We have curated 6 must-have WordPress ecommerce plugins for your ecommerce business using WooCommerce.
Please note that we’re not going to include WooCommerce as a plugin on this list, as we’re assuming that you are already a WooCommerce user.
For other types of plugins besides ecommerce that you can use for WordPress, you might want to check out our 10 Must Have WordPress Plugins post.
WordPress Ecommerce Plugins List
1. AutomateWoo
Let’s talk about AutomateWoo.
This is an excellent marketing plugin since it helps WooCommerce users retain customers.
AutomateWoo supercharges your ability to send follow up emails and win over inactive customers through win-back initiatives.
But these advantages are just the tip of the iceberg.
AutotmateWoo offers at least 12 substantial benefits that turbocharge your online marketing.
Here is the list of perks from the AutomateWoo website:
- Send follow up emails
- Remind customers who have abandoned carts about their pending items
- Follow up with inactive customers with special email marketing offers and product recommendations
- SMS notifications to customers
- SMS integration with Twilio
- Incentivize product reviews (VERY IMPORTANT) by offering discounts for reviews
- Email your customers when their wish list products go on sale
- Send birthday emails with coupons
- Notify customers about their card expiration
- Create personalized coupons for your customers
- Subscriptions automation (failed payments, renewal reminders, etc.)
- Increase your grassroots sales word-of-mouth through AutomateWoo’s Refer A Friend feature
- Give VIP status to your top customers
Translation:
AutomateWoo helps you consistently reach out to clients and create automatic touch points that would otherwise have to be handled manually.
AutomateWoo Is VERY Useful, But It Does Have Limits
AutomateWoo is a solid plugin for any WooCommerce store, and it is a top contender on our WordPress Ecommerce Plugins list.
With that said:
We do feel that there are specific WordPress ecommerce plugins available on the market that are better at performing their respective functions than some of the packaged options available within AutomateWoo.
The reason AutomateWoo is so useful is that it is a great all-in-one option.
Use AutomateWoo First As A Beginner, Then Upgrade When Ready
There comes a point when, as your store scales, it will require even more functionality than AutomateWoo can provide, and at that point, you could investigate additional options to help you achieve your goals.
In the beginning, though, AutomateWoo is a cost-friendly and effective choice.
The Price of WordPress Ecommerce Plugins Adds Up
Take it from us, using a bunch of WordPress ecommerce plugins early on isn’t necessary.
It will just cost you money.
Plugins may not be expensive individually, but they do add up.
Buy too many plugins and you might find yourself paying a few hundred dollars very easily.
And you won’t necessarily know if you’re going to use them until you try them out to see if they’re truly useful.
For example, a wish list, you might think that your customers will use one.
Let’s say you pay for a wish list plugin, and then come to find out, no one actually uses your wish list.
It doesn’t make sense to pay for a WordPress ecommerce plugin that doesn’t accomplish your goals.
2. WP All Import and WP All Export
WP All Import and Export are two separate WordPress ecommerce plugins essentially.
You can buy the import license by itself or the import/export license together.
WP All Import Use Case
What these plugins do is they allow you to import and export data at scale, whether it’s customer records, product updates, or something else.
Both of these nifty WordPress ecommerce plugins are great to have when you have a sale going on since you can update all your pricing as needed.
WP All Import Is Definitely Worth It
If you have an ecommerce website, you’ll find yourself using this plugin almost daily, so it’s definitely worth adding to your WordPress Ecommerce Plugins list.
Want more information about it?
Here is the list of perks from the WP All Import website:
- Import to any plugin field or theme (auto-detect important elements of your WordPress site, such as image galleries)
- Upload any file type and file size with drag and drop
- Import large files of 100+ megabytes, including on shared hosting
- Update your existing content by importing data into existing posts
- Export from any plugin or theme (auto-detect custom fields)
- Make custom spreadsheets quickly and rearrange via drag and drop
- XML feeds for schema
- Export and import data without disturbing your original data, i.e., no overwriting old data
- Migrate everything done in WordPress (WooCommerce, images, etc.)
- Keep track of where your data is imported
- Bulk edit your WordPress data in minutes (posts, listings, or products)
- Automatic scheduling (easy set up for your imports and exports)
Additional Functionalities
According to the WP All Import website:
“Variable products, SEO meta, repeater fields, custom user meta, image galleries, term meta – WP All Import does it all.”
WP All Import allows for:
Easy integration with WooCommerce, Advanced Custom Fields, Toolset Types, Pods, WPML, Yoast SEO, Rank Math SEO, All In One SEO, RealHomes, WP Job Manager, Listify, and more.
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 the bulk table editor for WooCommerce, which is just great for mass percentage changes or reduction of price on specific items.
It didn’t quite make our WordPress Ecommerce Plugins top 6, but it’s an honorable mention.
