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9 Best Etsy Alternatives for Sellers (More Freedom + Less Fees)

Looking for the best Etsy alternatives to sell your products?

Etsy is arguably the most popular e-commerce platform to sell handmade goods. But with the rise of seller transaction fees and the influx of dropshippers and print-on-demand merchants hopping on board, competition has become stiffer than ever.

In this article, we’ll give you the best Etsy alternatives for sellers so you can tap into a less competitive space and enjoy lower fees.

etsy-alternatives-for-sellers-og

Why Look For an Etsy Alternative?

Since 2005, Etsy has become a popular platform for crafters and collectors to sell their custom-made, handmade, or vintage items. You can sell everything from home goods, collectibles, furniture, clothing, holiday items, crafts, and more.

That said, sellers have started to notice an influx of mass-market products that aren’t handmade. But that’s only the start.

In 2022, Etsy has raised its seller transaction fees from 5% to 6.5%, causing more displeasure among sellers, as it only eats into the razor-thin profit margins. So much so that Etsy sellers actually went on strike because of it.

Beyond the hyper-competitive space and the rise in seller transaction fees, you might also want to control your own customer data. Relying on a third-party marketplace means you don’t fully control your business.

Etsy can only take your eCommerce store so far. You have limited customization options and restrictive store design. That said, other platforms allow you to customize your store theme, colors, call to action buttons and even add your own upsells and cross-sells.

Best of all, you own your customer data, so you can send them emails to you keep them in the loop about new products, product categories, store discounts, or other news.

1. WooCommerce

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the best alternative for creators who are ready to leave Etsy and grow their businesses. Since WooCommerce is the best all-in-one commerce platform, migrating your shop from Etsy to WooCommerce is seamless.

With Etsy, you’re limited to making yourself stand out from competitors. If your store looks like everyone else’s, buyers will treat your items as a commodity. Unlike most seller marketplaces, WooCommerce offers a full suite of resources and tools to help make your online store more in line with your brand.

You’re able to choose which payment gateways to accept, create pop-up campaigns to get visitors to stay, optimize SEO for increased traffic, add one-click upsells, and much more.

Here’s an example of what a website built entirely from WooCoomerce. Notice how clean the design is and the buttons are strategically placed to make adding to cart easy.

WooCommerce store example

Plus, WooCommerce keeps everything in one place. For example, if you’re a retail store, you probably already have a WordPress website (or at least you should). In that case, rather than juggling between different platforms to manage your business, you’re able to house everything right from your WordPress dashboard.

You can start a WordPress blog, edit your website content, and manage your orders from customers without switching windows. It’s less confusing, and you’ll have to pay for fewer subscriptions.

You may also want to check out our list of the best WooCommerce plugins for your store.

Pros:

  • WooCommerce is built right inside WordPress to keep everything in one place.
  • Lots of customization options to boost sales and create your own brand
  • Relatively easy to use

Cons:

Why We Recommend Using WooCommerce: If you want to create an Etsy-like store with WordPress, WooCommerce is the way to go. When you choose WooCommerce, you get all the profits. That means Etsy isn’t going to take a cut and eat into your margins. There are all kinds of plugins in the Woo Marketplace, so you’re pretty much able to add any type of feature you’d like to your store.

2. Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is the best Etsy alternative if you sell digital products like digital art, planners, Canva templates and other downloadable items.

Like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Download is a plugin that lives directly in the WordPress dashboard, so you wouldn’t need to bounce between multiple platforms. Everything is one place, which makes everything convenient.

Etsy has become popular for selling digital downloads. Graphic designers and other artists can easily sell their artwork without the incurring the costs of having to print, pack, and ship the items.

Easy Digital Downloads allows you to create and design your product pages. When customers make a purchase, they can automatically access their downloads directly from your site or through email.

For instance, here’s an example product page of a digital download products page using EDD.

Example canva template

The beauty of EDD is that you get to control the entire checkout experience. That means, you can allow users to create an account for faster checkouts, add flexible payment options like recurring payments or subscriptions, offer discount codes, and more.

Beyond that, EDD has a wide selection of extensions. For instance, you can connect the plugin to an email marketing service, so you can continually send them new offers from your store or send them reminders to reduce cart abandonment.

If you plan on using EDD, you may want to check out our ultimate guide on how to sell digital downloads on WordPress.

Pros:

  • It’s a great plugin for selling custom digital downloads
  • They provide lots of customization features so you control the entire buying experience
  • They make it easy for customers to receive the downloadable file.

Cons:

  • EDD is only good for digital download products, not physical goods.

Why We Recommend Using Easy Digital Downloads: We like EDD as the go-to product for selling downloadable items. With this plugin, users get immediate access to the product. Everything is in WordPress, so you don’t need to go to a separate e-commerce platform.

3. Shopify

Shopify

Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform with over two million merchants selling in over 170 million countries. While Shopify isn’t our top choice, it’s still has a lot going for it.

The main benefit of Shopify is its plug-and-play type of user experience. Everything lives within the Shopify ecosystem. You can easily find hosting, domain names, payment gateway, website building, marketing tools, order tracking, and much more inside of the platform.

They also already have a built-in tool for adding discounts. You can create automatic triggers for discounts based on a certain product, link, or seasonal promotion without writing code. And you can set a percentage, fixed amount, or buy X, get Y type of discount as well.

If you’ve ever been on the Shopify app as a seller, you probably have heard the famous “cha-ching” noise. The seller dashboard comes with plenty of reporting and analytics. You can see your recent sales and compare them to a previous time period. Also, you can view other valuable metrics like your store’s average order value, compare how well your sales channels are performing, and monitor where your visitors are coming from.

Pros:

  • Shopify is a very easy-to-use platform.
  • It comes with its own eco-system of apps and built-in tools to manage your online store.
  • The platform integrates with marketing platforms, email services and other third-party apps.

Cons:

  • The total monthly price can be expensive. You also have to pay for tons of monthly subscriptions for apps, plugins, and fees.

Why We Recommend Using Shopify: It’s hard to go wrong with Shopify, since it’s such a trusted and well-known brand in the eCommerce industry. It’s an all-in-one platform that gives you all the marketing and selling tools you need to scale your online store to however big or small you’d like.

4. eBay

eBay

eBay is a great alternative to Etsy if you still want to sell your products on an eCommerce marketplace. While you don’t get to fully customize your storefront like with WooCommerce or Shopify, you do get to take advantage of their existing audience with over 134 million active buyers. The platform has a wide global reach, which only ranks second to Amazon.

The biggest selling point for eBay is its auction feature. If you’ve got one-of-a-kind items, sometimes you rather auction that item off. These are products that have a limited quantity, which further drives up demand. You can leverage the auctions to capture the highest bidder by using scarcity tactics like a countdown timer to draw our FOMO (fear of missing out).

With eBay, you also get protection for buyers and sellers, which helps prevent scams. They will help to mediate the situation between you and your buyer. The protection also can give buyers confidence to shop on eBay since they know they’re always backed by the protection policies.

Pros:

  • The auction feature can increase sales.
  • eBay has built-in SEO to help your listings get seen.
  • The platform is great for hard-to-value products, similar to Etsy.

Cons:

  • eBay has a clunky interface.
  • They also come with a lot of fees, like Etsy.

Why We Recommend Using eBay: eBay is a great alternative to Etsy especially for collectible or rate items. In comparison, Etsy is better for handmade goods. That said, eBay’s auction feature and built-in SEO is helpful for getting more eyeballs to your product and boosting revenue.

5. Wix

Wix

Wix is a website builder that primarily caters to beginners because of ease of use and drag-and-drop editor. It comes with over 900 beautifully designed templates spaning just about every business type imaginable from online stores, to bold portfolios.

The advantage of using Wix is that it’s built with performance in mind. One of the key factors for improving SEO is your website speed. Wix does a great job of insutring that all of their webpages load quickly due to their globally distributed CDN and data centers.

All Wix sites are optimized for core web vitals as well to maintain top-flight speeds. Plus, they include multi-cloud hosting services to avoid site crashes, so your customers never experince a disruption when trying to place an order.

Wix also easily connects to most online marketplaces including eBay, Amazon, Etsy, and others. Rather than sticking to one platform, you can leverage multichannel selling to reach new audiences and boost sales. Just create your Wix store and then seamless upload products directly from your site and track orders from the dashboard.

Pros:

  • Wix is very easy to use.
  • You can leverage multichannel selling due to marketplace integrations.
  • Wix offers catalog and inventory management to track and fulfill orders.

Cons:

  • Limited customizations compared to WooCommerce since it’s not built in WordPress.

Why We Recommend Using Wix: While Wix doesn’t compare to WordPress, it still is a good platform. Since it connects with online platforms, you can easily upload products from Wix to Etsy or Wix to eBay, making life a lot easier.

6. Amazon Handmade

Amazon Handmade

Amazon Handmade is arguable the biggest direct competitor to Etsy and is a no-brainer when it comes to putting it on our list of alternatives. The beauty of Amazon Handmade is that you get to tap into the largest online retailer in the word boasting over 2.7 billion web visits per month. With such a massive potential reach, you would probably reach a larger global audience.

Amazon Handmade is an artisan-only section that is dedicated to selling crafted handmade products only. This is where you can sell personalized items rather than mass-producted products.

But the huge advantage is it’s lower seller fees. There’s no listing fees unlike Etsy, so you have the opportunity to profit more. In fact, 33% of Amazon Handmade sellers have profit margins above 20%.

Plus, you still get to leverage the FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) model. This is where you send your products in bulk to Amazon’s warehouses. From there, they handle all the shipping, packing and labeling, so you don’t have to. With two-day free shipping for Prime members, you ensure a great customer experience right off the bat.

Pros:

  • Amazon Handmade has lower seller fees.
  • You get to tap into a bigger audience.
  • You can leverage Amazon FBA, so you don’t have to worry about packing or shipping products on your own.

Cons:

  • There are some customizations, but they are still limited when compared to WooCommerce or Shopify.

Why We Recommend Using Amazon Handmade: Amazon Handmade is the easiest switch you can make if you’re unhappy with the Etsy platform. It’s a direct competitor and offers pretty much everything you get from Etsy except lower fees and a better fulfillment process.

7. Big Cartel

BigCartel

Big Cartel is an eCommerce platform designed on servicing creative and artisitc sellers. Powering over 83,000 online stories, Big Cartel is an affordable option with customizable capabilities.

The best part of Big Cartel is the ease of navigation. You don’t need lots of experience building websites to get started. They come with a variety of free templates, so you never have to start from scratch. The themes also suit many niches like artists, creatives, bloggers, photographers, and more.

What makes Big Cartel unique is that they also offer live classes aimed to help you set up the basics. That way you’re not left in the dark trying to figure it out on your own. An insturctor takes you through every step through a session recording, so you know how to set up everything. This includes everything from adding products and creating discounts to packaging your products.

Pros:

  • Big Cartel is specifically designed for creatives and artists, which might be great if you sell paintings or artwork.
  • It comes with a built-in reporting dashboard and Google Analytics integration.
  • They offer SSL security and other security controls to protect your site from hackers.

Cons:

  • They are limited in the type of apps and integrations available.

Why We Recommend Using Big Cartel: Big Cartel certainly the big-name platform you might expect. But if you don’t have desire to become a large e-commerce brand then setting up a simple shop with easy-to-use features might be the way to go. Big Cartel gives you basic tools that get the job done.

8. Redbubble

Redbubble

RedBubble is a great Etsy alternative if you are mostly focused on print on demand products. Handmade items is where you make the items yourself or done with manual labor. On the flip side, print on demand items are usually designs printed on items like t-shirts, mugs, socks, hats, and other product categories. They’re more on the mass-produced side, but still appeal to niche audiences.

If you fall under the print on demand category, then Red Bubble is an excellent choice. They have a wide product category with over 70 product types like wall art, gifts, clothing and more. The audience size isn’t anything to scoff at either with over 40 million monthly site visitors.

Redbubble works by uploading your original designs to the platform. Then they’re listed for sale based on the product category you choose. If you’re not keen on brand promotion or running ads, you can simple optimize your listings on Redbubble and watch the sales come rolling in.

Also, like Amazon Handmade, Redbubble automatically prints, packs, and ships all orders to customers directly. That means you don’t have to worry about the fulfillment side of things.

Pros:

  • Redbubble is perfect for print-on-demand sellers.
  • You don’t have to handle inventory management.
  • There’s a wide range of product catalogs to choose from.

