The 12 Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins for Your Online Store

WordPress is one of the most popular website builders on the market. Powering roughly 40% of the world's websites, what started out as a simple content management system has evolved into a comprehensive ecommerce solution to support just about any need.

But, choosing the right plugins can be a headache. In this guide, we'll cover the 12 best eCommerce plugins you can install today to turn any WordPress site into an eCommerce powerhouse.

Why do you need ecommerce plugins for WordPress?

In order to get the functionality you need out of your WordPress site, you'll need to find and download a few plugins. Plugins are pieces of software that add new features to your site, from SEO optimisation to ecommerce and everything in between.

Think of WordPress plugins like the third-party apps you download on your smartphone—they empower you to go beyond the basics.

While the functions plugins add can be complex, using them is easy. Just install them from the plugin directory, and they'll automatically be added to your WordPress dashboard.

How to choose a WordPress ecommerce plugin

With over 58,000 plugins, it's important to narrow down your search. To run an ecommerce store online, search for plugins that can give you the following functionalities:

• Built-in payment processing
• Product pages
• Order management
• Payment options
• Shipping rates
• Real-time customer service

In addition to finding the functionalities you're after, you'll want to consider the following factors to help you make your choice.

Cost: Some plugins are free, others are very reasonable for what they offer and others would make your accountant weep.

Appearance: Make sure that your plugin fits in with the theme of your WordPress website and business branding.

Impact on page speed: Plugins aren't always made with the best interests of your site speed in mind. Before installing any (or getting too attached) check reviews to see if users have reported any issues.

Reviews: A plugin’s site is going to show off the best features they have to offer. A third party review app is going to tell the real story.

Mobile responsiveness: More than half of ecommerce sales come from mobile devices, so you better make sure that your customers can checkout with ease no matter how they access your website.

Integrations: Your WordPress dashboard is not going to be the only tool you use online. Integrations allow you to connect with important third-party apps, for example your CRM or email marketing tools.

Analytics: If a plugin comes with analytics, you’ll be able to monitor customer behaviour and adjust your content based on SEO and PPC practices.

Community: The best WordPress plugins have active communities that offer assistance and resources for troubleshooting problems that may pop up. How active the community is happens to be an accurate reflection of how popular (and good) a plugin is.

Customer support: At the very least, your plugin should have thorough documentation and support forums.  Tutorials are invaluable and nothing beats being able to talk with a support team in real-time.

The 12 best WordPress ecommerce plugins

Our list of ecommerce plugins is split into two sections: ecommerce solutions and additional plugins. Ecommerce solutions are other tools (not affiliated with WordPress) that you can use to embed additonal functionality into your website, whereas plugins are a WordPress specific fix.

1. Paperform

(Image Source: Paperform)

Paperform's WordPress plugin allows you to create beautiful forms, product and payment pages, surveys, contact forms, and more, all from the easy to use editor. Whether you want to start your own online business or bring an existing store online, Paperform offers a powerful and intuitive digital suite of tools you can use to do so.

Most plugins involve a lot of clicking around your WordPress dashboard. Not Paperform. Just use the free-text builder to make your snazzy ecommerce page—add products and services, set stock levels, create custom SKUs and get your dream store up and running.

Paperform gives you all the tools you need to create powerful, brand specific forms and pages. You can customize the color, size, and look of every element of your creation, from the first letter to the final submit button.

Your digital storefront is just the beginning. From Paperform's dashboard, you can manage orders, monitor inventory and track products through the buying cycle. With coupons and subscriptions, automated receipts and support for all leading payment gateways, Paperform makes it easy to sell physical or or digital products online.

Start with one of the more than 650+ templates, or create your own from scratch. You can also connect to your favourite third-party tools by using one of Paperform's 3,000 Direct and Zapier integration to automate ecommerce processes like order processing, sending confirmation emails, or filing customer data.

