Are you looking for the best ecommerce plugins to use for your online business? If so, check out our list of 7 must-have plugins.
» MORE: For help managing your plugins, learn more about Sage Digital Agency’s website maintenance services.
Top 7 WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
1. AutomateWoo
First on our list is AutomateWoo, which is an excellent marketing plugin. With AutomateWoo, you can effortlessly send targeted follow-up emails, as well as deploy strategies that re-engage your existing customers.
This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, AutotmateWoo offers over a dozen benefits to you as an online store owner.
Check out this list of the advantages that AutomateWoo offers:
- Send follow-up emails to your customers
- Remind customers with abandoned carts about their pending items
- Follow up with inactive customers with special email marketing offers and product recommendations
- Send SMS notifications to customers
- Integrate SMS with Twilio
- Incentivize product reviews through special initiatives
- Email your customers when their wish list products go on sale
- Send birthday emails with coupons
- Create personalized coupons for your customers
- Notify customers when their credit or debit cards expire
- Automate customer subscriptions with renewal reminders.
- Increase your grassroots sales word-of-mouth through AutomateWoo’s Refer A Friend feature
- Give VIP status to your top customers
The bottom line:
AutomateWoo helps you communicate with your customers by automating (and streamlining) important and otherwise time-consuming processes.
Take review emails as an example.
With AutomateWoo, you can send an automated email after your customer has received their product, saying something like, “Hey, how is your new product? Did it ship correctly? Can you give us a review?”
AutomateWoo Is Useful, But It Does Have Limits
While AutomateWoo is a solid plugin for any WooCommerce store, it does have limitations.
There comes a point when, as your store scales, it will require even more functionality than AutomateWoo can provide. At this point, we suggest exploring additional options to help you achieve your goals.
» MORE: Get more out of your ecommerce website & plugins with 22 web design resources
2. WP All Import and WP All Export
As an ecommerce store owner, you need the right kinds of plugins to manage your ecommerce data. For this, we suggest WP All Import and Export, which are two distinct yet complimentary WordPress ecommerce plugins that can be used together.
You can either buy the import license by itself or purchase the combined import/export license.
Benefits of WP All Import and WP All Export
WP All Import and WP All Export offer an intuitive drag & drop interface, allowing seamless imports from XML, CSV, or spreadsheet to WordPress.
Compatible with various plugins and themes, WP All Import and WP All Export support large files and diverse structures. Users can update existing content, integrate with other plugins like WooCommerce and Yoast SEO, and schedule auto-imports.
The software employed by WP All Import and WP All Export is developer-friendly and supports popular themes and plugins for effortless data management.
Here is a list of uses for WP All Import and WP All Export:
- Import to any plugin field or theme (auto-detect important elements of your WordPress site)
- Export from any plugin or theme (auto-detect custom fields)
- Upload any file type and file size with drag and drop
- Import large files of 100+ megabytes, including on shared hosting
- Export and import data without disturbing your original data, i.e., no overwriting old data
- Migrate everything you’ve done in WordPress (WooCommerce, images, etc.)
- Keep track of where your data is imported
- Update your existing content by importing data into existing posts
- Bulk edit your WordPress data in minutes (posts, listings, or products)
- Make custom spreadsheets quickly and rearrange them via drag and drop
- XML feeds for schema
- Automatic scheduling (easy setup for your imports and exports)
- Variable products
- Image galleries
- Repeater fields
- SEO meta, custom user meta, and term meta
WP All Import also offers:
Easy integration with WooCommerce, Advanced Custom Fields, Yoast SEO, Toolset Types, Pods, WPML, Rank Math SEO, All In One SEO, RealHomes, WP Job Manager, Listify, and more.
Conclusion:
WP All Import and WP All Export are worth the money.
If you have an ecommerce website, you’ll likely find yourself using these plugins almost daily, so they’re definitely worth adding to your list of ecommerce plugins.
Similar Product to WP All Import – Bulk Table Editor for WooCommerce
A similar product to WP All Import that we’ve had experience with is Bulk Table Editor for WooCommerce. It is great for adjusting product prices in bulk by a certain percentage, as well as managing price reductions on specific items.