Cons:

  • it’s not great for handmade items since it’s strictly a print-on-demand marketplace.

Why We Recommend Using Redbubble: If you wanted to sell custom t-shirts, mugs, or anything where you print designs on products, then Redbubble is the place to go. Just upload your design, optimize your listing, and voila! There’s not a whole lot of work to it. That said, you also have less control because there’s little marketing you can do on your end.

9. BigCommerce

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a good alternative to Etsy because it’s a fully-hosted eCommerce website builder that is both suitable for beginners and advanced ussers. It packs a bunch of essential features fo a quick start and comes with high-performance functionality to scale your store up.

On the plus side, BigCommerce has a wide range of paid themes and it’s page builder makes it easy to design your store to your liking. It’s got plug-and-play widgets so you add social media profiles, testimonials, upsell buttons, countdown timers, etc.

One cool design feature is their swatches allowing users to hover over product images for instant zoomed-in views. This creates a better user experience, since you can instantly view products without landing on the product page.

Also, BigCommerce has comprehensive checkout features to help boost conversion rates. For example, you can create customer logins, add progress bars and even show all the available shipping methods. They even have a built-in abandoned cart recovery system, where you can send automatic emails to customers who exit your store without completing their purchases.

Pros:

  • Lots of robust features to personalize your online store.
  • There are lots of templates and design elements.
  • BigCommerce integrates with online marketplaces and social media platforms for multichannel selling.

Cons:

  • It comes with extra expenses since the best themes are paid and you’ll need to pay for addons as well.

Why We Recommend Using BigCommerce: BigCommerce is a useful alternative to Etsy. It’s similar to WooCommerce and Shopify in that you get full control over how your online store looks and you customize the entire buying experience. But it still doesn’t have as much apps and advanced SEO features as those two platforms have.

Frequently Asked Questions?

What’s the best alternative to Etsy?

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, but we like WooCommerce for selling physical goods and Easy Digital Downloads for digital products.

How do you sell art without Etsy?

Easy Digital Downloads allows you to sell custom printable arts. When a customer places an order, they’ll land on an order page where they can directly download the product. You can also send a copy of the file via email.

What is the best site to sell handmade items?

WooCommerce makes it easy to sell handmade items because you can create product pages. You can customize the design of your online store to match your brand. Plus, you can always connect it to other software to add more functionality like OptinMonster for adding pop-ups, SeedProd for thank you pages and FunnelKit for one-click upsells.

We hoped this article helped you discover the best Etsy alternative, so you can start selling your handmade and custom goods. You can also check out our list of Shopify Alternatives or our actionable tips to increase sales.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 9 Best Etsy Alternatives for Sellers (More Freedom + Less Fees) first appeared on WPBeginner.

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4+ Best WooCommerce Alternatives for Specific Needs

Are you looking for the best WooCommerce alternatives?

While WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress sites, it may not be the perfect option for everyone. Depending on your needs, there are better alternatives to WooCommerce that can get the job done faster and easier.

In this article, we will share the best WooCommerce alternatives you can use to sell online.

What are the best WooCommerce alternatives

Why Might You Need WooCommerce Alternatives?

WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform because it allows anyone to launch an online store. And it’s an open-source solution, so you can download and use it for free.

Due to its ease of use and powerful customization options, it is hugely popular among online store owners. And WooCommerce powers over 23% of all eCommerce stores.

WooCommerce comes with hundreds of free and premium extensions to add powerful eCommerce features to your online store. It includes inventory management, point of sale (POS), and so on.

In our opinion, it is the overall best WordPress eCommerce plugin on the market.

Now you may wonder, is there a better option than WooCommerce?

Well, there are some scenarios where WooCommerce may not be the right tool for the job.

It might not have the specific key features you need for your eCommerce business or require a learning curve. And this is where WooCommerce alternatives come in.

These user-friendly eCommerce platforms offer better solutions for specific needs and may be more suitable for your business plans.

Now, without delay, let’s look at the best WooCommerce alternatives and see when they are a better solution for your online business.

1. MemberPress (For Membership Websites)

MemberPress

MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin on the market. It allows you to sell paid memberships with multi-level subscriptions, drip-content support, and eCommerce features.

It comes with support for multiple payment gateways, easy pricing tables, and other tools to help you sell and grow your membership community.

When Is MemberPress a Better Solution Than WooCommerce?

If you want to create a membership site that offers access to premium content with subscriptions, then MemberPress is made specifically for that purpose. It offers a better experience for you as well as your users.

You can do the same thing with WooCommerce, but it would soon become overly complicated. You will have to use several add-ons to get the same functionality that you get built-in with MemberPress.

More importantly, MemberPress works well with WooCommerce, and you can combine them to sell subscription-based products and physical products on the same website.

Cons Compared to WooCommerce

MemberPress does not have any of the traditional shopping cart or advanced checkout features. To sell physical products, you will need to use them alongside WooCommerce.

For more details, see our article on how to build a WordPress membership website.

Why Do We Recommend MemberPress?

We recommend MemberPress as a WooCommerce alternative because it’s the best membership plugin for WordPress, and it’s PCI compliant by default, making it easy and secure to accept online recurring payments.

When it comes to top features, MemberPress lets you create multiple membership levels so you can show different content to different members on your WordPress site.

While WooCommerce is an ultimate eCommerce solution, it has fewer membership options and is not PCI compliant. You can use third-party payment plugins to ensure your online store’s compliance with payment cards and processors.

Plus, MemberPress offers advanced community building, timed content release with Drip, a powerful LMS platform, a subscription plugin, integrations with third-party tools, and more.

2. Easy Digital Downloads

The Easy Digital Downloads website

Easy Digital Downloads is the best WordPress digital downloads plugin made specifically for selling virtual goods. These include software, music, eBooks, movies, and more.

You can manage software licenses, accept payments, install addons to extend the platform further, and more.

When Is Easy Digital Downloads a Better Choice Than WooCommerce?

If you only want to sell digital downloads, then Easy Digital Downloads can replace WooCommerce easily. It simplifies the process and allows you to manage licenses, accept payments, manage users, and manage file downloads.

You can sell digital products with WooCommerce as well. However, it includes many key features to sell physical goods, cluttering the interface.

You’ll also need to use several addons to manage licenses, file permissions, and other virtual product features.

On the other hand, there’s a free version of the Easy Digital Downloads plugin. However, you need to use their professional business plan to get access to several features like shipping digital products.

Bonus Tip: You can use our Easy Digital Downloads discount code to get up to 50% off.

Cons Compared to WooCommerce

Just like you can sell digital goods with WooCommerce, you can also sell physical goods with Easy Digital Downloads using addons.

However, if you plan on selling digital and physical goods, then WooCommerce will be a much better solution to manage your file downloads.

Why Do We Recommend Easy Digital Downloads?

We recommend Easy Digital Downloads because it is the best WordPress plugin to sell virtual products, digital goods, and software. We use it on several of our websites, including WPForms and MonsterInsights, and it works like a charm.

While WooCommerce lets you sell physical products and anything else you might want, it comes with a lot of features and options. This makes it confusing for business owners to set up their sites and sell digitally.

On the other hand, Easy Digital Downloads has a simple setup process. It comes with secure payment options, subscription plans for customers, hundreds of integrations, and more.

Easy Digital Downloads also offers addons to sell physical products. So, if you are using this plugin, then you can sell anything and everything with a few extra steps.

3. Shopify

Shopify Ecommerce Website Builder Software

Unlike other WooCommerce alternatives on this list, Shopify is a fully hosted eCommerce platform that does not require using WordPress. You don’t have to manage software, install updates, or manage backups.

It allows anyone to start an online store and sell without technical skills easily.

When Is Shopify a Better Solution Than WooCommerce?

Normally, you need to manage your shopping cart software using a platform like WooCommerce.

You will need to register a domain name and buy a WooCommerce web hosting account to install software, manage updates, backups, and so on.

Shopify takes care of all that and offers you a fully hosted platform. You can use their drag-and-drop tools to build your online store within minutes.

Shopify offers a better user-friendly solution if you are looking for a completely hands-off platform. It also provides a mobile app to manage your products, process orders, and design campaigns using built-in marketing tools.

Cons Compared to WooCommerce

Shopify is a hosted platform, meaning you get less control over your website than with a hosted WooCommerce store. It also charges you transaction fees, which means your costs will increase as you start selling more.

For a side-by-side comparison, you can see our article on Shopify vs. WooCommerce with the pros and cons of both platforms.

Why Do We Recommend Shopify?

We recommend Shopify because it’s a popular hosted eCommerce solution. When we say hosted, this means that you don’t need to worry about a lot of things, including web hosting, security, and more.

Unlike WooCommerce, Shopify is a ready-made eCommerce platform for business owners to get started quickly. There’s no need to install or manage software, and you can use their drag-and-drop builder to set up your online store.

While WooCommerce gives you full control over customization and installing third-party tools to make a powerful eCommerce store, Shopify has limited options. You have to work around their provided tools and addons.

Shopify has more than enough addons, extensions, and themes to get you started with your online store. And if you outgrow Shopify, you can always move your online store from Shopify to WooCommerce.

4. WPForms

WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress form builder plugin in the market. Although it’s not a full-featured eCommerce plugin, it comes with payment options for Stripe, PayPal, Square, and Authorize.net, so you can easily create online payment forms in WordPress.

It also has a free plan, but you’ll need the WPForms Pro version to access payment options and other eCommerce functionality.

When Is WPForms a Better Solution Than WooCommerce?

If you are looking to create an order form to accept credit card payments on your WordPress website, then WPForms is the simplest option on the list.

You can use it for one-time or recurring services like consulting, lawn mowing, and more. It also offers hundreds of ready-made form templates for your ease.

WPForms is also a better solution for NGOs to create an online donation or fundraising form and automatically send email notifications to donors.

Moreover, WPForms has an excellent customer support team that can help with setting up your credit card and other payment options easily.

Bonus Tip: You can use our WPForms discount code to get up to 50% off.

Cons Compared to WooCommerce

This is not an apples-to-apples comparison. WPForms is not an eCommerce plugin. So, you will need to install addons to handle advanced features like taxes, shipping, and more.

It’s a simple payment solution for people who want to sell online without setting up a complete online store.

WooCommerce, on the other hand, is a powerful, full-featured eCommerce plugin.

Why Do We Recommend WPForms?

We recommend WPForms because it’s the best WordPress form builder and a simple and secure payment solution. For people who don’t want to set up a complete eCommerce store and still sell from their site, WPForms is the ideal choice.

It supports all major payment options, including Stripe, PayPal, Google Pay, and more. WPForms is the most beginner-friendly WordPress plugin that lets you add a payment form with just a few clicks.

While WooCommerce is a complete WordPress eCommerce plugin to start an online store, sometimes it’s too much for small businesses with a few products. WPForms provides a way out and lets you install specific addons that get the work done without cluttering your WordPress website.

With WPForms, you can give choice to users to select one or multiple products within the online form and use their favorite payment method. Additionally, WPForms has conditional logic to accept one-time and recurring payments.

Bonus WooCommerce Alternatives

If you didn’t find the perfect WooCommerce alternative in the list above, then here are some other alternatives that may be more suited to your needs.

5. Magento (Adobe Commerce)

Magento

Magento, also known as Adobe Commerce, is a popular open-source platform that lets you easily build and manage an online store.

It allows you to accept payments from different gateways, is completely customizable, and has customer management tools, helping you create an online store of any shape and size.

When Is Magento (Adobe Commerce) a Better Solution Than WooCommerce?

If you are creating an online store on an enterprise level with a high traffic volume and a huge product range, then Magento is the ideal choice.

It comes with features for B2B businesses, including quote management, custom pricing, and credit terms, and has amazing marketing tools for targeted promotions, personalized product recommendations, and customer segmentation.

Other than that, you can also create coupons on Magento, add blog posts, build landing pages, and manage shipping and returns.

Cons Compared to WooCommerce

While Magento itself is open source, it does have two premium editions that add significant licensing fees.

Additionally, the platform is difficult to set up, and you may need to hire a team of developers to create an online store, which can add to your costs.

It also has a smaller community compared to WooCommerce and has a less user-friendly interface. For more details, you can see our comparison of Magento vs. WooCommerce: Which is better?

Why Do We Recommend Magento (Adobe Commerce)?

Magento is the perfect platform if you want to create a large product catalog and handle a huge traffic volume.

