friendly?

    Thanks

    • Kyla

      Yes – everything is managed from your one dashboard, plugins and updates 🙂 When you install new plugins or plugin extensions you will usually see a new menu item added to your dashboard for what you’ve installed. Updates for themes, plugins and WordPress are very user friendly. To see if you have updates, check your admin bar or hover of the “dashboard” menu item. There will be a refresh icon with the number of available updates. Just click to go to your updates page to see each available update, read about the new features or fixes included and then just check the box for each theme/plugin to update. It’s easy, I promise! 🙂

  27. deucalion

    Is there a shop that is possible a customer put is item at sell in my own shop? Almost like auction, but without bids, only buy now,,, Thanks

    • Kyla

      I think you’re looking for a marketplace theme – and you can do this with WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads. You will need to purchase an extension in both cases. For WooCommerce you can use their premium Vendors extension, or there is a free MultiVendor plugin on WordPress.org that you could try. For EDD you’ll need their Marketplace Bundle.

      • deucalion

        Many thanks. I will try 😉

  28. Max

    Very informative article. However, another element I am looking for–is there a way to charge a subscription fee simply to use the site–similar to newspapers like NY Times, etc. in WordPress?

  29. there nohere

    thank-you Freddy,
    may just saunter over to woo from prestashop

  30. Mohammed

    Nice article, thank you.

    I spent a whole year developing Tajer (https://wordpress.org/plugins/tajer/), a new WordPress eCommerce plugin.

    Hope someone find it useful.

  31. Igor komarnitskiy

    I can also recommend the plugin automated email marketing system for E-commerce

  32. Annette

    Awesome article thank you!

  33. Amir Hasan

    Very informative and helpful post. Thanks!

  34. Jigar Shah

    Wonderful Post… this post is for 2014, but I have found the great names in this list who still lead the market in 2016 and the options are “WooCommerce” and “Easy Digital Downloads”. The both are really awesome and ruling WordPress Plugins.

  35. marksandsite

    I am building a blog about data research for a small business and thinking about providing some services. Not sure how useful it would be (not my full-time job, at least for now), but I would love to develop it slowly. Having some troubles to choose eCommerce plugin. A lot of variants to look for, but…you know tons of information on this topic. Another post I read provides nearly the same list and only a few suggestions on what to choose. Maybe I should think too much and simply install WooCommerce?

    • Kyla

      WooCommerce is a great solution! It’s free, easy to setup and has a ton of options for setting up products (shouldn’t be too hard to add your service listings). Best of luck with your business!

  36. Ben

    Nice Post, I used the Trustbadge reviews widget on my online shop (litespot.co.uk) to collect and show customer reviews. It’s fairly easy to use. They have many integrations in different shop systems. And it comes with 7 languages and is mobile-optimized. There’s a freemium version available at at trustbadge.com so you can try yourself if it helps 🙂

  37. John

    I am looking for an accounting plug-in that allows me to assign sales representatives to each customer and calculate commissions earned. Does anyone know of one?

  38. srp

    couple of them are paid plugins

    • AJ Clarke

      That is correct, not all plugins are free. Sometimes you need to invest a little money for a specific function – it costs a lot of money to develop and maintain plugins.

  39. James

    Thanks a lot for the post. Though all of them are not free but totally worth the price.

  40. Tobin Bland

    Thanks for sharing awesome article and in depth too!

  41. Mark Henry

    Priceless post! Thanks for sharing. I also want to introduce one another WooCommerce related WordPress plugin called WC Checkout Fields Editor. This is a very easy to use and fully responsive plugin that helps to manage billing address, shipping address and additional fields also. It provides many amazing features and excellent support as well.

  42. Martin

    A wonderful list of e-commerce plugins. For me, the calculator plugin has also proved to be a useful form of calculation or calculators, for example uCalc

  43. zozothemes

    Really superb! Very very useful article. Thanks for sharing. Thank you so much!

  44. Wonder Push

    WordPress always has a solution to our needs. Its plugin repository seems a magic lamp that when you explore, you surely get a solution to your need, be the need is big or small.

  45. shobita

    This is a great collection you have here. I have used some of them in the past and totally loved using WooCommerce. I found it very easy. Hope that I will be using more in the future.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Learn how your comment data is processed by viewing our privacy policy here.