Are you thinking of launching an online store? Or, perhaps you have one already but your sales aren’t growing as fast as you’d like?
Either way—keep reading because in this article, we’ll list 11 best WordPress eCommerce plugins to help you take your online store to another level.
From launching your WordPress ecommerce business through building an engaged email list to increasing sales and recovering abandoned carts, these free and paid tools can be added to your website within minutes.
We’ll look at pros and cons of each, and compare various options so that you can choose the best solution for yourself.
Ready? Let’s have a look!
Launching an online store
First off, the list of eCommerce platforms that will allow you to finally launch your store. (Skip this part if you are already running an online shop).
Depending on the type of goods you’ll be selling, here are the most popular options when it comes to the platform:
WooCommerce
Naturally, the first, and in our view, the best choice is WordPress’ native eCommerce platform (plugin)—WooCommerce. Why?
Well, apart from being free, it is also regularly updated so you can rest assured that your store keeps up with the latest trends in technology.
WooCommerce also comes with a Setup Wizard that will guide you step by step in the process of turning your website into an online store.
It also offers a great set of features to make selling online as easy as possible:
- Option to add unlimited number of products
- Ability to sell physical and digital goods
- Public ratings and reviews
- Different product payment options
- Highly customizable & access to multiple themes
- Product sorting and filtering
Cons:
- Adding integrations and plugins in excess can slow down the performance
Price: Free
Easy Digital Downloads
Next, a platform specifically designed to sell digital goods. Yes, it can also work for selling physical goods too but it’s mostly recommended for digital sellers.
Easy Digital Downloads is a complete eCommerce solution for WordPress that can be easily customizable for your needs. The set of features include:
- Large library of themes and extensions
- Integration with popular payment gateways and CMSs
- Advanced reporting
- Discount codes and promotions
- Shipping and tax calculators
- Variable product options
Cons:
- Paid Payment Gateway add-ons
- Slow customer service
Price: Free
BigCommerce
Lastly, we’ve decided to include BigCommerce on the list, too. It’s a platform that’s often compared side by side with its two rivals WooCommerce and Shopify.
The company went public in 2020 and that means that BigCommerce might become a more significant player in the eCommerce space. BigCommerce is cloud-hosted and comes with following features:
- Omni-channel sales including social media, marketplaces, physical stores
- 80+ predesigned, responsive templates
- Abandoned Cart Saver feature
- More than 40 payment methods
- In-built blog and analytics
- Dropshipping management
Cons:
- Only paid plans available (apart from 15 days free trial)
- Lack of in-built option for launching a multilingual store
- Small app marketplace
Price: Starts from $29.95
Pro Tip: For choosing the best eCommerce WordPress plugin check out: Top eCommerce Themes for your WordPress website
Building an email list
Next up is a short list of extremely useful tools that allow you to build an email list from scratch and hassle-free.
With a list of engaged subscribers your marketing and sales efforts can be expanded significantly. You can launch a newsletter, create a discount and promotion strategy, and start sending cart abandonment emails.
That’s why, installing plugins that can help you collect email addresses of your website visitors (and, therefore, potential customers) is so important.
Here’s a list of best WordPress plugins for your eCommerce business:
KyLeads
A plugin that’s described as an “all in one customer feedback and lead generation”. You can use it to design interactive, engaging quizzes to generate qualified leads.
KyLeads also allows you to design pop-ups,customized forms, and surveys to collect email addresses in an easy way. The list of core features include:
- A/B testing
- In-built powerful analytics
- Pre-built templates and full customization
- Contact segmentation
Cons:
- Only paid plans available
- Limited lead qualification features
Price: Starts from $49/month.
LeadQuizzes
Similar to the tool above, LeadQuizzes is a powerful addition to any eCommerce site wishing to acquire new leads in a hassle-free way. With it, you can design fun quizzes in minutes (or use one of the many existing templates) and capture email addresses of your site visitors with ease.
LeadQuizzes is a great choice for those businesses that want to build a list of qualified leads in order to send personalized email campaigns in the future. You can segment your quizzes’ participants based on their answers and set up your email flows in an automated way to deliver them the most value.
Main features include:
- Design flexibility
- Access to free 75+ templates
- URL redirect
- Facebook and Google Ads Integration
- In-built analytics
Cons:
- Only paid plans available (14 days free trial)
- Limited integration options
- Not intuitive UI
Price: Starts from $37/month
Tidio
An all-in-one tool designed specifically for small eCommerce businesses. Tidio offers 3 interconnected products: live chat, chatbots, and email marketing. Although Tidio can be also used for closing sales and recovering abandoned carts, its power lies in chatbot automation, especially useful for generating leads.
Most eCommerce businesses use Tidio to add chatbots to their stores with a welcome message or a discount code. It’s also common to see companies switching to a 24/7 customer support via chat, or setting up a FAQ bot.