For example, if you have a B2B online store that sells products to other smaller stores, then Magento will be a great option with its product management, marketing tools, and extensive store customization settings.

The tool also offers 3,783+ extensions for further scalability and can easily integrate with payment gateways like Stripe, 2Checkout, Braintree, WePay, Google Checkout, Skrill, Venmo, and more.

6. BigCommerce

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a fully hosted e-commerce platform that comes with a variety of features, including design, payment gateways, SEO, email marketing, and more to build an online store.

Plus, the platform also has a BigCommerce plugin that you can use on your WordPress site if you don’t want to move your entire store to the platform itself.

When Is BigCommerce a Better Solution Than WooCommerce?

BigCommerce can be a great solution if you are a beginner and looking for an all-in-one solution that manages everything for you, from site security to backups.

BigCommerce is super easy to set up and offers a very intuitive interface with its drag-and-drop builder, making it easier to create an online store.

Plus, the tool is also fully self-hosted, offers 24/7 customer support and unlimited bandwidth, and has fixed monthly pricing, which can make budgeting easier.

The solution is completely hassle-free, can handle large product catalogs, and has built-in SEO and marketing features, which WooCommerce does not offer.

Cons Compared to WooCommerce

As BigCommerce is a self-hosted solution, it gives you limited control and flexibility over your site design. It also offers fixed pricing plans, limited themes, and integration apps, which can stunt your store’s growth.

On the other hand, WooCommerce is completely free and offers full control over your website. However, you will have to face scalability challenges as your site grows.

For more details, you can see our comparison of BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce.

Why Do We Recommend BigCommerce?

We recommend BigCommerce if you are a beginner and want to easily start your online store on a self-hosted platform that manages all the security, scalability, and backups for your site.

BigCommerce has a drag-and-drop builder, reporting and analytics, social media integration, customer management, and premade templates that can help you launch an online store of any size in just a few minutes.

7. WP Simple Pay

WP Simple Pay website

WP Simple Pay is the best WordPress Stripe plugin on the market that lets you accept payments without adding a shopping cart to your site.

It lets you create an online payment form, has premade templates, comes with a discount coupon codes field, and lets you collect payments from gateways like Klarna, AliPay, Affirm, and more.

When Is WP Simple Pay a Better Solution Than WooCommerce?

If you want to add a simple payment form to your site and accept Stripe payments, then WP Simple Pay is your go-to solution.

The plugin can be used to accept consultation fees, organize fundraisers and donations, or for small businesses like cleaning service subscriptions, dance lessons, landscaping, martial arts lessons, laundry service payments, and more.

It can also work if you have a very small online store with a limited product catalog.

Additionally, WP Simple Pay can integrate with other tools like WooCommerce Shipping, FunnelKit Automations, EDD, or WPCode to create an automated workflow.

You can also schedule your payment forms, customize the payment page, and send email notifications as a payment receipt to customers.

Cons Compared to WooCommerce

WP Simple Pay is not a complete eCommerce plugin. It is a simple solution that accepts Stripe payments and is only recommended if you want to sell services instead of multiple products on your online store.

On the other hand, WooCommerce is a fleshed-out eCommerce platform that lets you manage your product inventory, add different payment gateways, and create a scalable online store.

For more information, you can see our complete WP Simple Pay review.

Why Do We Recommend WP Simple Pay?

We recommend WP Simple Pay because it is completely secure and makes it easy to sell online.

If you sell services, want to accept donations, or take registration fees from users, then WP Simple Pay is the best solution because it comes with premade templates, different payment methods, and recurring payments.

However, if you want to build an online store that sells physical products, then you should opt for WooCommerce or another alternative.

What Are the Best WooCommerce Alternatives?

Finding a better eCommerce solution than WooCommerce is not difficult if you know exactly what you need as an online business owner.

We recommend MemberPress for creating a fully functional membership site. It’s user-friendly and works with WordPress out of the box.

And if you want to sell digital products with better features and flexibility, then Easy Digital Downloads is the right provider.

There are many other WooCommerce alternatives that we didn’t mention in this list to avoid confusion. For example, you could use BigCommerce, Magento, Ecwid, Opencart, or Square.

These can be good eCommerce solutions, but we wanted to share only the best WooCommerce alternatives for beginners and small business owners.

We hope this article helped you learn about the best WooCommerce alternatives and when they can be a better solution. You may also want to see our other guides about WooCommerce, online businesses, and eCommerce sites.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here is a list of some questions frequently asked by our users about WooCommerce alternatives.

What is the cheapest way to sell on WordPress?

If you want to start an online store to sell physical products but have a shoestring budget, then you can use WooCommerce because it is completely free and easy to use.

However, if you are looking to sell digital downloads, then you can opt for the free version of Easy Digital Downloads.

Similarly, you can also accept payments for your services with WPForms Lite, which is free.

Can WooCommerce handle high traffic?

WooCommerce itself can handle a high amount of traffic on your website. However, several other factors can influence the store’s ability, including your hosting service, site optimization, themes or plugins, and custom code.

If you are still doubtful about WooCommerce’s ability to handle traffic, then you can opt for a self-hosted platform like Shopify or BigCommerce. These platforms will manage the hosting, site speed, and backups all by themselves, and you won’t have to worry about a thing.

Is there a better option than WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform for WordPress because it is free, easy to use, and completely customizable.

However, considering the type of products or services that you want to sell, WooCommerce may not be the best option for you.

For example, if you want to sell ebooks, then Easy Digital Downloads is a better option than WooCommerce because it is specifically designed for selling digital downloads.

Similarly, if you want to start a wholesale store that sells products to other online stores, then Magento would be better to help you manage your large inventory and high traffic volume.

On the other hand, if you want to accept donations, host fundraisers, or accept fees for your services, then adding a simple payment form with WPForms or WP Simple Pay is the better choice.

Best eCommerce Guides for Your Online Business

Best WooCommerce Tutorials for Business Owners

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Ultimate Web Hosting Statistics and Market Share Report (2022)

Are you looking for the latest web hosting statistics and market share information?

Web hosting is one of the key parts of every successful website. By understanding the hosting market and all of the major players, you can choose the best provider for your WordPress website.

In this article, we’ve gathered tons of web hosting statistics and market share information.

Ultimate web hosting statistics and market share report

Ultimate List of Web Hosting Statistics

We’ve divided this list of web hosting statistics into several different categories. You can use the links below to jump to the section you’re most interested in.

Global Web Hosting Services Market Size in 2022

Global web hosting market size statistics
  • The global web hosting market is projected to grow to $267.10 billion by 2028 at a compound annual growth rate of 18%.
  • In 2020, the global market was valued at $75 billion.
  • Web hosting is expected to generate $79.25 billion in revenue in 2022.
  • By 2027, it’s predicted that the web hosting space will generate $144.40 billion.
  • According to experts, the growing number of small and medium businesses is the biggest factor driving the industry’s growth.
  • Market share differs dramatically depending on location. While Amazon rules the US market with a 3.9% share, in Germany the most popular web hosting provider is 1and1 (18.29%), while in Italy Aruba has an impressive 30.71% market share. Similarly, the most popular cloud hosting provider in the United States is Amazon (31%) but the Google Cloud platform has the biggest share of India’s cloud computing market (39%).

No matter whether you run an online store, a nonprofit organization, or an affiliate marketing business, every organization needs a website. That means a big demand for web hosting.

In fact, at the start of 2022, there were around 1.8 billion live websites and over 5.1 billion internet users.

When you consider the stats, we can see that web hosting is a billion-dollar industry that’s only going to grow in the future.

Global Web Hosting Market Share in 2022

A global web hosting network
  • In 2020, the North American web hosting industry was valued at $34.32 billion.
  • Experts predict that the United States will have the largest market share right up until 2026, with Europe forecast to have the second biggest market share.
  • In 2022, analysts predict the United States will generate the largest web hosting revenue ($5,832 million). In second place is the UK, which is predicted to generate $5,832 million, followed by Japan ($5,666 million), China ($4,930 million), and Germany ($4,435 million).
  • Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the highest CAGR throughout 2021-2028, with the market in the Asia Pacific expected to reach $2.5 billion by 2026.
  • Experts also predict that the Middle East and Africa will show steady growth in the web hosting space due to an increasing focus on digitization.
  • China is forecast to reach an estimated market size of $16.9 billion in the year 2026, with a CAGR of 15.6% for the period 2021-2026.

The Asia Pacific region is expected to grow rapidly throughout 2021-2026. Experts say this is due to the growing popularity of online platforms and improved connectivity in the region.

Governments have also invested lots of money in small and medium enterprises, startups, and side businesses, which is fueling the growth in web hosting. For example, in 2019 the Chinese government announced a special investment of $894 million for small and medium enterprises, and in 2020 it invested $140 million into developing more startups.

With that being said, we expect to see the number of websites continue to grow. By investing so much money into startups and small businesses, governments in the Asia Pacific region are creating a huge demand for web hosting in these areas.

Domain Registration Statistics

Balloons showing different domain extensions
  • A domain name typically costs $10–$15 per year, although the most expensive publicly reported sale was carinsurance.com, which sold for $49.7 million.
  • GoDaddy has over 78 million registered domains, which gives them a 12.77% share of all registered domains. That makes GoDaddy the world’s most popular domain registrar.
  • Namecheap is GoDaddy’s closest competitor with over 17 million registered domains. This gives it a 2.87% share of all registered domain names and makes Namecheap the second most popular domain registrar.
  • 37.20% of domains are top-level domains (TLDs).

Choosing the best domain name for your website is crucial, and many sites even use a domain name generator to pick the perfect domain, fast.

Once you’ve chosen a domain, the next step is to properly register that domain name.

The good news is that many of the top web hosting providers are also domain name registrars, so you can often get a domain and hosting from the same provider.

Interestingly, GoDaddy is both the most popular web hosting provider and the most popular domain registrar, which suggests a lot of people choose to use the same company. Since it’s such a popular choice, we expect to see more web hosting companies also offering domain registration in the future.

If you haven’t purchased a domain name yet, then please see our expert pick of the best domain registrars.

Shared Hosting Stats (Including Average Cost of Web Hosting)

Shared web hosting
  • Shared hosting plans typically cost between $2.51-$4.63 per month.
  • On average, an entry-level shared hosting plan will cost $2.5 –$3.72 per month.
  • Typically, you can expect to pay between $4.63–$6.52 per month for mid-tiered shared web hosting.
  • Experts predict that the shared hosting market will grow at 15% CAGR and reach $72.2 billion by 2026.
  • 75% of the websites on a shared hosting plan use GoDaddy.

Shared hosting is where multiple websites share a server. By hosting several sites on the same server, web hosting companies can reduce their costs and offer hosting at a lower price, as the stats show.

To help you decide whether shared hosting is right for you, we’ve published this guide on the real truth about the best shared web hosting services.

VPS Hosting Stats (Including Hosting Costs Per Month)

A VPS Virtual Private Server
  • You can typically expect to pay between $13.41-$21.89 per month for VPS hosting.
  • Entry-level VPS hosting costs $13.41–$15.57 per month.
  • For mid-range VPS hosting, the average cost is $21.89–$25.17. However, when publishing these figures researchers pointed out that the range is skewed by a small number of premium service providers.
  • 21% of the websites on a VPS hosting plan use GoDaddy.

Similar to shared hosting, VPS hosting runs multiple sites on the same server. However, VPS uses powerful virtualization technology to create a digital barrier between each site. This gives customers guaranteed access to a percentage of the server’s resources. They also have greater control over how their server is set up.

As we can see from the web hosting statistics, extra flexibility, security, and improved performance come at a cost. On average, even entry-level VPS plans are noticeably more expensive than shared hosting.

To help you choose the right VPS hosting plan for your budget, we’ve created a guide to the best VPS hosting.

Dedicated Hosting Stats (Including Web Hosting Market Size)

A web hosting server
  • In 2021, dedicated hosting had 25.5% of the global web hosting services market.
  • Dedicated hosting is predicted to grow at 11.1% CAGR throughout 2021-2026.
  • GoDaddy is the most popular dedicated hosting provider. When we look at all the sites that are known to use dedicated hosting, 35% of those websites use GoDaddy.

Dedicated hosting is where a single customer has private access to an entire server. Dedicated hosting plans are mainly used by big websites that get lots of visitors and need a high level of performance and security.

Dedicated plans are expensive, but they’re not the only way to create a top-notch website.