3. Advanced Custom Fields
This agile plugin allows you to add custom fields as needed to your WooCommerce store and is a must-have for your WordPress Ecommerce Plugins list.
ACF’s Uses
Advanced Custom Fields makes it easy to import products, especially if you have any sort of drop shipping business.
It makes it very easy to bulk upload a lot of products very quickly.
ACF Is Better At Adding Custom Fields Than WooCommerce
Advanced Custom Fields allows you to add custom fields above and beyond what WooCommerce offers as standard.
If you want to get much more granular and offer additional information, you will want to have a field that is searchable or editable to show whatever information it is that you find appropriate.
ACF does come with other capabilities beyond what we’ve mentioned.
Here is the list of perks from the ACF website:
- Add fields on demand to WP edit screens
- Add fields anywhere on WP, including posts, comments, and even custom options pages
- Display your custom field values with developer-friendly functions
- Simply create a field group and define the location rules
- Intuitive API: Build effective templates
- Over 30 field types (plus you can make your own)
- Extensive documentation (resource library with tutorials, code examples, and more)
- Free support for all ACF users (EXTREMELY helpful)
The Bottom Line When It Comes To ACF
ACF is definitely a must have for any ecommerce website.
If you use a custom field, whether it’s a review or you want to add custom variables that do not come “out of the box” with WooCommerce, then this is the plugin for you.
4. WooCommerce Subscriptions and Memberships
We often use these two WordPress ecommerce plugins together (WooCommerce Subscriptions and WooCommerce Memberships) since they extend what WooCommerce can offer.
Everything you need is handled inside the WooCommerce platform with these extensions if:
(1) you have any kind of WooCommerce membership that allows access to digital or virtual items, and (2) if you want to be able to charge a recurring fee.
Here is the list of perks for these helpful WordPress ecommerce plugins from the WooCommerce website:
WooCommerce Membership
- 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 members 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
- Simplified communication with members via Membership Notes
- Remind customers of expiring memberships with a reminder email
- Quickly 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
- Integrate with 25+ payment gateways for recurring payments (automatic)
- Manual renewal payments capability through WooCommerce
- Allow for rebilling on failed subscription payments
- Renewal notifications and automated emails to let customers know when their subscription payments have gone through
- Detailed revenue reporting
- Create a subscription box (might require additional plugins)
WooCommerce Subscriptions Revenue
WooCommerce Subscriptions revenue is easy revenue, so we recommend exploring this plugin.
For those unfamiliar with WooCommerce Subscriptions, it gives you the option to offer subscription products or services to your customers with annual, monthly, or weekly payment plans.
We Highly Recommend Leveraging Your WooCommerce Subscriptions
Once you’ve won over a new customer, why not offer a weekly, monthly, or yearly option to get recurring purchases?
Your customer or client has already shown that they value your products or services.
Many organizations lose touch with that and focus too heavily on bringing in new business.
They end up not paying attention to existing clients that have already expressed an interest in what it is they’re selling.
Maintaining Your Existing Customers Takes Work But Is Worth It
It takes maintenance, time, effort, and resources to acquire new customers.
So, if you’re continually trying to go out and redo that cycle (as opposed to exploring existing subscription revenue options), it’s like fighting an uphill battle.
Certainly, acquiring new customers is important. But it isn’t the full equation.
Well-Crafted Subscription Offerings Are Low Maintenance
Perhaps the best part about offering subscription services is that they are low maintenance…when they are well crafted.
When you have an existing customer who is interested in your subscription plan, you may not even have to talk to that customer—unless, of course, they encounter an issue that they need you to resolve.
You can minimize how much time you need to focus on maintaining the quality of your offerings by creating an excellent product or service from the get-go.
Sounds obvious, but:
You’d be surprised how many companies jump into offering subscription services without thinking their products or services all the way through.
The ability to create a high-quality subscription service that generates income without requiring constant supervision from you is invaluable and will supplement your business’ overall revenue.
Side Note About Customer Outreach
We’ve just talked about WooCommerce, but let’s peddle back to AutomateWoo for just a moment.
AutomateWoo, like many other WordPress ecommerce plugins, offer a lot of opportunities, especially when it comes to customer outreach.
Since these tools exist, there should be no reason why businesses skip doing outreach.
Our Suggestion
Reach out a week after your customer has received their product and say:
“Hey, how is the product? How was your shopping experience? Did the product ship correctly? What can we do better? Can you give us a review?”
Using any form of email marketing or any form of AutomateWoo, it’s super easy to send follow-ups like this automatically.
5. Flexible Shipping – Octolize
Octolize’s Flexible Shipping is a WordPress ecommerce plugin that does exactly as the name implies.
It expands the capability of WooCommerce’s default shipping and makes it more flexible, so that you can offer different prices for shipping.
Flexible Shipping Advantages
Maybe you want different shipping rates based on price.
If, for instance, someone buys more than a hundred dollars worth of products, you could reward them automatically with free shipping.