While Bulk Table Editor didn’t quite make our list, it’s an honorable mention.
» MORE: Want to deepen your ecommerce web design knowledge? See our web design glossary of terms
3. Advanced Custom Fields
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) is a comprehensive plugin that enhances WordPress editing, allowing you to control edit screens and custom field data.
With a simple click, you can add fields to various sections in WordPress (including posts and comments) and easily load and display these fields in theme templates.
ACF offers a user-friendly API, over 30 field types, and support for custom post types without extra plugins. It also provides extensive documentation, community support, and a more advanced pro version.
Advanced Custom Fields is a must-have for your WordPress ecommerce website.
Benefits of Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)
Here is the list of uses for the ACF plugin (from the ACF website):
- Add fields on demand to WordPress edit screens
- Add fields anywhere on WordPress, including posts, comments, and even custom options pages
- Display your custom field values with developer-friendly functions
- Easily create a field group and define the location rules
- Intuitive API: Build effective templates
- Over 30 field types (you can also make your own)
- Extensive documentation (resource library with tutorials, code examples, and more)
- Free support for all ACF users
The Bottom Line When It Comes To ACF
Advanced Custom Fields allows you to add custom fields above and beyond what WooCommerce offers as standard. If you use custom fields with variables that do not come “out of the box” with WooCommerce, then ACF is likely an excellent choice for you.
» MORE: Are We A Fit? Find out if we’re the right choice for your ecommerce web design
4. WooCommerce Memberships and Subscriptions
WooCommerce is a fantastic tool by itself, but there are ways to enhance it, such as with WooCommerce Memberships and WooCommerce Subscriptions.
See the lists of benefits offered by WooCommerce Memberships and WooCommerce Subscriptions below:
WooCommerce Memberships
- Sell or assign memberships
- Sell memberships that offer only a single product
- Incentivize product purchases by offering a membership as part of the purchase
- Create a product suite with several products tied to the same membership
- Create invite-only member areas
- Grant content access for members based on a schedule, e.g., monthly product releases
- Create members-only products to turn your store into a purchasing club
- Hide certain products from non-members who visit your shop to reward your members
- Restrict the purchase of certain products from non-members but leave them visible to incentivize member sign-ups
- Offer your members enhanced shipping options
- Give your members special discounts
- Create a Member Area for your members so that they can quickly access information about their subscription
- Import and export your members to other services, such as an email tool
- Simplify communication with members via Membership Notes
- Remind customers of expiring memberships with a reminder email
- Easily allow members to pause or downgrade their memberships (this is important to build trust with your members)
WooCommerce Subscriptions
- Create product-of-the-month clubs
- Add sign-up fees
- Set expiration periods
- Offer free trials
- Benefit from multiple billing schedules (weekly, monthly, or annual)
- Integrate with 25+ payment gateways for recurring payments (automatic)
- Renew payments manually
- Allow for rebilling on failed subscription payments
- Renewal notifications and automated emails to let your customers know when their subscription payments have gone through
- Allow your customers to manage their own plans
- Create a subscription box (might require additional plugins)
- Detailed revenue reporting
- WooCommerce’s Cart and Checkout blocks
Leveraging Your WooCommerce Subscriptions
To encourage repeat business from your newest customers, why not offer a weekly, monthly, or yearly payment cycle? A lot of businesses get so preoccupied with acquiring new customers that they fail to develop a healthy pricing model.
With the right pricing model in place, you can better meet your customers’ needs.
» MORE: Selling products online? Hire us for exceptional ecommerce web design
5. Octolize – Flexible Shipping Import/Export WooCommerce
Octolize’s Flexible Shipping Import/Export WooCommerce plugin does exactly as its name implies. It expands the capability of WooCommerce’s default shipping, making it more flexible so that you can offer different shipping prices.
