I want to start my eCommerce business. I want to earn money online by setting up an online store. I have already invested in a website and domain name. I do not wish to my online store to cost me much. What should I do? Don’t worry. With these 8 best free e-commerce plugins for WordPress, you don’t need to pay an upfront cost to set up your online store. You may be having a blog which you now wish you monetize using your digital content or you want to sell physical goods, there is a plugin for each of that. Some plugins offer dual functionality. We have covered here the best free plugins that are suitable for different needs. Have a look and choose the one that best suits your particular needs.
These are the 8 plugins that we have chosen:
1. WooCommerce
2. Easy Digital Downloads
3. Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart
4. Wp eCommerce
5. Wp Easy Cart Shopping Cart and eCommerce store
6. MarketPress – WordPress eCommerce
7. JigoShop eCommerce
8. BigCommerce for WordPress
1. WooCommerce
If you want to set up your eCommerce business, this is the one plugin you must check out. WooCommerce offers robust functionality and awesome support for WordPress. It is built by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and it is open source. There is so much functionality built-in with this plugin that more than 4 million websites run on WooCommerce alone. In terms of percentage, WooCommerce has a share of 30% in the eCommerce sector, more than anyone in the field. This should tell you enough about WooCommerce to get you curious about it.
Why you should choose WooCommerce
1. You can sell anything, anywhere
With WooCommerce, you can sell both physical goods as well as digital content. You can offer product variations, instant downloads, and multiple configurations. You can even sell affiliate products. You can offer memberships, subscriptions, and bookings using add-ons. You can offer a discount as per your preference.
2. Easy Shipping control
You can customize between free shipping, flat rate shipping or you can make real-time calculations with the built-in shipping calculator. You have the option to limit your shipments to specific countries or make it available across the globe. You can configure shipping the way you want. WooCommerce also supports dropshipping.
3. Payment Options
WooCommerce is pre-bundled with payment options like major credit cards, PayPal, BACS (Bank transfers) and cash on delivery. More than 140 region specific gateways integrate with WordPress.
4. Complete Control
With WooCommerce, you have complete control over your online store. You can manage taxes, stock level, customer accounts, add and remove extensions, change the design and switch setting the way you want. Even in the event of closing your shop, your data belongs to you.
5. Extensive Support
WooCommerce is supported by a large number of developers community. There are more than 300 extensions for the plugin. There are numerous themes that support WooCommerce. There are active support and documentation available for WooCommerce. So help is at hand should you ever encounter a problem.
2. Easy Digital Downloads
If you are planning to sell only digital products online, then Easy Digital Downloads is the best ecommerce solution for you. You can choose from available EDD themes or make galleries on your own. Whenever a user makes a purchase, Easy Digital Downloads automatically sends him an email with a link to download the digital content. This plugin is so popular for digital downloads that it powers more than 60,000 digital stores.
Why you should choose Easy Digital Downloads
1. Selling Digital Content
Easy Digital Downloads makes it really easy to sell digital content. Since it is focused completely on digital products, it offers content-specific solutions. You can sell software, documents, photos, ebooks, songs, graphics etc.
2. Multiple Payment Gateways
Easy Digital Downloads supports multiple payment gateways through 3rd party plugins.
In the core, it supports:
PayPal Standard
Amazon Payments
Through free or premium extensions, it supports:Stripe
PayPal Pro
PayPal Payments Advanced
PayPal Adaptive Payments
Braintree
Authorize.net
2Checkout
SOFORT Banking
BitPay
Coinbase
3. Add Functionalities through Extensions
There is an extensive extension catalog for Easy Digital Downloads. It contains dozens of add-ons that add more functionality to the plugin. Some of the extensions include software licensing, Recurring Payments, Free downloads, Zapier, Reviews, MailChimp, AWeber, Amazon S3, Dropbox File Store, etc.
4. Multiple Language Support
Currently, Easy Digital Downloads is translated into more than two dozen languages. There is translation support for new translations. Using a local language provides native experience to your consumers.
5. Extensive Support
Easy Digital Downloads is built for developers. There is a huge community of developers, bloggers, and enthusiasts. So community support is never away in case you face a problem.
3. Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart
This is a powerful, easy to use and Gutenberg-friendly plugin for WordPress. Ecwid has been famous for its simplicity. The checkout is a fairly easy process. It can help you sell using Instagram and Facebook also. It supports 45 languages, over 40 payment options, and real-time shipping integration.
Why you should consider Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart
1. Automated Shipping and Taxes
This plugin integrates with major shipping carriers including UPS, USPS, FedEx, Canada Post, Australia Post, and others so that it can automatically calculate shipping rates. It also automates taxes which can be set up with a few clicks. For the US, Canada and EU VAT, automated tax rate calculations are available.