For example, if you’re using WordPress then there are lots of ways to boost WordPress speed and performance. Plus, you can use security plugins to help protect your site.

Web server software code
  • Nginx is used by 34.2% of all websites whose web server is known, making it the most popular server technology. Alipay, TikTok, and Zoom all use Nginx.
  • 31.2% of all the websites with a known web server use Apache. Some big names that use Apache hosting services include eBay, Spotify, Dropbox, and Salesforce.
  • 21.6% of all websites with a known web server rely on Cloudflare Server. This includes some big names such as Zoom, Indeed, Etsy, Discord, and Fiverr.

The web hosting stats show that over 50% of all websites use open-source server software.

Open source gives you the freedom to use, change, extend, and redistribute software without having to pay anything. Immediately, open source helps you run a website for less and creates a sense of community and collaboration that benefits everyone who uses the software. With that being said, it’s not surprising that it’s one of the major hosting trends.

As well as open-source server software, almost half of the web (43%) uses the WordPress open-source content management system. It’s clear that in 2022, the world wide web runs on open source.

For more details about open source and WordPress, you can check out our guides on why WordPress is free and how much it really costs to build a WordPress website.

AWS Web Hosting Market Share

The AWS Amazon website
  • Over 57 million websites use Amazon as their hosting provider.
  • 6.2% of all websites use Amazon as their host, which gives Amazon Web Services (AWS) the biggest share of the web hosting industry.
  • Some of Amazon’s most well-known customers are Reddit, Netflix, TikTok, Twitch, Zoom, and eBay, plus Amazon themselves.
  • Out of the top 1 million websites, 22.23% use Amazon as their provider.
  • 41.08% of the top 100K websites use AWS, plus 53.76% of the top 10k websites.

Amazon has the largest market share and is also clearly a favorite among high-traffic sites.

This popularity could be down to Amazon’s reputation, as they’re known to provide robust and scalable hosting to some of the biggest companies in the world.

In fact, Netflix alone uses over 100,000 Amazon server instances to deliver high-resolution videos to their customers.

GoDaddy Hosting Market Share

The GoDaddy web hosting website
  • Despite the name, the GoDaddy Group owns several web hosting providers including Host Europe and Media Template. When we look at the entire GoDaddy Group, 3.9% of all websites use one of the company’s hosting providers.
  • GoDaddy is the Group’s most popular brand. Out of all the sites that use the GoDaddy Group, 78.5% choose GoDaddy as their web host.
  • Over 41 million websites use GoDaddy’s data centers.
  • When we look at the top 1 million websites based on traffic, 2.27% use GoDaddy as their hosting provider.
  • 1.76% of the top 100K websites use GoDaddy, plus 1.78% of the top 10k websites.

GoDaddy may have a mixed reputation, but it still has a big market share and hosts over 41 million websites.

This may be because of how much GoDaddy spends on marketing, as they invested over $100 million during the second quarter of 2022 alone.

However, it’s always smart to consider all your options. With that being said, you may want to see our expert pick of the best GoDaddy alternatives.

Namecheap Pricing and Web Hosting Statistics

The Namecheap web hosting provider
  • Over 5 million websites use Namecheap as their host, which is 1.0% of all websites.
  • Out of the top 1 million websites, 0.75% use Namecheap as their hosting provider.

Namecheap is best known as a domain registrar, but they’re also a popular hosting provider since their plans are very affordable.

For example, Namecheap’s shared hosting plans start at $2.18 per month, which is low when compared to the shared hosting average of $2.51-$4.63.

As we’ve previously seen, Namecheap is also the second most popular domain registrar. For website owners who want to buy their domain and hosting from the same company, this makes Namecheap an attractive choice.

Hostinger Web Hosting Market Share

The Hostinger web hosting website
  • Over 1 million websites use Hostinger as their provider, which is 1.3% of all websites.
  • Out of the top 1 million websites, 0.5% use Hostinger as their hosting provider.

Hostinger may not have a huge share of the high-traffic market, but they have a significant slice of the wider web hosting market.

This is likely because they offer affordable, all-in-one hosting packages complete with 24/7 live chat support, managed automatic updates, a free CDN service, and free site migration. They also have a 1-click installer that makes it easy to install WordPress plus other popular software.

For a detailed look at Hostinger’s strong points and weak points, you can check out our expert Hostinger review.

WP Engine Group (Managed WordPress Usage Statistics)

The WP Engine website
  • 2.2% of all websites use one of WP Engine Group’s brands as their hosting provider.
  • 81.5% of all sites that use WP Engine Group, choose WPEngine as their provider.
  • Flywheel is used by 18.5% of all websites that use the WP Engine Group.
  • Some of WP Engine Group’s biggest customers include Indeed, Udemy, SoundCloud, and Mozilla.

WP Engine is one of the world’s leading managed WordPress hosting providers, used by 2.2% of all websites.

A managed hosting plan is perfect for busy website owners who want to avoid time-consuming admin tasks.

With its advanced security features, protection against DDoS attacks, and built-in CDN in partnership with MaxCDN, WP Engine is powerful enough to support larger businesses such as Mozilla and SoundCloud.

For more information, please see our expert review of WP Engine.

HostGator Web Hosting Statistics

The HostGator homepage
  • HostGator is part of the Newfold Digital Group, which was formerly known as the Endurance International Group. HostGator is the company’s most popular web hosting provider. In fact, HostGator is used by 30.8% of all websites that use a Newfold Digital Group brand.
  • HostGator is used by 1.4% of all websites.
  • Over 960,000 sites rely on Hostinger as their hosting provider.

With 1-click WordPress installation, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and 24/7 support, it’s easy to see why HostGator is used by 1.4% of all websites.

They also offer shared hosting, Virtual Private Server hosting, dedicated hosting servers, and managed WordPress hosting plans, so website owners can choose the plan that works the best for them.

To see whether HostGator is right for you, check out our expert review of HostGator.

Bluehost Pricing and Web Hosting Statistics

The Bluehost special offer for WPBeginner readers
  • Bluehost is also part of the Newfold Digital Group and is the company’s second most popular hosting provider. Bluehost is used by 27.4% of all websites that use a Newfold Digital Group brand.
  • Over 2 million websites are hosted on Bluehost, which is 1.2% of all websites.
  • Out of the top 1 million websites based on traffic, just 0.39% use Bluehost.

Bluehost is an affordable hosting provider, especially when compared to the average prices we’ve seen earlier.

WPBeginner readers can get a 60% off discount with Bluehost. You can purchase a shared plan for just $2.75 per month, which is at the lower end of the $2.51-$4.63 average. Plus, it comes with a free domain name!

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

These affordable prices may explain why Bluehost is used by 2 million websites. As well as offering low prices, Bluehost is one of the few hosts officially recommended by WordPress.

To learn more about Bluehost, you can see an in-depth Bluehost review from our experts.

Shopify Hosting Stats

Shopify website
  • Almost 4 million websites use Shopify as their hosted solution.
  • In 2020, Shopify’s market share was just 1.8%, but by 2022 it was 4.4%. That’s an increase of 2.6% in just 2 years.

Shopify is a popular website builder, similar to Wix and Squarespace. Shopify has seen rapid growth from a 0.4% share of the web hosting market in 2016 to 4.4% in 2022. This is likely due to the rising popularity of online shopping, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With physical shops closed around the world, many businesses needed to create an online store, fast. As a fully hosted eCommerce platform, Shopify saw good conversion rates and lots of new customers during the pandemic.

However, Shopify does force you to use its Shopify Payment platform. If you want to use a different payment processing solution, then you’ll need to pay an extra 2% transaction fee which is very high compared to other eCommerce platforms.

With that in mind, we may see Shopify’s growth slow as store owners start to look for more affordable Shopify alternatives. For example, we’re starting to see more people move from Shopify to WooCommerce.

Squarespace Web Hosting Stats

The Squarespace CMS
  • Over 4 million websites use Squarespace as their hosting solution, which means 2% of all websites use Squarespace.
  • When we look at the 1 million sites based on traffic, 0.69% of them use Squarespace.
  • 1.36% of the top 100k websites use Squarespace, plus 3.16% of the top 10k sites.

Similar to Shopify, Squarespace’s market share has grown very quickly. In 2016, Squarespace had just 0.3% of the market, but by 2022 it had 2.0%.

Despite this, today only a small percentage of the top 1 million sites use Squarespace. This could be because Squarespace forces customers to use its built-in drag and drop builder which can be restrictive.

Bigger organizations are more likely to choose a flexible hosting plan and open-source CMS such as WordPress, rather than a hosted solution and restrictive web builder.

For more information, you can see our guide on Square vs. WordPress – which one is better?

Sources:

Internet Live Stats, Internet World Stats, GoDaddy, Global Industry Analysts, Fortune Business Insights, W3Techs, Statista, BuiltWith, Domain Name Stat, AWS.

We hope this ultimate web hosting statistics and market share report will help you find the best hosting provider for your website. You may also want to see our research on the latest blogging statistics as well as new marketing trends and stats.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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How to Easily Integrate Shopify with WordPress (Step by Step)

One of our readers recently asked if it was possible to integrate Shopify in your WordPress website?

Using Shopify with WordPress allows you to combine the eCommerce features of Shopify with the powerful website platform on the planet, WordPress. This gives you more flexibility and freedom to grow your business.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily connect Shopify with WordPress to grow your business.

Using Shopify with WordPress

Here is a quick overview of the topics we’ll cover in this article.

Let’s get started.

Why Use Shopify with WordPress?

WordPress is the best website builder in the world powering more than 43% of all websites on the internet.

It is incredibly easy to use and gives you access to thousands of free and paid WordPress themes and plugins (apps for your WordPress website).

On the other hand, Shopify is a popular eCommerce platform that helps you easily sell products online.

You can use WordPress with WooCommerce to create your online store, but some users may want to use Shopify for their online store and WordPress for their website.

For more details, see our comparison of Shopify vs WooCommerce with the pros and cons of both platforms.

Combining Shopify and WordPress gives you the advantages of both platforms. You can sell products with Shopify while enjoying the flexibility and freedom of WordPress to manage your website.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily use Shopify with WordPress.

What Do You Need to Get Started?

If you don’t have a Shopify store, then you can go ahead now and create your Shopify store. You can quickly add a few products and then come back here.

Shopify website

Next, you’ll need to set up your WordPress website.

There are two types of WordPress. First, there is WordPress.com which is a website hosting service. Then you have WordPress.org also called self-hosted WordPress.

You’ll need WordPress.org because it gives you instant access to all WordPress features out of the box. For more details, see our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

To make a WordPress.org website, you’ll need a domain name (like wpbeginner.com) and a web hosting account.

A domain name costs around $14.99 per year, and website hosting plans start at $7.99 per month (usually paid yearly).

Our friends at Bluehost have agreed to offer WPBeginner users a free domain name with a generous discount on hosting. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Once you have signed up for Bluehost, they’ll automatically install WordPress for you.

You’ll see your WordPress site under the My Sites section in your Bluehost account.

Bluehost dashboard

Simply click on the ‘Log into WordPress’ button to access your WordPress admin dashboard.

It would look something like this:

WordPress dashboard

Connecting WordPress to Your Shopify Store

Now, the next step is to connect your WordPress website to your Shopify store.

For that, you’ll need the ShopWP plugin. It is a Shopify plugin for WordPress that allows you to easily connect WordPress to your Shopify account.

First, you need to install and activate the ShopWP plugin on your WordPress site. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the ShopWP Pro » Connect page and click on the ‘Begin the connection process’ button to launch connection wizard.

Start Shopify connection wizard

This will launch the connection wizard.

First, you’ll be asked to enter your myshopify.com domain name.

Your Shopify store URL

Click on the ‘Connect your Shopify store’ button to continue.

Next, you’ll be asked to allow ShopWP app access to your Shopify store. Simply click on the Install App button to start the connection process.

Install App

This will take you back to your WordPress website.

The plugin will confirm that your website is connected to the Shopify store.

Connected to your Shopify store

Click on the Next button to continue.

Now, you’ll be asked to configure different settings for your store, starting with the pages you want to use for your Shopify products.

Create pages

You can turn on listing pages and then choose a WordPress page or use the default ShopWP Products page.

Similarly, you can turn on collection pages and individual product detail pages.

In the next step, you can choose what happens when users click on the products. You can show the product in a modal, or redirect users to Shopify or the WordPress product detail page.