Benefits of Octolize’s Flexible Shipping Plugin
Here is a list of uses offered by this plugin:
- Integration with WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento
- Integrate your store with your chosen payment gateway (PayPal, PayU, and Stripe)
- Choose how you want to handle process order fulfillment (ShipStation, ShipBob, and BaseLinker)
- Easy shipping management (handling multiple methods efficiently, as well as making bulk adjustments)
- Instant pricing updates
- Adjust your shipping rates based on the price
- Adjust your shipping rates by weight, product dimensions, and product type
- Duplication & Transfer (transfer methods across zones or between stores using the exported CSV)
- Editable CSV Files (export, modify, and re-import shipping methods easily)
- Generate shipping labels to track shipments
- Allows shop owners to configure their shipping options (Flexible Shipping Pro, Conditional Shipping Methods, FedEx Live Rates PRO, UPS Live Rates and Access Points PRO)
- Dedicated Import/Export Wizard: Step-by-step guidance for precise import/export decisions
- Premium Support: 1-on-1 tech assistance for any encountered issues
Why Octolize’s Flexible Shipping Is An Important WordPress Ecommerce Plugin
Shipping oversized items is expensive. Fortunately, Octolize’s Flexible Shipping plugin can help you offset some of the costs, as you can adjust your shipping prices as needed.
6. TaxJar
TaxJar offers a WooCommerce plugin that allows you to automate your sales tax compliance. Used by thousands of businesses, TaxJar’s plugin makes it much easier to track, calculate, and file your taxes.
Benefits of Using TaxJar
Here is a list of perks that TaxJar’s WooCommerce plugin offers:
- Reduce your tax errors with automated compliance across 11,000 jurisdictions
- Submit taxes on time with TaxJar’s compliance advantage
- Manage sales tax compliance across multiple channels, making it easier to enter new markets
- Work with award-winning support to make your experience with TaxJar easy and enjoyable
- Benefit from accurate sales tax for all your products across all your channels (assign the right product tax code to your products)
- Integrate all your ecommerce channels
Elevate Your Ecommerce with TaxJar
If you need help managing the taxes for your online store, this is one of the better plugins to use!
7. Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)
Easy Digital Downloads is a WordPress ecommerce plugin that streamlines your digital sales, making it easier to sell your music, ebooks, and much more! This is a comprehensive platform with over 100 integrations, as well as in-depth reporting tools.
Easy Digital Downloads offers flexible payment options (includes support for PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, and Google Pay), and it supports subscriptions.
No code is required to use Easy Digital Downloads.
Benefits of Easy Digital Downloads
Here is a list of benefits offered by Easy Digital Downloads (from EDD’s website):
- Start taking credit card payments within minutes, thanks to an easy setup
- Payment flexibility via several different payment gateways
- Recurring payments
- Seamless shopping cart experience
- Allow your customers to buy multiple downloads at once
- Unlimited file downloads (you can distribute your products as much as you want)
- Limit the number of downloads (optional)
- Offer discounts at a flat rate or percentage rate (plus create discount codes to incentivize sales)
- Show customers their purchase history via a purchase history table
- Full data reporting with a built-in reporting tool
- Easy access to sales and product information in either JSON or XML format
- Monitor your product downloads and track date, time, and IP addresses (If you’re concerned about the tracking of IP addresses, contact Easy Digital Downloads for more information.)
Easy Digital Downloads integrates with the following:
Mailchimp, Dropbox, Zapier, AffiliateWP, ConvertKit, Powered by AWS, AWeber, Authorize.Net, and Slack.
The Best Part About Easy Digital Downloads
EDD’s best feature is how simple and straightforward it is. It comes with plenty of features, but the plugin isn’t overstuffed or too complicated, and it doesn’t have much of a learning curve.
To learn more about Easy Digital Download’s features, visit their Easy Digital Downloads Features page.
Why We Made This Ecommerce Plugins List
Our intention with this list is to save you time and keep you from having to sort through the broader ecommerce plugin market, which is saturated with thousands of plugins.
For ecommerce plugin management with Sage Digital Agency, see our Website Management pricing.
To enhance your existing ecommerce website with us, book a web redesign discovery call!
