Top 6 WordPress Plugins For Advanced Ecommerce Support

It’s no secret that WordPress is the most popular content management system of the decade. It houses nearly 40% of the overall websites on the Internet. While the majority of users use WordPress to manage their blogs and service-based websites, the platform is also a popular choice for e-commerce owners. With an easy-to-use interface, it’s quite convenient for users to turn their regular websites into fully functional online shops.

However, unlike other SaaS-based e-commerce platforms, managing an e-commerce store with WordPress is not straightforward. Since WordPress’s default panel doesn’t get any e-commerce specific features, you’ll have to rely on third-party plugins to turn your traditional website into an e-commerce store.

In this guide, we are going to share a list of the top 6 WordPress plugins that you can install to get a feature-rich online store for your brand. So, without any further ado, let’s get started.

Why Choosing the Right WordPress Plugins is Important?

As of 2024, there are almost 50,000 plugins for WordPress and each plugin is designed to cater to a specific requirement. Due to this extensive availability, it can always get challenging for ecommerce owners to pick the right plugins for their brand.

Moreover, if you don’t pick the right plugins for your online store, it’ll become challenging to deliver the desired shopping experience to your customers. This may result in a poor customer retention rate and you’ll struggle to drive more sales. To avoid such a scenario, it’s always a good strategy to be extra cautious while choosing e-commerce plugins for a WordPress website.

Best WordPress Plugins to Design an E-commerce Store Using WordPress

So, here’s a list of the top 6 WordPress plugins you can install to get ecommerce-specific features on your WordPress website.

1. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the most reliable e-commerce plugin for WordPress users. The plugin is so popular that nearly 6.8% of the top one million websites are designed using WooCommerce. It is a free WordPress plugin that you can install with a single click. What separates WooCommerce from other ecommerce plugins is that you can also use it as a complete e-commerce platform to manage your store.

With WooCommerce, you get access to thousands of add-ons and extensions to enhance the overall functionality of your store. Not to mention, there is an endless list of themes that you can install to customize your online shop to offer a personalized shopping experience to the customers.

Another major reason behind the immense popularity of WooCommerce is that the company is owned by Automattic. For people who don’t know it’s the same company that owns WordPress.com. This means if you’re looking for a complete solution to turn your WordPress blog into an online store, WooCommerce will be the most reliable solution.

Here are some of the additional advantages of WooCommerce that make it the perfect ecommerce plugin for WordPress.

• WooCommerce is available for free. You can integrate WooCommerce into your WordPress store without paying any subscription charges, which makes it a cost-effective choice for small businesses.
• With WooCommerce, you can set up an online shop to sell both physical goods and digital products such as eBooks and online subscriptions
• WooCommerce supports a multitude of payment gateways. You can easily integrate these payment portals and allow users to pay online in a completely safe environment.
• There are plenty of hosting service providers that offer WooCommerce-specific hosting plans. You can sign up for these hosting packages and further cut down the overall setup cost.

2. BigCommerce

If you’ve done your research, you may already know that BigCommerce is a popular SaaS-based ecommerce platform. However, the company has recently released its latest plugin, known as ‘BigCommerce for WordPress’ that’s primarily tailored to help users set up an online store on their existing WordPress website.

Like WooCommerce, the process to integrate the BigCommerce plugin is quite straightforward. All you need to do is go to WordPress’s official plugin directory and search for BigCommerce. As soon as you’ll integrate the plugin, it’ll automatically create all the essential pages (including the sign-in page and the shopping cart) for your website.

Basically, ‘BigCommerce for WordPress’ is an ideal plugin for ecommerce owners who want to utilize the features of both the platforms (WordPress and BigCommerce). The only downside of using the BigCommerce plugin is that it’s not inexpensive. Even the basic plan starts at $29.95/month, which may not make it the right choice for startups and small businesses.

Here are some of the additional core features of BigCommerce for WordPress.

• You can use the BigCommerce plugin to sell products across multiple channels.
• BigCommerce offers advanced SEO-friendly features. This will make it easier to optimize your online store for better search visibility in Google SERP.
• BigCommerce plugin is compatible with every modern WordPress theme. This means that you won’t have to change your website’s existing theme white setting up your online shop
• BigCommerce offers 24×7 customer support, making it easier for people to tackle different technical issues without any hassle.

3. Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is another popular ecommerce platform that’s commonly used to sell digital products on a website. Like the previous two e-commerce plugins for WordPress, EDD also offers a one-click solution to turn your existing WordPress website into an online store. However, EDD is exclusively meant for businesses that want to sell digital products such as eBooks or audio files on their online store.

With Easy Digital Downloads (EDD), you get access to thousands of themes and add-ons to add specific features to your ecommerce shop. Another potential benefit of using Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)  is that it’s available for free. As a result, you’ll be able to integrate the plugin without paying any upfront fees.

Here are some of the additional features of Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) that make it a reliable tool to sell digital products on your WordPress website.

• EDD offers an extensive library where you can find thousands of built-in themes, add-ons, and extensions. All these items are available at pocket-friendly prices; hence, keeping your overall expenditure minimum.
• With EDD, you can sell a variety of digital products, be it online subscriptions, eBooks, audio files, etc.
• With EDD, you get complete customer support as well. There are dedicated video tutorials, forums, and 24×7 customer support that’ll help you get through any technical issues.

4. EcWid E-commerce Shopping Cart

EcWid ecommerce shopping cart is a free ecommerce plugin for WordPress. If you’ve used WooCommerce in the past, you’ll find too many similar elements in EcWid. However, despite this resemblance with WooCommerce, it’s safe to say that EcWid has its own identity in the market, mainly due to its features.

Unlike WooCommerce, EcWid isn’t a WordPress-specific plugin. You can use it on different platforms such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Wix to create instant shopping portals. This gives users the liberty to set up multiple shopping channels and boost the overall revenue.

Another reason for choosing EcWid is that it’s a pocket-friendly ecommerce plugin for WordPress. Not only the core plugin is available for free, but you can also find affordable themes and add-ons for your online store. So, if you’re planning to set up a small online shop with limited products, EcWid will be an ideal solution.

Here are some of the key features of EcWid E-commerce Shopping Cart that make it one of the best e-commerce plugins for WordPress.

• EcWid’s core plugin is available for free for all users. With the free version, you can add up to 10 products to your website.
• With EcWid, you can create multiple shopping channels on different websites and manage them using the same panel.
• EcWid also allows users to integrate the most popular payment gateways and keep customer’s banking details safe.

5. MemberPress

MemberPress is a widely popular membership plugin for WordPress that’s specifically tailored to help users sell subscription-based digital items on their website. It comes with an exclusive “Access-Rules” feature that’ll allow you to grant/revoke access for specific pages and items.

As far as user-friendliness is concerned, MemberPress has an easy-to-use interface that’ll make it easier to set up and manage your online store. The plugin automatically creates some of the essential pages including Pricing, Products, and the login page.

Here are some of the key features of MemberPress that make it one of the best ecommerce plugins for WordPress.

• Sell subscription-based digital products on your existing WordPress website without any hassle.
• MemberPress comes with a default course-builder. You can use it to design and optimize your own online courses and sell them on the website
• There are multiple extensions for MemberPress that’ll help you optimize your online store for better usability

6. Cart66Cloud

Like BigCommerce, Cart66Cloud is a popular ecommerce platform. However, to expand its community, the company has also released a dedicated WordPress plugin that comes with all Cart66Cloud features built-in. This will save you from the hassle of installing third-party add-ons and extensions.

And, since it offers a simple drag-&-drop feature, you’ll be able to set up your online store easily, even if you don’t have any coding experience. With Cart66Cloud, you can set up both small and enterprise-level e-commerce stores. The plugin also offers SEO-friendly features that’ll help you optimize your website and generate more sales organically.

Here are a few features of Cart66Cloud that make it a reliable ecommerce platform for WordPress.

• As opposed to other ecommerce plugins, Cart66Cloud offers better scalability. You can start your online shop for free and slowly switch to the premium version once the sales start to grow
• You’ll get all the Cart66Cloud features that’ll save you from the hectic process of installing and managing multiple add-ons
• You can sell both physical and digital products on your online store
• The customer support team is available around the clock.

Conclusion

So, that concludes our guide on the top 6 WordPress plugins that you can install to set up an online shop on your existing WordPress website. These plugins are designed to meet different brand requirements. However, if you don’t have the required experience, it would be better to hire a team of professional web developers in Miami and let them turn your website into an online store.