If your customer buys $50, they pay X amount. If they buy $15 worth of something, they pay Y amount, and so on.
Flexible Shipping By Weight
Flexible Shipping also allows you to adjust your shipping prices by weight, product dimensions, and even product type.
Why Flexible Shipping Is An Important WordPress Ecommerce Plugin
Shipping rates for UPS and FedEx fluctuate and can be costly.
Likewise, shipping oversized items is expensive.
So, depending on what you’re trying to ship, using something like Flexible Shipping can help absorb or pass on some of the costs for certain items that would otherwise be affected.
And you don’t necessarily have to raise all your prices or charge people more if the product they’re ordering isn’t actually applicable for the shipping cost increase.
More About Octolize’s Flexible Shipping
Here are some of the perks of Octolize:
- Integration with WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento
- Allows shop owner to configure their shipping options (Flexible Shipping Pro, UPS Live Rates and Access Points PRO, Conditional Shipping Methods, and FedEx Live Rates PRO)
- 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)
- Generate shipping labels to track shipments
6. TaxJar
Although TaxJar is a service, they do have a WordPress ecommerce plugin that makes it super easy to calculate all of your taxes.
As you know, taxes work differently depending on your location.
For this reason, your shipping might be taxable or it might not.
If you do get taxed for shipping, when rates go up, you need to be able to account for the increase.
TaxJar Offers An Advantage That WooCommerce Doesn’t
WooCommerce does not offer the same advantages that TaxJar does, at least not by default, and the tax features WooCommerce does offer are not very good.
Fortunately:
TaxJar integrates via an API, making it simple to use.
One click is all you need to install the plugin. You just copy the API key from the dashboard, and you’re done.
Setting up TaxJar is a breeze since you can have it done within five minutes or less.
TaxJar’s Main Use
What TaxJar does is it calculates your taxes as you make sales, so you’re always collecting the right amount of tax based on the product that you’re selling.
If you’re not required to pay taxes in your state, then the plugin won’t charge anything.
TaxJar also helps with reporting.
If you need to collect sales tax, there’s not an easier system out there at a more affordable rate.
More About TaxJar
Here is the list of perks that this WordPress ecommerce 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
Further Reading: Bonus WordPress Ecommerce Plugin
7. Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)
Easy Digital Downloads is a helpful WordPress ecommerce plugin that allows you to sell software like WordPress
themes and plugins, documents, images, digital artwork, music, ebooks, videos, and more.
Easy Digital Downloads is much more than just a download portal for content.
It is an ecommerce platform that streamlines your digital sales.
The Best Part About Easy Digital Downloads
EDD’s best feature is how simple and straightforward it is.
It doesn’t have much of a learning curve.
Certainly, it comes with plenty of features, but the plugin isn’t overstuffed or too complicated.
Who Uses Easy Digital Downloads?
This helpful WordPress ecommerce plugin is used by WPForms, Spybot, ProBlogger, WPZOOM, MonsterInsights, and Smash Balloon.
Here is the plugin’s list of perks from the Easy Digital Downloads website:
- Payment flexibility via Stripe, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal. EDD allows you to start taking credit payments within minutes, thanks to its easy setup
- Additional payment gateways and recurring payments
- Create discount codes to incentivize sales. Easy Digital Downloads gives you the option to offer discounts as a flat or percentage rate
- Full shopping cart that lets your customers buy multiple downloads at the same time
- Seamless shopping cart experience
- Unlimited file downloads, meaning you can distribute your products as much as you want. This is a great perk for businesses that have a lot of sales
- Allow your customers to download their purchased files as many times as they want or limit the number of downloads
- Show customers their purchase history via a purchase history table
- Rest API. The Easy Digital Downloads website says, “Developers and external applications can take advantage of a complete RESTful API that provides easy access to sales and product information in either jSON or XML format.”
- Monitor your product downloads and track date, time, and IP addresses of purchased files. If you’re concerned about the tracking of IP addresses, contact Easy Digital Downloads for more information
- Full data reporting via a built-in reporting platform
Additional Easy Digital Downloads Features:
Easy Digital Downloads integrates with Mailchimp, Dropbox, Zapier, AffiliateWP, ConvertKit, Powered by AWS, AWeber, Authorize.Net, and Slack.
To learn more about Easy Digital Download’s features, visit their Features page.
Contact Us
Thanks for checking out our WordPress Ecommerce Plugins essentials list!
If you have any questions about other WordPress ecommerce plugins that we use or web design, call us at (702) 268-9000.
About Sage Digital Agency
We are a professional web design and web development agency based in the Las Vegas area. We service clients across the United States.
Our web designs are custom made in Figma and WordPress and offer more than your average pre-packaged website.
All of our websites are handcrafted with custom code, as opposed to being built from pre-packaged templates.
To learn more, reach out to us for a free consultation.