Product click settings

Next, you can choose how you want to display the cart. ShopWP comes with a custom cart experience that shows the cart in a slide-in modal. You can turn it off if you are using individual product detail pages in WordPress.

Click on the Save and Finish Setup button to exit the wizard.

Next, you need to sync products between your WordPress website, and your Shopify store.

Simply switch to the Sync tab under plugin settings.

Sync products

From here, you need to click on the Sync Detail Pages and Connect Auto Post Syncing buttons. This will allow the plugin to fetch any product details as you add new products to your Shopify store.

That’s all! You have successfully connected your Shopify store to WordPress.

Displaying Shopify Products in WordPress

ShopWP allows you to easily display your Shopify products anywhere on your WordPress blog.

If you are using the default settings, then the plugin will create a ShopWP Products page for you which will display your Shopify products.

Shop page

You can also display products on any WordPress post or page by simply editing it and adding the Products block.

For more details, you can see our guide on how to use the WordPress block editor.

ShopWP Products block

The block comes with a bunch of settings that you can configure to change the appearance of products.

The settings include the layout, colors, product details to display, and more.

Product block settings

Similarly, you can also add a Single product block to display a single product.

You’ll be able to find the product you want to display by typing product title in the block settings.

Single product block

The plugin comes with powerful display options that you can control in block settings or under the plugin settings page.

Customizing Your WordPress Website

Now that you have connected your Shopify store to your WordPress website, the next step is to continue setting up your WordPress site properly.

First, you would want to choose a theme for your WordPress site. Your WordPress theme controls your site’s overall design and layout.

There are thousands of premium and free WordPress themes to choose from. To get started, you can take a look at our roundup of the most popular WordPress themes. We’ve also hand-picked a list of of the best clothing store themes.

Want to design your own theme layout? You can do that with SeedProd. It’s a drag-and-drop WordPress site builder that allows you to create your own custom theme without writing any code.

The SeedProd Visual Editor

Next, you would want to create content for your WordPress website.

You can use pages to create your website structure by adding home, blog, shop, contact, and about pages. See our list of important pages to create in WordPress.

After that, go ahead and add pages to the navigation menu in WordPress.

Site navigation

For more details, you can see our tutorial on how to customize your WordPress theme.

Growing Your WordPress Website and Shopify Store

The best part about using WordPress is that it comes with thousands of plugins and works with all the marketing tools that you’ll need to grow your business.

Following are a few essential tools and plugins that you may want to install right away.

1. OptinMonster – The best conversion optimization software, OptinMonster allows you to convert website visitors into customers. It comes with tools like sticky banners, countdown timers, lightbox popups, and more. The best thing is that OptinMonster works with both WordPress and Shopify, so you can use one plugin for both platforms.

2. WPForms – The best WordPress form builder plugin that allows you to easily create contact forms, surveys, polls, and basically any kind of forms you need for your website.

3. All in One SEO for WordPress – The best WordPress SEO plugin on the market, it allows you to easily optimize your website for search engines. This helps you bring more traffic to your website. The one feature you absolutely need from this plugin is the ability to add your Shopify store to your WordPress sitemap.

4. MonsterInsights – Want to see where your traffic is coming from? MonsterInsights helps you install Google Analytics and easily setup enhanced eCommerce tracking.

5. TrustPulse – Adds social proof to your eCommerce store by displaying targeted messages to users with real time user actions on your website. TrustPulse works with both WordPress and Shopify.

6. PushEngage – The best web push notification software that helps you connect with your visitors after they leave your site through push notifications.

For more recommendations, see our list of essential WordPress plugins for business websites.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily integrate Shopify with WordPress. You may also want to see our expert pick of the best email marketing services and best live chat software to grow your business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Querying Shopify Data in Postgres

Introduction to Shopify

Shopify is a SaaS company that simplifies the process of setting up and running an online business. Businesses that use Shopify have access to important information about their products, orders, customers, and more within Shopify. In most cases, businesses will want to extract this data and combine it with other data into a central database. In this article, we will be discussing how to migrate data from Shopify to Postgres.

Create the Postgres Database

You need to have a Postgres database in which you will store your Shopify data. You can create the database directly from Postgres, in which you will use the CREATE DATABASE database_name command. For example to give the database the name shopify, run the following command:

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How to Properly Move from Shopify to WooCommerce (Step by Step)

Do you want to move from Shopify to WooCommerce?

Many users want to move from Shopify to WooCommerce to avoid higher costs or have more control over their online stores.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to easily move from Shopify to WooCommerce with step-by-step instructions.

How to Properly Move from Shopify to WooCommerce (Step by Step)

Migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce

Shopify and WooCommerce are two of the most popular eCommerce platforms.

They both allow you to create an online store, but they are quite different in many ways. For more on this, see our comparison of Shopify vs WooCommerce with pros and cons of each platform.

For instance, Shopify is a fully hosted platform where you don’t need to worry about backups and updates. However, this comes with slightly higher costs and limited control of your website.

On the other hand, WooCommerce is open-source software that needs to be installed on your own hosting. That means you have much more flexibility with your online store, and you can completely customize it however you want.

Due to these differences, Shopify users often choose to switch to WooCommerce when they realize the true costs and limitations of that platform.

Unfortunately, Shopify does not provide an easy way to export data to a WordPress supported format.

There are some Shopify to WooCommerce migration services, but they charge a fortune to do the work for you. Their pricing for full migration varies based on number of products, customers, orders, and other factors.

So we built an easy importer tool to help you do the Shopify to WooCommerce migration for free.

That being said, let’s take a look at how you can move Shopify to WooCommerce without hiring an expensive migration service.

Step 1. Setting Up WooCommerce

Before migrating your Shopify store to WooCommerce, you’ll need to install and set up WooCommerce.

Unlike Shopify, WooCommerce is a self-hosted platform. This means you’ll need a web hosting account and a domain name to set up WooCommerce.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the largest WooCommerce hosting company and officially recommended by WordPress and WooCommerce.

They have agreed to offer WPBeginner users a generous discount with free domain name and an SSL certificate. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

After signing up for your hosting account, Bluehost will automatically install WordPress for you. You can access the WordPress dashboard from your hosting account dashboard.

Simply click the ‘Log in to WordPress’ button.

Log in to WordPress

This will bring you to the WordPress admin panel. You can now go to Plugins » Add New page and search for WooCommerce.

Install WooCommerce

Next, click on the Install Now button next to WooCommerce. WordPress will now install the WooCommerce plugin for you. After that, the Install Now button will say Activate. You need to click on the Activate button to continue.

Upon activation, WooCommerce will show you a set up wizard where you can set up payment gateway and enter your store information and other basics. Follow the on-screen instructions to set up your store.

Click the button to start the setup wizard for WooCommerce

Need help? See our tutorial on how to start an online store for detailed step by step instructions on installing WooCommerce.

Step 2. Download Your Shopify Data

In the past, there was no reliable method to migrate Shopify to WooCommerce. No free migration tool existed to export your store data from Shopify and then import it into WooCommerce.

That means you’d have to either pay for an expensive service to do it for you, or you’d have to set up each product from scratch, one by one. You’d also lose any historical customer data such as previous order information.

We decided to solve this problem and created a Shopify to WooCommerce exporter. It allows you to export your Shopify data in a standardized format and then later import it into WooCommerce using a companion plugin.

Best of all, it’s totally free!

Let us show you how to migrate your data from Shopify.

First you need to visit the Shopify to WooCommerce website. From here, you need to enter your Shopify website URL and provide an email address.

Shopify to WooCommerce migrator

Click on the Submit button to continue.

This will take you to your store’s Shopify admin section, where you’ll be asked to install the app which will automatically generate a Shopify API key for data migration. Simply click on the Install App button at the bottom to continue.

Shopify to WooCommerce app permissions

On the next screen, the app will show you the data it will export using the Shopify API. Currently, it exports all your product data, product categories, customer data, and orders.

Note: Currently, the app does not export your Shopify pages or blog posts. You’ll need to manually import them into WordPress.

You’ll need to provide an email address where you’ll receive a link to download the export file.

Start Shopify export

Click on the Start Export button to continue.

The app will show you the progress of the migration process. Once it’s finished, you’ll see a download button. You’ll also get an email with a link to the download file.

Download export file

You can now go ahead and download the export file to your computer.

Step 3. Import Shopify Data in WooCommerce

Now that you have exported your Shopify data, the next step is to import it into your WooCommerce store. For that, you need to switch to the admin area of your WordPress website.

First, you need to install and activate the Import Shopify To WP plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Tools » Shopify Importer. From here, click on the ‘Choose File’ button to select the export file you downloaded earlier.

Upload Shopify store data to WooCommerce

Click on the Upload button to continue.

Next, you’ll see a list of exported products found in your upload file. Simply click on the ‘Start Import’ button to begin importing them into your WooCommerce store.

Importing Shopify products into WooCommerce

The plugin will now start importing your data. You’ll be able to see the progress of your upload on the screen.

Once finished, it will show you a list of must have WooCommerce plugins (all of them are free) that you can install to grow your WooCommerce store.

Recommended plugins

Click on the continue button to move forward.

Import finished

You can now review your imported products, orders, order status, and WooCommerce product categories to make sure that everything is imported.

Step 4. Customizing Your WooCommerce Store

Now that you’ve successfully migrated your products, orders, and other shop data from Shopify to WooCommerce, it’s time to finish setting up your WooCommerce store.

This includes choosing a design, installing add-ons for additional options and functionality, and choosing tools to grow your WordPress website.

1. Choose a Theme (Template) for Your Website

Choosing WooCommerce theme

With a WooCommerce shop, you can choose from thousands of WordPress themes. These professionally designed themes will make your WooCommerce store stand out, and they come with easy to use customization options.

Our favorite theme for WooCommerce is Astra, because it has many different templates and customization options so you can create a unique design.

If you need help picking a theme, then take a look at our hand-picked list of the best WooCommerce themes on the market.

2. Design Your Own Landing Pages

Many store owners want to quickly create custom landing pages for their eCommerce site. For example, you might want to create a custom design for your login or checkout page.

Luckily, you can easily do that in WooCommerce.

Simply install and activate SeedProd. It is the best WordPress landing page plugin and comes with dozens of beautiful templates and simple drag and drop tools to design your product pages.

You can easily add products to any landing page, create custom checkout page, display product grids, and more.

SeedProd WooCommerce blocks

3. Improve your eCommerce SEO

Edit product category title and description

Search engines are the biggest source of traffic for most eCommerce websites. Improving your SEO helps you get free traffic from search engines to grow your business.

To improve your SEO and get more traffic, simply install and activate the All in One SEO for WordPress plugin. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to easily optimize WooCommerce SEO without any special skills.

4. Set up Conversion Tracking

Adding upsell offers to thank you page

Want to know where your customers are coming from and what they are looking at?

MonsterInsights helps you easily track WooCommerce users and provides complete eCommerce stats. You can see your top products, conversion rate, average order value, and more, all from your WordPress dashboard.

For detailed instructions, follow our complete WooCommerce conversion tracking guide for beginners.

5. Boost Conversions and Sales

Newsletter signup form in popup

Did you know that more than 75% of users leave an online store without adding products to their shopping cart or making a purchase?

This is where OptinMonster comes in. It allows you to easily convert website visitors into subscribers and customers.

You can use OptinMonster to show targeted popups, slide-in popups, countdown timers, header and footer banners, and more.

For more tips, take a look at our guide on how to recover abandoned cart sales in WooCommerce.

Step 5. Setting Up Redirects

Now that your WooCommerce shop is completely set up, the last step is to set up the proper redirects from Shopify to WooCommerce.

Redirects automatically send search engines and visitors from your old Shopify website to your new WooCommerce store. That way, you won’t lose any customers if they end up on the wrong website.

If your store had a Shopify branded domain name (Example: yourstore.myshopify.com), then you cannot set up individual redirects. One easy solution to deal with this is to add a link to your new store by editing your Shopify website.

Moving Your Domain from Shopify to WooCommerce

If your Shopify store was using a custom domain name, then you can point it to your WooCommerce store and set up redirects.

To do that you’ll need to change your domain’s DNS settings. Your new hosting provider will provide you with DNS server addresses that you need to enter in your domain settings. They typically look like this:

ns1.bluehost.com
ns2.bluehost.com

If your domain is registered via Shopify, then you can login to your account and go to Online Store » Domains to manage your DNS settings.

Manage Shopify domain

For other domain registrars, see our article on how to easily change DNS nameservers.