2. WooCommerce

(Image Source: WooCommerce)

Despite there being plenty of alternatives to WooCommerce, it still retains the mantle of the most popular WordPress ecommerce plugin. This is largely because it's free, open-source and has everything you need to start selling online.

With the WooCommerce plugin, business owners can look after every element of their store. Add products, manage inventory and sell anything from ebooks to potted plants. It's super customizable, giving you ultimate control over the look, feel and functionality of your site.

The base product is fairly simple. However, you can further empower your WooCommerce store with 400+ extensions covering everything from payments and email marketing to accounting.

WooCommerce extensions to consider

Out of the box, WooCommerce's features are quite limited, which is understandable seeing as it's free. To unlock most of the advanced functionality you'll need to add a few extensions. Here are some we recommend:

• Enhanced Ecommerce Google Analytics: This gives you the analytics data you need to know your customers well. Track and get actionable insights into all aspects of the buyer journey, from when a customer lands on your website until they leave.
• Ultimate Gift Card: This plugin empowers you to create, design and sell gift certificates that customers can redeem on your online store. This is a great way to promote customer retention and grow brand loyalty.
• Amazon Affiliates: Affiliate marketing can be an effective way to make money online, and WooCommerce Amazon Affiliates make it a whole lot easier. You can import products, including variations, from the Amazon marketplace to your site without any API keys. Any changes are automatically synced and there's a report that tracks every product for you.

3. WP EasyCart

(Image source: WP EasyCart)

WP EasyCart is one of the best ways to create and monitor your ecommerce store with one tool. Once it's installed, your visitors can browse and purchase products directly on your site without any hassle.

You get all the features you'd expect. Product pages, order management systems, marketing tools and automated taxes are all baked into the core product. WP EasyCart also offers useful tools to track and monitor sales performance without the need for any third-party tools.

All plans integrate with over 30 payment gateways including PayPal, Stripe and Braintree. This means customers can choose the right solution for their needs (and this cuts down friction). With the premium plan, you also unlock access to more integrations like MailChimp, Quickbooks and ShipStation to enhance your workflow.

4. Shopify Buy Button

(Image Source: Shopify)

Shopify is a colossal ecommerce platform of its own that exists as a major competitor to WordPress. But even they know how popular WordPress is, which is why they have a plugin of their own.

The Shopify Buy Button is one of the best ways to add ecommerce to your WordPress site without any bells and whistles. This tool allows you to generate a "buy" button that you can embed anywhere across your website to sell products.

Sales are run through Shopify's platform. Just customise the button to fit the look of your business, and connect with Shopify. It's a barebones solution for people that don't quite require a fully-fledged ecommerce site.

5. BigCommerce WordPress

(Image source: BigCommerce)

BigCommerce is an ecommerce platform that competes with WordPress. And, just like Shopify, they've tried to get in on the WordPress action with their own dedicated plugin.

The plugin exists as a brand play to get users to use BigCommerce, but it's still a handy solution. It has everything an ecommerce business requires, including complex inventory management tools, the ability to manage multiple sites in one place, and easy customisation without any code.

It's particularly handy if you have an omnichannel sales strategy. You can sell across multiple marketplaces including Amazon and social media platforms. There are also extensive sales and marketing analytics, so you can get insight into things like product performance and cart abandonment.

6. Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart

(Image source: Ecwid)

With Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart, it's all in the name. As with all the other tools listed so far, Ecwid is a storefront platform that lets you sell online. Boasting a colossal $5 billion of merchant revenue processed, it's a hugely popular option.

So what makes it different? Ecwid is all about giving merchants the power to sell what they want, where they want it. For example, you can add your online store to Facebook and Instagram with no add-ons necessary, which is great if you have a large social media audience.

Every Ecwid online store includes unlimited storage and regular backups. Also worth pointing out are the array of shipping options (including integrations with major carriers like USPS, UPS and Australia Post), live customer support and a mobile app that lets you monitor your store on the go.

7. Easy Digital Downloads

(Image Source: Easy Digital Downloads)

Most other ecommerce plugins on this list are jacks of all trades. They come with a virtual toolbelt chock full of features—a lot of which you'll probably not ever use.