Features consist of:
- Live typing preview
- Visitors’ viewed pages history
- In-coming visitor notification and live visitor list
- Library of chatbot and email templates
- Contact segmentation and analytics
Cons:
- Limited analytics and reporting
- No default white label option
Price: Freemium (forever) plan available
Pro Tip: If you are struggling with bringing traffic to your WooCommerce store, check out this resource: 7 tips to leverage both traffic and revenue for your WordPress website
Recovering abandoned shopping carts
This list of plugins could not be complete without giving you a few options for tools which help recover abandoned carts.
Cart abandonment is a real plague among eCommerce businesses and something that keeps online store owners up at night. Yet, there are tools that can help you reduce your cart abandonment rate and get more of your potential customers to complete their purchase.
Here are a few hand-picked options to get you started.
TI WooCommerce Wishlist
Starting off with a very popular eCommerce plugin for beginners – Ti WooCommerce Wishlist. The tool is designed not so much to recover abandoned carts in a given moment, but rather to allow your visitors to come back to their purchase at a later date by adding the desired product to their wishlist.
The option to save an item to a wishlist is a non-intrusive way to also upsell your products. It’s common for customers to come back to their wishlist adding more and more items they plan on purchasing.
TI WooCommerce has the following set of features:
- Automatic removal of a wishlist product once it’s added to the cart
- Customizable wish list table columns
- “Add to wishlist” button or link on product page
- Appearance customization
- Multi-wishlists per user (premium)
Cons:
- Slow customer service
- Limited multilingual options
Price: Free
Cart Recovery for WordPress
A simple plugin that captures email addresses of users on the checkout page. When integrated correctly, you can set it up to send an automated series of follow up emails. It’s simple to install and you can personalize the email sequence to fit your brand in minutes
This plugin is quite popular among WP users also because it offers the following features:
- Ready-to-use follow-up email templates
- Webhooks/Integrations
- GDPR Compliance
- Reports
Cons:
- Limited email editor features
- SPAM issues
Price: Free
OptiMonk
A tool which will allow you to reduce your cart abandonment rate as well as help you optimize your customers’ journey on your website. Optimonk is a great choice for beginners looking for an all-in-one plugin to start their eCommerce journey.
When set up correctly, this tool will allow you to get users’ insights and optimize your customer journey to fight cart abandonment, build an email list, boost sales, and collect feedback in one place.
Main product features include:
- A/B Testing
- Cart based targeting
- Custom form fields
- Multi-step campaigns
- 150+ responsive templates
Cons:
- Pricing model based on page views
- Limited customization options
Price: Free
Pro Tip: Want to dig deeper and uncover more opportunities for reducing your mobile cart abandonment rate? Check out this resource: How much are abandoned mobile purchases costing your company?
Reviews and testimonials
Finally, let’s take a look at plugins which allow your users leave their reviews and testimonials about your products.
Collecting customer feedback is a crucial part of any successful marketing strategy, as social proof has become one of the key factors that helps consumers decide whether doing business with you is a good choice.
Here are a few popular WordPress plugins for reviews and testimonials that you can add to your store within minutes. Let’s take a look.
Stars Testimonials WordPress Plugin
One of the most widely used plugins for eCommerce, Stars Testimonial made its way to the top because of its extensive functionality and extremely helpful technical support from the team behind it. It’s easy to install and use, and offers options such as start rating and customers’ images.
Apart from that, you can preview and moderate each testimonial as well as easily integrate it with popular page builders such as Elementor, Divi, Visual Composer, WPBakery, and more.
Main features consist of:
- Unlimited testimonials quota
- Appearance customization
- No-coding testimonial widget editor
- Images and star rating feature
Cons:
- Limited free version features
Price: Free
WP Product Review
This fairly popular plugin was created by Themeisle to help WordPress users collect and display reviews in the most efficient way. Now available only in a free version, WP Product Review is a great option for all beginners.
It’s a great tool for interacting with your users and boosting social proof. You can display product reviews in the most effective way and add a “buy now” button to close the sale faster.
Some of the most useful features include:
- Appearance customization (colors etc.)
- Option to add rich snippet (schema) to posts
- Download button for the posts
- Option to post reviews in different review sections with shortcodes
Cons:
- Has bugs sometimes messing the CSS
- No pro version available – limited free features
Price: Free
Wrapping up
There you have it—11 best WordPress eCommerce plugins to choose from when launching or already running your online store.
With so many options available, picking the right one might seem tricky, so save yourself time and money by testing the free ones first. Your eCommerce digital marketing strategy would be incomplete without the right toolkit at your disposal.
Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves, download your chosen plugins, and watch your email list and sales grow even when you sleep. Good luck!