Update URLs in WooCommerce

Next, there may be URLs in your product descriptions still pointing to your old Shopify branded domain. Here is how you can bulk update all those URLs easily, instead of trying to find them one by one.

Simply install and activate the the Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Tools » Update URLs page. From here you need to enter your Shopify store URL as the old URL and your WooCommerce domain name as the new URL.

Update URLs

Then, simply click the ‘Update URLs NOW’ button at the bottom, and it will fix all your links across your site.

Once your URLs are updated, you could uninstall the plugin from your site.

Setting Up Redirects for Individual Pages and Posts

Lastly, if you have any blog posts or pages, then you would want to redirect visitors and search engines to the correct page.

First, you need to install and activate the Redirection plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Tools » Redirection page. Simply follow the instructions in the setup wizard to set up the plugin.

After that, you need to click on the Add New button to add your first redirect. Simply provide the URL of the post or page in the Source URL field, and then enter the new URL in the Target URL field.

Set up redirects

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Add Redirect’ button to save your changes.

For detailed tips on setting up redirects, take a look at our guide on how to set up redirects in WordPress.

That’s it! You have successfully set up your new WooCommerce shop.

We hope this article helped you move from Shopify to WooCommerce. You may also want to see our guide on how to create an email newsletter, or our expert comparison of the best business phone services for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Properly Move from Shopify to WooCommerce (Step by Step) appeared first on WPBeginner.

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The Best Free and Premium Shopify Themes of 2021

The recent pandemic has forced many businesses to go online. This has created a boom for Shopify, a popular eCommerce platform that makes it easy to open up your online store.

With hundreds of beautiful themes and apps that enhance your shoppers’ experience, Shopify has everything you need to shift your operation online and create a digital storefront for your business.

But to get started, you’ll need a solid Shopify theme and that’s what this post is all about. We’ll cover the best free and premium Shopify themes for 2021 that will allow you to launch your store as quickly as possible.

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18 Best Free And Premium Shopify Themes

Below, you’ll find an overview of the 18 best Shopify themes along with their features.

Debut Free Shopify Theme

DEMO / TRY THEME

Helas Minimal Premium Shopify Theme

Helas Minimal Premium Shopify Theme

The Helas theme has a clean and minimal design. It would work well for a fashion store and has a product-centered layout which makes it easy for your customers to see what you have to offer. Notable features include product carousels and labels, plenty of customization options, built-in customer reviews, wishlist support, and more.

DEMO / BUY THEME

Vintage Free Minimal Theme

Vintage Free Minimal Theme

The Vintage theme is a free Shopify theme that would work well with home and garden, entertainment or arts and crafts stores. The theme has a minimal design and includes features such as recommended products, stock counter, in store pickup availability indicator, and more. In addition to that, the theme is responsive and easy to use. 

DEMO / TRY THE THEME

CORO – Minimal & Clean Fashion Shopify Theme

CORO – Minimal & Clean Fashion Shopify Theme

Here’s a versatile and responsive Shopify theme that can be used for any type of store. It features a minimal design and has a built-in mega menu. Notable features include automatic price changes, products’ quick view, powerful customization options, product labels, built-in product zoom, and more. 

DEMO / BUY THE THEME

Narrative Free Shopify Theme

Narrative Free Shopify Theme

The Narrative is a free Shopify theme that would work well for stores selling only one or two products. The theme has a simple design and includes features such as hero video, customizable image blocks, quote slides, customizable navigation, wide layout, and more. On top of this, the theme looks stunning on both mobile and desktop devices. 

DEMO / TRY THEME

Hikez | Trekking & Hiking Premium Shopify Theme

Hikez | Trekking & Hiking Premium Shopify Theme

If you have a store that sells hiking, camping, and trekking gear, the Hikez theme is a great choice. It has a stunning grid based layout which makes it easy to organize and display your products. The theme is fully responsive and comes with awesome features such as product carousel and product comparison, 5 types of mega menus, Ajax filters, multi-currency support, and more. 

DEMO / BUY THEME

Brooklyn Free Shopify Theme

Brooklyn Free Shopify Theme

If you’re looking for a free theme that was designed with apparel stores in mind, the Brooklyn theme has you covered. This theme features a modern and elegant design and has plenty of customization options. You’ll also find all the necessary features for a powerful eCommerce store such as dynamic product grid, header slideshow, slideout cart, support for video on the homepage, and more. 

DEMO / TRY THE THEME

Daxone – Multipurpose Shopify Theme

Daxone – Multipurpose Shopify Theme

The Daxone theme is a great choice for any type of store since it has a versatile and modern design. The theme is packed with features to help you sell more, including: various page layouts, prebuilt sections, plenty of customization options, popup cart, built-in newsletter form, product quick view, and more. The theme is also responsive and optimized for SEO. 

DEMO / BUY THEME

Simple Free Shopify Theme

Simple Free Shopify Theme

As the name implies, the Simple theme has a clean and simple layout that makes it easy to showcase your products in a modern grid layout. The theme has a sidebar menu which offers easy navigation and you’ll also find features such as product image zoom, image animations, product recommendations, and customization options. The theme is also responsive. 

DEMO / TRY THEME

Ella Multipurpose Shopify Theme

Ella Multipurpose Shopify Theme

The Ella theme is a premium multipurpose Shopify theme that works well with any type of store. The theme looks stunning on both desktop and mobile devices thanks to its responsive design. It has plenty of customization options and includes important eCommerce features such as dynamic product filters, pre-built page sections, quick shop, quick edit cart, recommended products, product bundles, and more. 

DEMO / BUY THEME

Supply Free Shopify Theme

Supply Free Shopify Theme

The Supply theme is perfect for any store that has a large inventory. You can easily showcase products, feature best-sellers, and more. The theme is responsive, easy to customize, and comes with features such as collection filtering in the sidebar, product slideshow, featured collections, and more. In addition to that, the theme comes with two color schemes. 

DEMO / TRY THE THEME

Wookie Multipurpose Shopify Premium Theme

Wookie Multipurpose Shopify Premium Theme

If you’re looking for a theme that gives you plenty of control over the design of your store, the Wookie theme is a great choice. Not only does it have plenty of customization options but it also offers a number of premade sections to make it easy to design and build your store. You’ll also find features such as numerous layout variations, mega menu, dynamic checkout buttons, product filters, and sticky add to cart button. 

DEMO / BUY THEME

Boundless Free Shopify Theme

Boundless Free Shopify Theme

The Boundless theme has a minimal and lightweight design that puts your product photography front and center. The theme is easy to use and has a responsive design. It includes features such as slideshows with a fading effect, full width collection images, sticky navigation, homepage video, and more. The theme is also fully responsive and optimized for large images. 

DEMO / TRY THEME

Avone – Multipurpose Shopify Theme

Avone - Multipurpose Shopify Theme

The Avone theme has been optimized to load fast. It has a versatile design that works well for any type of store. The theme also includes features such as powerful customization options, mega menu, wishlist support, product countdown, quick view, product filters, product recommendations, and more. The theme is responsive and has several demo layouts to choose from. 

DEMO / BUY THEME

Venture Free Shopify Theme

Venture Free Shopify Theme

The Venture Shopify theme is another free theme designed with stores that have a large inventory in mind. The theme features a multi-column menu that makes it easy to browse your store. You’ll find features such as product filtering, product slideshow, single featured product, promotional banner, and more. The theme is also responsive, optimized to load fast, and has a clean design. 

DEMO / TRY THEME

August – Multipurpose Shopify Theme

August - Multipurpose Shopify Theme

The August theme comes with 8 different demos and it’s a great choice for a fashion, apparel or swimwear store. The theme has a modern design and comes with features such as product style variations, multiple header and footer layouts, product filters, built-in product compare and wishlist, countdown timers, product labels, and more. On top of that, the theme is also responsive. 

DEMO / BUY THEME

Express Free Shopify Theme

Express Free Shopify Theme

The Express theme was designed to get you online fast. It doesn’t have a lot of customization options but it makes up for it with its ease of use and quick setup. The theme has a modern design and comes with features such as quick buy, responsive design, slideout cart, featured collections, and more. This theme is a great choice for one page stores that have a small product catalog. 

DEMO / TRY THEME

Aero – Auto Parts, Car Accessories Shopify Theme

Aero - Auto Parts, Car Accessories Shopify Theme

If you sell car parts, the Aero theme is a perfect fit. It has a modern and bold design that’s fully responsive. The theme has 10+ premade layouts and a mega menu that makes it easy to browse your store. Notable features include product slider module, Ajax add to cart, Ajax layered navigation, product quick view, and more. 

DEMO / BUY THEME

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there is no shortage of amazing free and premium themes for Shopify. The only thing left to do now is to pick a theme that suits your style and get started with your Shopify store. Good luck! Be sure to check out our other Shopify articles while you’re at it.

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Moving From Shopify Plus to Microservices-Based Commerce

If you’re selling products online, there’s a good chance you’re using a one-size-fits-all platform. These platforms offer many advantages but they also have limitations. If you want to move beyond these limitations, microservices can help.

Shopify Plus is a one-size-fits-all platform that allows you to use headless systems while retaining most of its features. So if you already have a Shopify Plus setup, you can keep the frontend and migrate the backend to a microservices-based alternative for more flexibility.

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How to Automate Deployments to Shopify Stores

E-commerce is surging under the lockdown, with thousands of businesses opening online stores every week. This means more work for developers, including those working with Shopify themes. With the numbers growing, deploying, and managing multiple shops at once can get tricky. Buddy solves this problem with delivery pipelines, a fast and elegant solution that lets you automate deployments and preview changes before going live.

Step 1: Configuring Theme Kit CLI

Start with downloading Shopify's Theme Kit CLI. The CLI lets you run various operations in the context of Shopify themes by running commands. You can find installation instructions for your OS on their documentation page.

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5 Web Design Software You Should Use for Web Development

Web development requires careful planning and management by people with attention to detail and a knack for creativity. We are in an advanced era where various software have been developed to help these creative minds in crafting websites at faster speeds and greater complexity. 

We have to take advantage of multiple software and use them wisely from start to finish. With all the software you can find, free and paid, it can be confusing to pick just one for each task. You’ll have to choose software for designing your website, managing content, a platform, web graphics, web design, and project management to keep track of everything.

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WooCommerce Vs Magento Vs Shopify – Which One Is the Best?

2020 is now in full swing and the debate for which eCommerce platform is the best suited to users is heating up. Why wouldn’t it be? With traditional businesses facing significant problems of their own due to the pandemic, many are now shifting towards eCommerce as a viable option. But businesses trying to embrace eCommerce […]

The post WooCommerce Vs Magento Vs Shopify – Which One Is the Best? appeared first on WPArena.

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How Much Do Ecommerce Websites Cost in 2019? (Real Numbers)

After our articles on how much does a WordPress website cost, and how much does it cost for a custom WordPress theme, many of you asked us to write about how much does an eCommerce website cost?

Knowing the cost of building an eCommerce website is important because it helps you calculate the investment you will need to start your new online business idea.

The challenge is that there are many factors involved in making an eCommerce website, and all of them will affect the overall cost of your business.

If you don’t have a clear action plan, then you can easily end up overspending. But don’t worry, we are here to help.

In this article, we will break down all the information to give you a clear idea of how much does an eCommerce website cost. We will also show you different ways to avoid overspending and maximize profits.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Cost of building an eCommerce website

How to Calculate the Cost of Building an Ecommerce Website?

The best way to calculate the cost of building an eCommerce website is to compare different eCommerce platforms, tools, add-ons, and additional services that you will need based on your business requirements.

This is the only way that will give you an accurate cost of an eCommerce website.

Since there are multiple ways to create an online store, most online eCommerce website cost calculators end up being completely inaccurate (so its best that you avoid them).

To keep this article focused, we will break down our eCommerce cost analysis into the following major expenses:

There are many different eCommerce software and platforms that you can use to make an online store. For the sake of this article, we will use the following top eCommerce platforms:

That being said, let’s start calculating the cost of making an eCommerce website, and how to save money with smart choices along the way.

1. Hosting Costs

Ecommerce hosting costs

Every website on the internet needs web hosting. This is where your website’s files are stored. You’ll also need a domain name which is your website’s address on the internet, e.g. wpbeginner.com.

When it comes to eCommerce hosting, there are two routes that you can take for your eCommerce projects. Each of them have different costs and technical requirements.