2. Sell on social media like Facebook and Instagram
With Ecwid, you can add your online store to Facebook and Instagram. This way you will be able to sell to millions of Facebook users. This functionality needs no add-on. Ecwid automatically synchronizes your products, orders, customers, and inventory between your WordPress and Facebook stores.
3. Mobile Apps for Ecommerce
Ecwid provides free mobile applications for Android and iOS. You can manage your store with your mobile apps and sell on the go. Your mobile device can work as a POS station. You can manage sales, track inventory, and scan products using your mobile app.
4. Unlimited Storage, Automatic Backups
Eucid hosts your online store data on its secure servers. This facility comes with your Eucid account regardless of the WordPress hosting service you use. The Ecwid online store includes:
- unlimited storage
- regular backups
- seamless upgrades and security updates
It automates security patches, server maintenance, and bug fixes for your online store.
5. Support
The Ecwid community is active and provides the necessary support. Apart from that, email, chat, and phone support are also available.
4. WP eCommerce
This plugin has been there since 2006. It is currently active on more than 20k websites. It supports 5 languages and it was last updated a year ago. It has been tested up to 4.9.9 version of WordPress. This plugin is similar to WooCommerce in terms of the dashboard interface and pricing model. You get the core functionality for free and you need to use add-ons to extend some functionalities. Mostly, these add-ons cost you money.
Why you should consider WP eCommerce:
1. Extend the functionality with Add-ons
WP eCommerce offers a range of add-ons that can extend the functionality of the plugin to a large extent. You get a lot of customized add-ons that can take your online store to a new level. However, most of these add-ons are premium. That is a downside of this plugin. If you are willing to shell out a few bucks for extra functionality, then you will find the add-ons quite helpful.
2. Competitive Features
WP eCommerce offers competitive features that are similar to WooCommerce. It has shipping modules such as flat, table and weight rates are built-in. It also integrates with external shipping options.
3. Payment Gateway and Tax Management
It features secure payment gateways such as:
ProPay
PayPal
WorldPay
It has a robust tax management system. It features multiple tax classes, exclusions, and tax bands.
4. Powerful Product Management
WP eCommerce allows you to sell both digital as well as physical products. These can be sold together or separately. You can sell numerous variations of the same product. You can also give premium access to certain products. You can allow discount coupons as per your marketing campaign. There are a lot of options for marketing.
5. Support
WP eCommerce has an extensive knowledge base. Apart from that, it offers real customer support for premium. You can speak directly with their professionals.
5. WP EasyCart Shopping Cart & eCommerce Store
When it comes to simplicity of setup, this plugin is the clear winner. This plugin is specially made for small business owners who do not want to go through all complicated setup process. It is created by keeping non-developers in mind. Thus, it is fairly easy to get going. It automatically creates 3 pages for the store, cart, and account. You can customize, utilize multi-currency and multi-language features and start selling.
Why you should consider WP EasyCart Shopping Cart & eCommerce Store
1. Free, Professional and Premium
WP EasyCart is a FREE eCommerce plugin. You can sell unlimited products. You can manage orders, do shipping and taxes. You can use the 3 default payment gateways for free. And most of the time, this suffices.
With professional and premium edition, you get 30+ additional payment gateways, coupons, and other marketing material.
2. Easier Shipping and Taxes
The free edition of this plugin includes extensive table rate shipping for the price, weight, quantity, and percentage-based systems. You can set up standard taxes based on states/provinces & countries.
3. Order Management
With this plugin, you can manage orders from within WordPress. You can print sales receipts & packaging slips, add shipping notes, email customers, and view order information. All in one easy location.
4. Marketing
The WP EasyCart plugin comes with SEO editing for every product, menu, and category you create. This helps in selling your products. There is also an option of Social sharing so that your users can share the links to the products they liked.
5. Support
WP EasyCart comes with extensive support. There is a dedicated website for that. You can access online documentation. There are tutorial videos. You can always ask your doubts in the community forum.
6. MarketPress – WordPress eCommerce
This is a completely free online storefront for WordPress.It has integrated functions of extra plugins so you don’t need to worry about installing extensions. It supports multiple payment gateways, supports multiple product variations and it is easy to learn. It also accepts major currencies.
Why you should consider MarketPress
1. Complete Online store
You don’t need to worry about extensions with MarketPress. You can sell real objects or digital downloads. There is a simple one-page checkout. You can easily set up your store with the built-in wizard. You can choose how many times a customer can download the file they have purchased. Tax and VAT integration is there. It tracks stock, provides coupons, hides products when they are out of stock, and you don’t have to be a site user to Checkout.
2. Easy Customizations
MarketPress integrates seamlessly with all major WordPress themes or any well-coded WordPress theme for that matter. You can use shortcodes and built-in widgets to place anywhere on your site. It includes CSS style presets. You can use lightbox zooming for product thumbnails/ images.
