The Best 5 WordPress Ecommerce Plugins – 2020

With WordPress, you can build anything, from a simple blog to a full-fledged e-commerce platform.

However, WordPress does not have a built-in e-commerce functionality.

Fortunately, several WordPress ecommerce plugins could help you turn a simple site into a fully-functional ecommerce platform.

In this post, we will be comparing the top 5 WordPress e-commerce plugins.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is one of the most popular and user-friendly WordPress ecommerce plugins out there.

With approximately 1 million active installs across the globe, this plugin allows you to add unlimited product pages.

You also get various e-commerce functionalities such as check-out, shopping cart, order management, product and inventory management, management of coupon, control over shipping, statistics, and a whole lot more!

Pros:

• It’s Free: One of the greatest benefits of this plugin is that it is free. This makes it easy to sell your products online and it will not cost you anything.
• It’s Familiar: WordPress is supporting millions of websites all over the world, and because WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, you can easily figure out how to use this platform.
• Professional and Customizable: A lot of free apps and plugins turn out to be below standard, but this is not true for WooCommerce. You can easily customize it with a variety of themes, which you can further customize by color variety.
• Highly expandable: This plugin is highly expandable to suit your needs. Several extensions and plugins allow you to extend WooCommerce’s functionality.
• Blog Integration: Blogs allow you to sell more content for your site to rank. It is easy to create and run a blog together with your online store, and there is no need for you to create a separate blog.

Cons:

• Updates in WordPress happen often: Updates are needed to prevent malware, security and data breach, and other cyber attacks. However, most plugins are not as quick to adapt to these updates.
• Too many options: The plugin is so easy to use, but the number of available options is quite intimidating for new users.
• Theme customizations are expensive: If your site is built on a theme, and you want to make drastic changes on how your online store would look like, it is a bit time consuming for the programmer to make changes to the theme’s layout.

BigCommerce

This e-commerce platform is fully hosted, giving users seamless integration with WordPress.

BigCommerce is a hosted scalable e-commerce platform. It integrates with WordPress so you can sell products directly from your website.

While the e-commerce engine deals with the business side, it supports the front-end experience. Furthermore, this plugin offers shipment and invoice tracking, online transactions, catalog and order management, and so much more.

Pros:

• Less Maintenance: Your e-commerce engine is separate from the other content of your site, making it easier to run and maintain.
• All-in-One Solution: If you are just starting and hiring a developer is expensive, then you will be drawn to BigCommerce’s all-in-one platform. It has virtually everything you need to run your online stores like themes, apps, hosting, access to multiple payment gateways, and more.
• No transaction charges: Unlike other e-commerce platforms, it does not charge you with every transaction you make. You can pick from top payment gateways and only pay the payment service provider.
• Excellent security features: This plugin helps manage your security, providing you with
  
  
  a secure e-commerce store with less risk and more resources.
• Easy checkout process: Its developers have created a more personalized experience for users, making the payment process as easy as possible.

Cons:

• Limited integrations: Its app store is still growing, so you might have difficulty finding an integration for less popular apps.
• No mobile app: As of present, it does not have a mobile app where you can manage your store on the go.

Easy Digital Downloads

If you are looking for a plugin where you can sell digital files, then we recommend Easy Digital Downloads.

This WordPress store plugin is free and is developed to sell videos, audio, images, and a lot more. It has also integrated Amazon Payments and Paypal so that you can sell your digital content easily.

Moreover, there are premium extensions that you can incorporate your e-commerce with. This includes a variety of tools for email marketing automation, hosting files on Cloud, and collecting


reviews.

Pros:

• Easy to Use: This plugin is easy to use. From the beginning, you could easily know how to add products and display them. Great for beginners.
• Extensions: There are several extensions available which usually include add-ons for payment getaways, services, and marketing platforms.
• Awesome support: This has a well-documented plugin, and you will have free access to support forums, tutorials, videos, and more. For premium users, there is a priority support option.
• Multiple features: This lets you set up the shopping cart page, pick from various payment methods, make file packages, utilize discount codes, and so much more.
• Advanced customer management system: Its customer management system lets you view, delete, edit, and track your customers’ activity and lifetime value.

Cons:

• Exclusive to digital downloads only: This plugin makes it easy to build e-commerce sites for digital goods. However, if you want to sell your digital downloads along with non-digital goods, then the process is quite complicated.
• Selling External Products: If you want to place an affiliate or external product for your store, then you have to install a third-party app for it.

Ecwid

This is another hosted service plugin that allows you to add e-commerce functions to a website. Ever since its inception in 2009, it is a popular and successful platform garnering about 1 million merchants worldwide.

Ecwid is ideal for anyone who wants to add a bit of an e-commerce flair to their site quickly and without the hassle of managing a store.

Pros:

• You do not have to start from scratch: It is quite easy for this plugin to turn your current website into an online store.
• Multi-channel selling: Offers extensive tools for managing your sales and selling across multiple stores.
• Beginner-friendly: You do not have to have mad coding skills to use this plugin. Therefore, it will not take most of your time.
• Excellent order process: You are informed whenever an order is placed. You can also process orders wherever you are. All you need to do is to launch the app to make customers informed about their order updates or if you need to request any additional information.
• Product Management: You can control and edit product combinations and options based on your product’s features. You also have the option to update the rating and make necessary changes to the stock, availability, and weight of the product in just a few clicks.

Cons:

• Limited design: Your design choices are quite restrictive. As a result, it is a bit difficult to customize.
• Small scale tools: Ideal if you have a small business, but will not support a lot of growth as your business scales over time.
• Free basic plan: In the free plan, you only have a limited amount of tools at your disposal. For instance, you could not access the app market.

Easy Cart

This is a free WordPress e-commerce store and WordPress Shopping Cart plugin that allows you to sell retail products, digital downloads, subscriptions, gift cards, donations, services, and more.

EasyCart also lets you sell products on social media via Instagram and Facebook extensions.

You can market your products on your WordPress store online and on social media.

It is ideal for small business owners who want to create a stunning online store without having to train for it at all. The store still runs on WordPress and provides a quick configuration process and basic tools that are fit for non-developers out there.

Pros:

• Flexible tax options: Tax options are extremely flexible, helping international sellers, as customs and duty taxes are added on international orders. The VAT can also be placed, depending on the country. Regional taxes can be configured as well so that various tax rates can be used simultaneously.
• Lets you sell simple products: EasyCart lets you sell simple, downloadable, variable virtual products, making it an excellent option for a lot of retail stores.

Cons:

• Complicated installation process: Since EasyCart is the new kid in the block, installing the plugin requires several steps. It still has a lot of room to grow.
• Requires license: Store administrators must have a license to create products and manage orders.
• Manual product entry: Product creation is non-intuitive and you cannot skip or disable SKUs.
• Time-consuming order management: That’s because it does not have a bulk option, which means it is not scalable (at the moment, at least).

Final Thoughts

Originally, WordPress was built as a blogging platform.

Eventually, the community started extending WordPress to sell things online. These efforts have now matured into full-fledged WordPress ecommerce plugins. With these plugins, you can use to add ecommerce functionality to your site, without writing a single line of code.

If you plan to build an e-commerce store in 2020, the WordPress ecommerce plugins we have discussed above can be useful.