Let’s take a look at both of them.

1. Hosting Costs for Self-Hosted eCommerce Website

WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform in the world powering millions of small and large online stores.

WooCommerce itself is available as a free software which means you can download and use it for free to create as many eCommerce websites as you like.

However, you’ll need a WooCommerce web hosting account to install it. You’ll also need a domain name and an SSL certificate.

A starter website hosting plan normally starts at $7.99 / month, domain name $14.99 / year, and SSL Certificate starts from $69 / year.

All of these costs add up to a small but still significant investment to make a starter eCommerce store.

Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer WPBeginner users a generous discount on hosting with a free domain name and SSL certificate.

Basically, you can get started for just $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

As your business starts growing, you will eventually need to upgrade your hosting plan to handle more traffic.

This means your hosting costs will start increasing as more customers visit your website. Hopefully, by that time you’ll be making enough money (sales) to justify the increasing costs of hosting.

You can switch your hosting plan to a managed WordPress hosting company like WP Engine. Their Starter plan is $35 per month and scale plan is $290 per month, but you can use our WP Engine coupon to get an additional discount.

Here are the advantages of a self-hosted eCommerce site:

  • You get complete freedom to build your eCommerce site the way you like.
  • You can save a ton of money by only paying for what you need.
  • You can make unlimited sales, add unlimited products, use any payment gateway platform that you like.

With that said, some non-techy users don’t want to learn how to install their own eCommerce software and prefer a done for you solution instead. That’s where the SaaS eCommerce platforms come in.

2. Hosting Costs for SaaS eCommerce Platforms

Ecommerce platforms available as SaaS (Software as a Service) do not require you to install software, manage it, or host it yourself.

Your website hosting price is included with the software. You don’t need to worry about managing website hosting.

The two of the most popular SaaS eCommerce platforms are Shopify and BigCommerce.

They both offer incredibly easy and highly scalable eCommerce platforms to sell your products online. Both platforms include SSL, but you’ll need to purchase a domain name separately. See our guide on how to register a domain name for instructions.

Here is the cost of Shopify eCommerce plans:

  • Basic Shopify: $29 / month
  • Shopify: $79 / month
  • Advanced Shopify: $299 / month

Shopify pricing
Now, let’s compare it with the BigCommerce plans:

  • Standard: $29.95 / month
  • Plus: $71.95 / month
  • Pro: $224.95 / month

BigCommerce pricing

For both platforms, each plan comes with a different set of features that you need to review, so you can choose the right plan for your needs.

There are some major differences between Shopify and BigCommerce, and we will discuss them throughout the article.

For example, BigCommerce Standard plan limits you to $50,000 in online sales per year. After that, you will need to upgrade your account.

Shopify on the other hand forces you to use Shopify payments. If you want to use another payment gateway, then you will be charged an additional 2% fee for each transaction made on your eCommerce store using third-party payment gateway. The fee drops to 1% and then 0.5% for their higher paid plans.

Estimated Ecommerce Hosting Costs:

Self-hosted eCommerce website: $2.75 – $241.67 / month

SaaS eCommerce hosting costs $29 – $299 / month

Please keep in mind that this cost estimate is for starter to medium sized online stores. For high-volume stores, you will likely have to upgrade to Shopify Plus or BigCommerce Enterprise which costs in the thousands per month.

On the self-hosted site, you will have to upgrade your hosting plans with WP Engine, Liquid Web, or whichever hosting provider you are using.

Based on the hosting cost analysis above, self-hosted eCommerce site with WooCommerce comes out as a winner. See our guide on: how to start an online store.

2. Payment Processing

Payment processing

Many beginners don’t look at payment processing fees when choosing an eCommerce platform. This can have a serious impact on your business because it will significantly increase your costs and lower your profits.

Let’s see how different eCommerce platforms handle payments, and how much it would cost you to accept payments from your customers.

Payment Costs in WooCommerce

WooCommerce payments

WooCommerce is an open-source software, so it has many payment platform integrations. This means self-hosted eCommerce websites using WooCommerce are free to use any payment gateway they want.

By default, WooCommerce supports PayPal and Stripe payment gateways to accept credit card payments. You can also choose from dozens of other payment services which are available as extensions.

You will only be paying the processing fees to the payment gateway service you choose. Each one of them has different rates for different regions, currencies, services.

Another advantage is that WooCommerce has extensions and integrations available even for some lesser-known regional payment services. This is a big advantage for eCommerce websites catering to customers in specific countries.

Using WooCommerce, you can compare the rates for different payment services and choose the best option for your business.

WooCommerce also does not put a cap on how many sales you can make on your website. This gives eCommerce websites freedom to choose their payment service and not pay any overage fees.

WooCommerce payment processing costs:

Payment processing fees vary depending on the payment gateway, currency, and region. Here is a quick overview of popular payment gateways in US dollars.

  • PayPal: 2.9% + $0.30 for transactions over $10
  • Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
  • Authorize.net – 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction + $25 monthly fee.

Payment Costs in Shopify

Shopify payment costs

Shopify offers its own payment solutions called Shopify Payments which lets you accept credit card payments on your website. It also offers many third-party payment gateways including regional and cryptocurrency payment services.

Shopify Payments is available only in 13 countries at the time of writing this article. You will need to carefully read payments terms for your country as you are not allowed to sell certain items in some countries.

If you choose to use a third-party payment service, then you will pay that particular payment gateway’s fees + 2.0% additional fee to Shopify. This might not seem a lot at first, but it can become a significant amount in the long term.

Considering that most payment services charge 2.9% of the transaction amount on average, this means you could end up paying up to 5% of total transaction as payment processing charges.

Now if you are in one of the 13 countries supported by Shopify, then you get almost the same rate as PayPal.

However, if you are not in those select countries, then you will pay 2% additional charges to Shopify for each transaction which could significantly reduce your profit margins.

Shopify Payment processing costs

  • Shopify Payments: 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction
  • Third-party payment services: The payment gateway fees + 2% additional fees paid to Shopify for each transaction.

Payment Costs in BigCommerce

BigCommerce payment gateway

BigCommerce allows you to choose from over 65+ third-party payment gateways. These payment platforms provide a wider global reach than Shopify, but it is not as large as WooCommerce.

The biggest advantage of using BigCommerce is that it does not charge additional transaction fees. This means you only pay for each transaction to the payment service provider you choose (similar to WooCommerce).

The charges for each transaction will depend on payment service, currency, and country. You can choose from all popular payment services like PayPal, Square, Stripe, Authorize.net, and many more.

BigCommerce Payment processing costs

  • PayPal: 2.9% + $0.30 for transactions over $10
  • Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
  • Authorize.net – 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction + $25 monthly fee.

Estimated Costs for Payment Processing on an Ecommerce Website

Your payment processing costs will depend on your eCommerce platform, and the payment services you choose. Here is an average estimate of the payment costs.

  • WooCommerce: PayPal or Stripe – 2.9% + $0.30 for transaction
  • Shopify : Shopify Payments – 2.9% + 30¢ | Additional 2% per transaction for third-party payment gateways
  • BigCommerce: PayPal or Stripe – 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

Note: These costs do not include any fees that may be charged by your bank.

When looking at payment processing costs, both WooCommerce and BigCommerce are tied for the lowest costs.

3. Ecommerce Website Design Costs

eCommerce design

The eCommerce industry is growing at an incredible rate. Each day new online stores are popping up and chances are that there will already be significant competition in your area of business.

This is where design comes in.

Giving your website a professional and customer-centric design helps you get ahead of competition.

Now you might be thinking, well I’m not a professional web designer, how do I come up with a design that helps my store stand out and make more sales?

Well, most eCommerce platforms realize this problem, so they offer ready-made website templates. Store owners can customize the layouts using simple drag and drop tools.

Store owners can also purchase premium designs that come with additional features, priority support, and unique layouts. Of course, you can also hire a developer to design a completely custom template from scratch with custom features.

Let’s see how much it costs to design an eCommerce website on different platforms.

WooCommerce Design Costs

WooCommerce themes

WooCommerce is the most flexible option in terms of design and appearance. It is built on top of WordPress, the most popular website builder, which means you can choose any WordPress theme to use with WooCommerce.

However, you would want to select a WooCommerce specific theme for best results.

Luckily there are thousands of WooCommerce themes that you can choose from. Many of them are completely free and some are available for a small fee, starting from $30.

Here are the top WooCommerce themes with tons of customization options.

  • Astra – A popular WooCommerce theme with dozens of ready-made sites that you can install with 1-click.
  • Divi – A powerful WooCommerce theme with dozens of templates, a built-in page builder, and beginner friendly customization options
  • Ocean WP – One of the top all-purpose WooCommerce themes on the market with tons of customization options

For the complete list see our article on the best WooCommerce themes

WooCommerce also gives you access to amazing WordPress page builder plugins. These drag and drop tools allow you to create custom product pages and custom landing page layouts within minutes.

If you don’t want to use a free or paid WooCommerce theme, then you can hire a WordPress developer for custom WooCommerce development.

Custom themes are unique and made specifically for your business. They allow you to incorporate custom features and turn your ideas into reality.

A custom theme can become very expensive depending on the features you need, and the expertise of your developer. The overall cost of a custom website development could start from $1500 to $6000 for an average-sized eCommerce business.

An enterprise-level custom theme with its own companion plugins can cost from $10,000 to $30,000.

Shopify Design Costs

Shopify themes

Shopify offers ready-made templates that you can use as a starting point for your eCommerce store. It also offers built-in tools to customize the layout, colors, and other settings.

There are currently 10 free and 65 paid themes available on the Shopify website. This is a very small number, especially when compared to thousands of themes available for WooCommerce.

On average, a paid theme for Shopify starts from $160. You may find cheaper themes on third-party theme marketplaces where Shopify themes may be available for as low as $59.

You can also hire a developer to make you a custom Shopify theme. However, Shopify is not as popular among developers as WooCommerce, which means your hiring pool will be quite small and rates will be higher.

Depending on the developer you choose and their rates, a custom design development for Shopify can cost between $5,000 to $30,000 USD.

BigCommerce Design Costs

BigCommerce themes

BigCommerce also offers paid and free themes. There are currently 12 free themes in multiple styles and more than a 100+ paid themes in the store.

Each of these themes is fully customizable using an intuitive user interface. You can add your own business logo, custom colors, and choose different layout styles for your store.

All themes are mobile responsive and designed for higher conversion rates. They strictly adhere to BigCommerce platform guidelines and coding standards, so you get the same user experience regardless of which theme you choose.

You can also find BigCommerce themes from third-party marketplace websites. However, these themes may not be as good in quality as those available in the official store.

BigCommerce also allows developers to upload custom made themes. You can find a developer for hire on BigCommerce’s official partner’s directory or freelance marketplaces like UpWork.

Pricing for paid BigCommerce themes start from $160+. A custom BigCommerce theme can cost you somewhere between $3,000 to $30,000, depending on the developer or agency you hire for the job.

Estimated Design Costs for an Ecommerce Website

WooCommerce – Free, $99 for premium, and $5,000 for custom

Shopify – Free, $160 for premium, and $5,000 for custom

BigCommerce – Free, $160 for premium, and $5,000 for custom

Note: Both BigCommerce and Shopify have limited themes both free and paid. WooCommerce gives you access to thousands of free and paid themes, large pool of developers, and a lot more flexibility in design.

4. Cost of Add-ons and Extensions

Addons and extensions

It is simply not possible for an eCommerce platform to bake all the features you’ll need into one software. Even if they tried, things would get messy and the software would become difficult to use.

To fix this problem, most eCommerce software are made with a modular approach. This allows the core software to be extended using add-ons and apps.

These add-on or extensions allow you to add new features to your eCommerce website and extend its functionality. Many of them are paid and buying them will increase your cost of making an eCommerce website.

Let’s compare the costs of add-ons and extensions on popular eCommerce platforms.

WooCommerce Extensions and Add-ons

WooCommerce Extensions

When it comes to add-ons and extensions, no other eCommerce platform comes even close to WooCommerce. There are thousands of both free and paid add-ons available for WooCommerce that you can use.

You also need to keep in mind that WooCommerce runs on top of WordPress, which gives you access to 55,000+ free plugins as well.

There is a plugin or add-on available for any feature that you can think of.

Want to see some examples? See our expert-pick of essential WooCommerce plugins showcasing the most popular WooCommerce add-ons (most of them are free).