3. Multisite and BuddyPress compatible
You can set up your own eBay or Etsy-style network of stores. MarketPress is BuddyPress compatible. You can choose to set up an individual storefront or an entire commerce network of stores, MarketPress can handle your need with its multisite compatibility.
4. Free Payment Gateways
MarketPress has 15 built-in payment gateways including the popular ones like Stripe, PayPal and Authorize.net
Here is the complete list of Payment Gateways available:
2Checkout
Authorize.net AIM
eWay shared Payments
eWay Rapid 3.1 Payments
Manual Payments
Mijireh
Mollie
Paymill
PayPal Chained Payments
PayPal Express Checkout
PayPal PayFlow Pro
PIN
Simplify Commerce by MasterCard
Stripe
WePay
5. Shipping, Google Analytics, and Social Sharing
With MarketPress you can use the table or weight rates or choose flat rate shipping. It is Google Universal Analytics and Google Analytics eCommerce compatible. You can track sales and site activity. There are Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter share buttons so customers can share your products.
7. Jigoshop eCommerce
Jigoshop is known for its incredible reports. You can easily understand the scenario of your inventory and sales with easy to manage buttons. There is a beautiful reports section with a graphical display to help you strategize your marketing plan. Jigoshop boasts to be a complete eCommerce solution. It has multiple plugins available that add to the functionality of Jigoshop.
Why you should consider Jigoshop
1. Easy Setup
You can completely create your shop in minutes with Jigoshop. You can sell physical products, digital products, and even services. It has all the features necessary to set up your online store as fast as possible. You can avail a multitude of product types, apply detailed attributes and arrange your products the way you want.
2. Multiple Product Types
Jigoshop supports the following Product types:
- Downloadable or virtual products
- Variable products
- Affiliate Products
- Simple Products
3. Detailed Reports, Styling and Stock Management
You get detailed reports inside the dashboard about sales, incoming orders, and store performance. It provides a Layout Manager to customize your theme. There are free and premium themes available that support Jigoshop. Jigoshop provides easy and effective stock management.
4. Extensions
You can extend the functionality of your Jigoshop store using extensions. Some are free while many are premium. You can extend Jigoshop with Payment Gateways, Shipping Methods, and other plugins.
Some of the important extensions are:
1. Payment Gateways
Authorize.Net
SagePay
2Checkout
Braintree
PayPal
2. Shipping Methods
Table rate shipping
Premium Shipping
Official UPS Shipping
Per Product Shipping
USPS Shipping
3. Misc Premium Extensions
PDF Invoices
Checkout Fields Manager
Customer Discounts
Official Duplicate Product
Official Duplicate Orders
5. Developer Support
Jigoshop has a large developer community behind it. There is ample support available in terms of documentation and community support. You can always ask for help should you encounter a problem.
8. BigCommerce For WordPress
BigCommerce, a key player in the premium eCommerce market, has entered in the WordPress world with its plugin for WordPress. It allows you to scale your business with WordPress at the front end and BigCommerce at the back end. This frees up server resources from things like catalog management, processing payments, managing fulfillment logistics, etc. You can sell across multiple channels and marketplaces from one location.
Why you should consider BigCommerce For WordPress
1. Scalable eCommerce for WordPress
BigCommerce boasts of being the most scalable SaaS eCommerce engine. You can build complex catalogs, manage large volumes of concurrent traffic, orders and analytics. You don’t need to install additional extensions to access common eCommerce features. Instead, you get the most common features out of the box.
2. Extensive Payment Gateways
BigCommerce features more than 65 payment gateways available out-of-the-box. It has more than 250 local payment methods in 100+ countries. It has pre-negotiated special credit and debit card processing rates with PayPal.
3. Scalable Product Catalogue
This plugin is built for large and complex catalogs with up to 600 SKUs per product, and 250 product values for a single option. The native catalog structure considers single products (including variants, details, SKUs, etc.) as a single API call. This makes inventory syncing with ERPs, PIMs, and WordPress fast.
4. Multi-Channel Selling and Management
You can sell across multiple marketplaces simultaneously, such as eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, Square and others. It offers bulk listing, automatic inventory syncing and unified order and fulfillment management.
5. Extensive Support
As a BigCommerce customer, you get access to 24/7 live phone, chat and email support. The help center has how-to guides and documentation for support.
So these were our picks for the best free eCommerce plugins in 2019 for WordPress. Each plugin comes with its own advantages and limitations. Furthermore, each one is suitable for different needs. Make sure you consider what exactly you are looking for before settling with any of these plugins. It is better to make a patient decision than an impatient one that can cost you your business. Hope this article helped you. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
