According to Statista research, eCommerce has become the crucial factor of retail frameworks worldwide.
- The global eCommerce retail sales are around 4.28 trillion USD
- The estimated global retail sales of eCommerce share in 2023 are approximately 22%
- Turkey is the country with the highest retail eCommerce Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for the year 2020-2024 among 18 countries worldwide
The information provided above is highlighting the importance of eCommerce businesses running in the world. The digitalized era is proliferating and converting the manual processes into automatic, specifically in the COVID-19.
In this blog, we will have a discussion on the five best WordPress eCommerce plugins in 2021. Get a clear understanding of the well-known plugins for eCommerce stores that have set the examples for starting online selling businesses.
Before diving deeper into the topic, let me share our research that will help you to differentiate among the five WordPress plugins for eCommerce stores—starting from the table list.
Key Findings
| eCommerce Plugins | Star Rating | Active Installations | WordPress Version |
| WooCommerce | 4.5 | 5+ million | 5.4 or higher |
| EasyDigital Downloads | 4.5 | 60,000+ | 4.4 or higher |
| Shopify | 4 | 6000+ | 5.4 or higher |
| Shopping Cart | 4.5 | 6000+ | 5.0 or higher |
| BigCommerce | 4 | 1000+ | 5.2 or higher |
We have ranked the plugins from top to bottom based on the average information we have found from WordPress.org.
According to the results, WooCommerce comes at the top, and BigCommerce comes at last.
Let’s explore each of them for a clear picture of the services and features they are offering.
1. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the top-notch FREE WordPress eCommerce platform that builds excellent online stores and marketplaces with a higher growth rate.
It is considered a giant among all eCommerce platforms and gains popularity due to its remarkable features, services, and addons.
It takes a few minutes to take your business online and keep an eye on your online presence with experts’ back support.
Do you know Wholesale for WooCommerce enables you to run the cross store for B2B and B2C both (Hybrid)? Create a fully-featured wholesale area for your WooCommerce store within minutes.
Features
- User-friendly and developer-friendly platform.
- Unlimited fascinating and pixel-perfect themes and addons for customization
- Product variations and wholesale ordering.
- Secure payment procedures with robust third-party payment integration.
- Social channels integration with an automated marketing approach.
- Create, build, and customize your store from scratch.
- REST API integration.
- Get instant support via community forums and online experts.
2. Easy Digital Downloads
As compared to other plugins, EasyDigital Downloads (EDD) has the specialty of building an online store that mainly focuses on digital products such as eBooks, PDF files, music files, etc.
Uploading digital products on different eCommerce platforms is possible, but EDD offers a wide range of features specifically for digital products.
EasyDigital Downloads is FREE to use and provides users with distinctive features to grow their business online.
Easy Digital Downloads With Square is a WordPress plugin that gives your customers the ability to pay for and download digital products from your e-store. This plugin has an integrated Square payment gateway that processes simple credit card payments.
Features
- Separate record for each customer.
- Monitor the customers’ activities.
- Choose buttons for Buy Now or Add to Cart.
- View, track, and export text and graphical reports of your earnings.
- Add and limit discount codes for customers.
- Add and customize themes to your stores.
- Get experts’ support and forums to discuss your queries.
3. Shopify
Shopify is capturing the online market with incredible growth due to its competent features for online selling.
It is an independent platform; however, it has integrations with WordPress and turns your regular website into an eCommerce platform.
The easy-to-use and easy-to-navigate shopping experience you get from Shopify. It enables you to manage and track your store activities 24/7 and get payments via secured payment gateways.
Features
- The sharp and well-designed theme templates ready to install on your online store.
- Make your store mobile-friendly and SEO optimized.
- Get a free SSL certificate on your online store with 100 payment gateways and free shipping.
- Manage your store options such as customer accounts & profiles, dropshipping, refunds, etc.
- It provides you with the best marketing practices like product reviews, Facebook selling, discounts, Google Ads credit, etc.
- Handle your products and their variations along with the inventory management and import/export options.
- Get Level-1 PCI Compliant and unlimited bandwidth.
- Dedicated experts are available round the clock to help you out in getting the problem solved.
4. Shopping Cart
Shopping Cart has not gained popularity among the other eCommerce platforms, but it has similarities like the mega plugins like WooCommerce, EDD, etc.
One of the WordPress eCommerce plugins is used to build online stores, particularly for small businesses without any tech expertise.
The developers of WP EasyCart already knew that small businesses build integrations with third-party software for adding the functionalities. This is why they made the synchronization easy for WP EasyCart Shopping Cart.
Features
- Offers three types of edition services; FREE, Professional, and Premium.
- Multi-currency and multi-language options are available.
- Integration with well-known payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, and Square.
- Get a shipping and taxes calculation system.
- Unlock the marketing assets like discount coupons, gift cards, promotions, etc.
5. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a Saas-based eCommerce platform that has turned the way of online businesses and overgrowing with the passage of time.
The profound approach of BigCommerce is that it scales your eCommerce journey further and results in robust online stores with hardcore front-end and back-end support.
BigCommerce is not left behind, but people deny using it for their e-store building due to its limited integrations.
Features
- Easy to configure with WordPress and provides page builder visual editor for theme customization.
- Build SEO and mobile-friendly stores.
- Site speed optimization and 70+ discounts and promotions.
- Simple API integration.
- Create marketplaces and brick-and-mortar stores with unique POS systems.
- Able to work B2B with the fastest and safest payment methods.
- Allow integration with global CDN with multi-language and multi-currency options.
Let’s Finish
In short, there is a wide variety of WordPress plugins for eCommerce stores, and the tricky thing is which one to pick for starting your business online.
We have added the must-to-know things with solid research for your better understanding and easy differentiation.
Based on your business niche, pick any one of them and start selling online.