5 Best WordPress Ecommerce Platforms SWAT Analysed For All Types OF Online Stores
Online stores are becoming more and more popular nowadays. The on the go shopping experience is the most user wants. It takes lots of resources to create a store like Amazon Go, but you can create an online store like Amazon. There are many e-commerce platforms to help you set up online store. When you combine the WordPress power with these best e-commerce platforms you can make innumerable things. To help you select the best WordPress e-commerce plugin for your business we have listed some best platforms and their features.
Best WordPress Ecommerce Platforms
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is one of the best and well-known e-commerce platform. The WooCommerce alone powers 28% of the online stores on the internet. The WooCommerce was started as a plugin in the WordPress.org directory. Later in 2015 due to its popularity and flexibility Automattic, the company who is responsible for both the WordPress.org and WordPress.com community. The basic version is free, in which you get all the basic features to set up an e-commerce store.
In the free version, you get shipment option but the flat rate for the entire product or per product only calculated. In order to give options to enter discount coupons and offer codes, you have either use a plugin or customize the WooCommerce plugin.
Customization
WooCommerce is famous for its flexibility and it is also well documented. If you are a developer or have a developing team, then customizing the WooCommerce for your needs is a piece of a cake for you.
Extensions
Even if you are not having any coding knowledge there are hundreds of useful WooCommerce plugins to help you. Both free and premium plugins are there to help you. Integrating the plugins with WooCommerce is also easy. The plugin provider gives you a complete documentation of the API and still if you can’t find a solution there is a big community out there to help you. You can see the complete list of WooCommerce extensions in the WooCommerce official page itself; some are free and some are premium.
Themes With WooCommerce
WordPress e-commerce themes have most of the basic functionalities integrated for you like the shipment, adding badges, tags, coupon code and much more. To get a better idea about the WooCommerce themes take a look at our Elsey theme and Seese theme.
Some of the niche related themes will also support WooCommerce, customized completely for the particular niche needs. Hence with WooCommerce, you have plenty of options and supports.
Easy Digital Download
Easy digital download is becoming way too popular among the digital asset and product selling companies. WooCommerce can also support digital product, but the EDD is specifically designed for selling digital products. So by default EDD has lots of useful functionalities for digital files. Another big plus point of the EDD is its user interface. The UI of the EDD is simple and straightforward, the learning curve for this platform is less.
Customization
Like the WooCommerce you also get tons of customization options in the EDD. As a developer, most of the people find this platform as very flexible and easy to integrate with any WordPress themes and even with the custom themes. From the user point of view also this template has given you plenty of straight front-end interface option to customize the options.
Extensions
Talking about the extensions, the EDD has lots of them developed in the past year. I have personally been waiting for the Stripe payment gateway option and the Slack integration options, thank god finally it was made available last year. Since their user base is increasing, especially among the digital startups the list of extensions is keep on increasing. You can take a look at the complete list of EDD extensions on their official page.
Themes With Easy Digital Download
The downside of the EDD is, it is better for managing and selling the digital files only. In order to use this platform to sell commodities or other types of physical product you have to use the premium add-ons, these features can be achieved more easily with the WooCommerce. It is one of the reasons why you can find the WooCommerce themes in abundance. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have EDD based themes. Some of the best selling EDD based WordPress themes are Humble shop, DG work, and Olam.
Colorlib had made a complete collection of best EDD themes please take a look at it if you are looking for one. Or you can get a custom theme support to integrate the EDD to your existing WordPress theme.
Shopify
Shopify is the best alternative for the WooCommerce. It almost has all the features you get in the WooCommerce and the best part is you get direct support from the team if you need help. The plus point and the negative point of the Shopify is the same, you have to pay monthly to use this plan, the plan starts at $29/month. The plus side is since it is premium all your maintenance worries are taken care by the Shopify engineers; and the downside is, if you get used to WooCommerce you will know maintaining your online store is not that tough and you get more freedom in the WooCommerce.
If you are a busy online store owner, who wants to concentrate on many other business oriented things, you can go for the Shopify.
Customization
Since it is a paid platform you no need to worry about the customizations. Shopify provides you many tools to customize the shop, even beginners can set up and customize the shop easily. For developers also the Shopify provides well documented API. You get 24/7 support center and forum support if you need any special attention.
Extensions
Extension wise you are covered completely with the Shopify apps. Again, since you are paying a monthly subscription, most of the apps are free to use. Only some advanced apps may cost you some extra bucks. But you get most of the regular extensions for free on the Shopify platform.
Some of these basic plugins you see in the Shopify are premium on other platforms. Cost wise all are going to be more are less equal. What you have to consider while choosing is your convenience and the features you get with this platform.
Themes With Shopify
Like the WooCommerce, the Shopify also provides you their own theme collections, which you can see in their dedicated Shopify theme page. You also get third party themes with the Shopify integrated, a few minute searches in the ThemeForest will bring you lots of options.
Shopp
Shopp is a simple and secure e-commerce plugin. This plugin is also a very old plugin, been there in the WordPress family for about ten years now. It is free to use up to some limit and if you are serious about your e-commerce store then you can go for the premium version of this plugin. The major plus point of the Shopp is, it has many security features and you can add any payment gateway you want via the premium add-ons.
If you are not very serious about your e-commerce store looks and if you can manage everything by yourself (including the coding), then you can go for it. Being a developer or a user you will be having lots of doubts and problems. The support team should be strong enough to take all your problems, you can’t expect this with Shopp. Even for a small clarification, you have to pay to get their support and for their community forum also you have to pay to get access.
Customization
With Shopp, you get impressive documentation, in which you get all the basic information and customizations given clearly. But if you need advanced customization you have to knock the support center doors and to get answers you need to pay.
Extensions
You have a handful of plugin extensions with the Shopp, mostly related to payment and security. Again you don’t have any free extensions in the list, all are premium. You can check Shopp add-on list on their official page.
Themes With Shopp
There aren’t many themes available in the Shopp, only a few templates are available. So it is better to get self custom made theme or integrate the Shopp with your existing WordPress themes.
Cart66
Cart66 is for the entry-level e-commerce store owners in US and Canada. You can sell both the physical and digital products on this platform. The only problem is, it is not a well automated plugin. The actions are not interlinked, you have to do each individual tasks manually. For example, if you need to update the customer about delivery, then you have to manually create one. And another drawback with this e-commerce plugin is it can’t manage data for a long time.
Extensions & Customizations
As of now, there is no cross plugin integration feature. You can use only the features you get along with the plugin. Integrating with the WordPress themes are made simple, so you won’t be having any trouble in setting up the platform with your theme. You have tutorials for the customizations and the features are growing. It is in the initial stage and will take few years to compete with big platforms. If you are new to e-commerce and to try out how well you can manage your business you can use this plugin.
Final Thoughts
These are some of the best WordPress e-commerce platforms you can use for your site. Each differs from one another and also have their own uniqueness. Select the best one that fits you.
- If you are running a general e-commerce store then WooCommerce will help you
- For digital goods selling sites, the Easy Digital Downloads is the best option
- If you are professionally running a purely online store then, Shopify will meet your needs