Easy Digital Downloads focuses exactly on what's on the tin. It gives you the tools you need to sell digital goods, from ebooks and PDFs to art and podcast episodes. It's easy to use, works without any tweaks and offers support through videos, tutorials and community forums.

It has a range of payment options, a full shopping cart system with customer account pages and basic activity tracking so you can track sales. You can set up discount codes and monitor sales with simple reporting. If you're a small business, freelancer or digital entrepreneur, it's a great option.

Other Essential WordPress ECommerce Plugins

We've covered the plugins that turn WordPress  into an eCommerce site. The following plugins add extra functionality to help support your online store:

1. Slider Revolution
2. Yoast SEO
3. TrustPulse
4. MonsterInsights
5. WP Rocket
6. Wordfence

8. Yoast SEO

Image Source: Yoast SEO

While not specifically a plugin, Yoast is an additional service you can use to boost the SEO ranking of your WordPress site. By boosting your SEO marketing, you can increase visits to your page, and improve your sales.

Need to find high-performing keywords? Fix your URL structure? Control your breadcrumbs or make sure you're blogging about the right topics? Yoast has all your SEO needs covered and does so in a visual, easy to comprehend fashion.

9. TrustPulse

(Image Source: TrustPulse)

Social proof helps you get more sales. The stats back it up: 40% of shoppers find new brands to shop with online based on word of mouth recommendations from friends and family.

TrustPulse is the best way to display social proof on your website. It plugs into your WordPress site to showcase testimonials, reviews and ratings from your customers. This doesn't just boost sales—it increases trust in your brand.

Setup is simple and it can be customised to suit any WordPress themes. With real-time event tracking, you can even show a popup notification any time a visitor buys a product or signs up for a trial.

10. MonsterInsights

(Image Source: MonsterInsights)

MonsterInsights is a tool that allows you to connect your WordPress site to Google Analytics. Linking your ecommerce website to Google Analytics is essential if you want to get insights into how people find and use your site. MonsterInsights goes one step further by letting you view your GA stats right from your WordPress dashboard.

Once it's set up, you can use it to optimise your website based on total traffic, subscribers and monthly views. Get page-level analytics, real-time stats and data to help understand your audience—all from the one place.

By optimising your website (and creating a better user experience) you can reduce cart abandonment, improve your conversion rate and increase your overall traffic. There's also an ecommerce metrics report that shows total revenue, average order value and top referral sources.

11. WP Rocket

(Image Source: WP Rocket)

Page speed is crucial if you want to appease both customers and the Google gods. That's why you need a caching tool like WP Rocket—it speeds up your WordPress site, improving performance, SEO and overall ease of use all in one go.

What makes WP Rocket stand out from other caching tools is how easy it is. The process takes only a few minutes, and there's no coding necessary. It supports both page and browser caching, meaning static content doesn't have to be re-loaded when people go from one page to the next.

WP Rocket is also compatible with all major ecommerce plugins. That means whether you choose one of the options on this list (or even ones we didn't include, like Jigoshop and Cart66) you don't have to worry about compatibility.

12. Wordfence

(Image Source: Wordfence Security)

Wordfence Security is an essential plugin for any WordPress eCommerce website. It defends your site against hacks, sets up an extensive firewall and blacklists any malicious activity in real-time.

There is a free version that offers good protection, however, we recommend any dedicated ecommerce website shells out for premium—a hundred bucks is a small price to pay for peace of mind.

Over to you

There you have it. The best WordPress ecommerce plugins plus a few extra tools to help take your site to the next level.

Keep in mind that it's important to always be looking out for ways to improve your site—that means both keeping an ear to the ground and seeing if any new tools pop up, and making sure your existing plugins are actually helping your site.

All that's left is to get your store up and running. Try Paperform's 14-day free trial to get started today—no credit card required.

This post was written by a guest author named Franc Lucas