Pricing for paid WooCommerce addons start from $19 and can go as high $299 (depending on licensing plans and features of a plugin).

If that’s not enough, and you want a custom feature, then you can hire a developer to make a plugin for you. It could cost you anywhere from $500 to $10,000 USD depending on how much work is required or the rates of the developer you hire for the job.

WooCommerce Addon Costs: Free – $299 and custom plugins cost $500 – $10,000 USD

Cost of Shopify Addons

Shopify app store

Shopify is a SaaS platform and the core software is tightly integrated to provide maximum security and stability to all users.

However, they do offer APIs for developers to integrate their own services and solutions into Shopify. These addons are available as third-party apps on the Shopify app store.

There are hundreds of apps available both free and paid. The prices for paid apps vary and most of them are available on a monthly subscription basis.

Shopify also allows you to add private apps made specifically for your store. The app needs to be stored and run elsewhere, and you can generate Shopify API keys to manage the app’s access permissions.

Shopify Addon Costs: Free – Varied monthly subscription apps. Custom app: $5,000+ depending on developer rates and skills.

BigCommerce Addons Cost

BigCommerce apps

Similar to Shopify, BigCommerce also allows you to install both free and paid apps. Many of these third-party apps are available on a monthly subscription basis.

You can also hire developers to create custom apps for a single store. These apps are stored as a draft app and you can only use it on that particular store.

BigCommerce Addon Costs: Free – Varied monthly subscription apps. Custom app: $1000+ depending on developer rates and skills.

Estimated Cost of Addons on an Ecommerce Website

This one is hard to calculate because each online store will use different apps for their own needs.

Ofcourse using more paid add-ons will cost more and increase your total costs significantly. Add-ons with recurring billing will be an ongoing expense for your business.

We are assuming that you will be careful with paid add-ons to give a very conservative estimate of the costs.

Add-on costs: Free – $1,000 USD

WooCommerce addons and WordPress plugins overall are cheaper since they’re billed on annual basis whereas Shopify and BigCommerce apps are billed on monthly basis.

5. Total Cost of Building an Ecommerce Website

Calculating total cost of an eCommerce website

Now that we have covered different spending areas for an eCommerce website, let’s take a look at how much would be the total cost of building an eCommerce website.

As mentioned earlier that each eCommerce platform gives you the flexibility to choose how much money you would spend. This would obviously affect your overall costs.

Following are the estimated total costs of building an eCommerce website.

WooCommerce Starter – $500 – $3000 (Shared hosting, paid design, fewer paid plugins and services).

WooCommerce Custom – $5000 – $10,000 (Managed WordPress hosting, custom eCommerce design, paid plugins and services).

WooCommerce Enterprise – $10,000+ (Dedicated hosting servers, custom design and features, paid plugins and services).

Shopify – $1,000 – $10,000+ (Your costs would increase dramatically when you make more sales and if you are using a third-party payment service).

BigCommerce $1,000 – $10,000+ (Your costs will increase when you make more sales as you will be asked to upgrade your plan).

A WooCommerce / WordPress eCommerce site costs between $500 and $3000 USD for a starter eCommerce business. This gives you the best value for your money as it is the most robust, flexible, and easy to use platform.

  • You wouldn’t have to pay additional transaction fees
  • WooCommerce doesn’t cap your sales or number of products you add
  • You can use it with any third-party service
  • It has the best design options to improve conversions and make more sales

If you would rather not maintain hosting by yourself, then BigCommerce saves you money by not charging you a transaction fee for using your preferred payment services.

You can also use BigCommerce with WordPress, allowing BigCommerce to handle your store and WordPress to manage marketing content.

Lastly, Shopify could be a cheap option for making an eCommerce website but only if you use Shopify Payments to accept credit card payments on your website.

For more details see our comparisons: WooCommerce vs BigCommerce and WooCommerce vs Shopify.

6. Bonus: Costs of Growing Ecommerce Business

Cost of growing your eCommerce business

Now that you have made your eCommerce site. What’s next?

The real fun part comes when you start growing your eCommerce business. This part is painful and overwhelming for most beginners, but it is also the most rewarding.

It is painful because it can be excruciatingly slow if you are not using the right tools. By using proper tools to grow your business you can boost your sales and skyrocket conversions.

While these tools will also add up to your overall costs, their ROI is so high that it automatically justifies the expense.

Following are our top picks for the best marketing tools to grow your eCommerce business with their costs.

Marketing Tools

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster

As your eCommerce site starts getting visitors, you’ll learn that most visitors leave without making a purchase. Wouldn’t it be great if you could stay in touch with them so that you can convince them to buy?

This is what OptinMonster does.

It is the best lead generation software in the world because it helps you convert abandoning website visitors into leads and customers. OptinMonster works with any kind of website and all eCommerce platforms.

For instructions and practical examples, see our article on how to convert visitors into customers.

Cost: We would recommend you to start with their Plus plan at least. It costs $19 / month with annual billing.

2. Constant Contact

Constant Contact

The best way to stay in touch with website visitors is by email, which is still the preferred mode of communication by customers.

You need to start building an email list on your eCommerce store from day 1. Basically, you are losing money each day you are not collecting emails.

The easiest way to start with email marketing is by using Constant Contact. It is the best email marketing software on the market allowing you to send targeted messages to subscribers and increase your sales.

For details and step by step instructions, see our tutorial on how to start an email newsletter.

Cost: Starting from $20 per month.

Alternatives: We also recommend SendinBlue and Drip depending on the use-cases.

3. SEMRush

SEMRush

The best source to get free traffic to your website is search engines. To utilize them, you will need to keep learning eCommerce SEO.

SEMRush is the best SEO tool on the market. It allows you to see the keywords your competitors are ranking for and how you can beat them by ranking higher.

In just a few clicks, it provides you a ton of optimization ideas that you can implement with minimal effort.

For instructions and details, see our guide on how to properly do keyword research.

Cost: Starting from $99.95 per month.

4. Nextiva

Nextiva

Normally you can just add your landline or mobile number to your eCommerce website. However, it doesn’t look very professional and can end up hurting your business.

Nextiva is the best business phone service on the market. It allows you to use one number on multiple devices, phonesets, mobile phones, and even computers.

It runs on voice over internet protocol technology also known as business VoIP. Compared to traditional landline phones, it is way cheaper and allows you to efficiently handle calls for your business.

Cost: Starting from $20 / month / user.

Alternative: RingCentral is a another popular virtual phone number app.

5. PPC Marketing

Starting an eCommerce website will not instantly start making money for your business. It will take some time before you can get search traffic to your website. Meanwhile, you’ll still be paying for hosting and other services.

This is where PPC marketing can help.

PPC or pay-per-click marketing allows you to display ads for targeted keywords in search results. You can use SEMRush to find the PPC keywords your clients are targeting and plan an effective strategy within minutes.

The best place to start with your first PPC campaign is Google Ads. It is super-easy to use and even absolute beginners can get started without any help.

PPC campaigns don’t need to cost a lot of money. You can set a small budget, run a very targeted campaign, and then increase the budget to get more leads and sales.

PPC is not just for eCommerce startups, you can continue using PPC marketing alongside your SEO efforts to get targeted traffic to your store.

Cost: You can start as low as $100 and increase budget as you need.

How much would it cost to properly grow an eCommerce business?

Basically, it depends on you. Your goal should be to find the right balance of tools start building upon it. Keep trying new tools as your business grows and you have more budget to expand.

Estimated Cost of Growth Hacking: $1000 to Unlimited

We hope this article gave you a good idea of how much does an eCommerce website cost in real numbers. We recommend being thrifty and only spending when it is essential for your business.

You may also want to see our guide on how to grow your business on a very small budget and the best live chat software for eCommerce websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How Much Do Ecommerce Websites Cost in 2019? (Real Numbers) appeared first on WPBeginner.

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WPWeekly Episode 360 – CBD and E-Commerce With Javier Cano

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Javier Cano, Director of Marketing for Liquid Web. We discuss the challenges people are facing selling CBD products on e-commerce platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce and what Liquid Web is doing to be an ally to the industry. We also talk about high-risk payment processors and the brick and mortar approach versus selling high-risk products online. Cano also shares his experiences from attending and speaking at recent CBD expos.

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5 Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins Compared – 2022

Are you looking for the best WordPress eCommerce plugin to build your online store?

Choosing the right eCommerce plugin is crucial for your business because a better platform means more opportunities for growth. Often users end up losing money because they didn’t do proper research when choosing the eCommerce platform to start their store.

In this article, we will compare the best WordPress eCommerce plugins. We will also explain their pros and cons to help you find which eCommerce plugin is right for your business.

Best eCommerce Plugins for WordPress

What to Look for in a WordPress eCommerce Plugin for Your Site?

There are plenty of WordPress eCommerce plugins in the market. But not all of them have the right set of features for your use case.

For example, some eCommerce plugins are made for selling digital goods like eBooks, photos, music, etc. Others are better suited for selling physical products that need shipping.

If you want to run a drop-shipping business, then you’ll need an eCommerce solution that provides better support for drop-shipping.

Basically, you need to consider what you will be selling and what kind of features you would need to efficiently run your online store.

Apart from that, the following are some of the most important factors you need to look for when choosing an eCommerce platform.

  • Payment solutions – Your eCommerce plugin should have support for your preferred payment gateways by default or through an extension.
  • Design and customization – Your store’s design is your customer’s first interaction with your business. Make sure there are plenty of templates and easy customization options available
  • Apps and integrations – Check out integrations available for third-party apps like email marketing services, CRM software, accounting software, etc. You’ll need those tools to manage and grow your eCommerce business more efficiently.
  • Support options – Make sure that there are support options available. Good support can save you a lot of money in the long run.

What Do You Need to Run an eCommerce Website?

Ecommerce websites are resource-intensive, so the first thing you will need is the best WordPress hosting that you can afford.

If you’re on a budget, then you can start with SiteGround or Bluehost. All their plans are eCommerce ready and comes with SSL Certificate which you need to collect payments securely, dedicated IP, and a dedicated support line. They also offer 1-click install options for the most powerful WordPress eCommerce plugins (as you’ll find out later in this article).

If budget is not an issue, and you want the best performance, then we recommend using a managed WordPress hosting provider like WPEngine.

Next, you will need to choose a domain name for your website. Here is our guide on how to pick the right domain name for your eCommerce site.

Lastly, you will need to choose essential business plugins that you will need such as OptinMonster which help you reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase sales.

Having that said, let’s take a look at the best WordPress eCommerce plugins.

Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins – The Contenders

Now that you know what to look for in an eCommerce platform and what you need to get started, here are our top picks for the best eCommerce platform for WordPress users.

  1. WooCommerce
  2. Easy Digital Downloads
  3. MemberPress
  4. BigCommerce
  5. Shopify

Let’s take a look at each one of them and compare their pros and cons.

1. WooCommerce

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin. It’s also the most popular eCommerce platform in the world. WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com’s blog hosting service) in 2015.

There is a large number of addons and themes available for WooCommerce. They also have a passionate developer community behind it. Recently several hosting companies have started creating specialized WooCommerce hosting solutions.

Pros of Using WooCommerce

Here are some of the advantages of using WooCommerce as your WordPress eCommerce plugin:

  • Extensions and Themes – There are hundreds of extensions and themes available for WooCommerce, which makes it easy for you to add new features to your eCommerce site. A large collection of themes means you have tons of options when choosing your site’s design and layout.
  • Supports Both Digital and Physical Goods – With WooCommerce, you can sell physical as well as digital downloads (such as ebooks, music, software, and more).
  • Sell Affiliate or External Products – Using WooCommerce, you can add affiliate or external products to your site. Affiliate marketers can create product sites and provide users with a better experience.
  • Complete Inventory Management – WooCommerce comes equipped with tools to easily manage your inventory or even assign it to a store manager.
  • Payment and Shipping Options – WooCommerce has built-in support for popular payment gateways, and you can add many other payment options using extensions. It can also calculate shipping and taxes.
  • Affiliate Management – You can easily add built-in affiliate management to WooCommerce using AffiliateWP and create your own referral program. This helps you avoid paying middle man fees.
  • Ecommerce SEO – WooCommerce is fully SEO optimized with the All in One SEO plugin (AIOSEO). This helps your product page ranks higher in search engines.
  • Ecommerce Growth Tools – WooCommerce has third-party extensions like WooFunnels that help you with funnel optimization to get maximum sales. You can also use Advanced Coupons extensions to add BOGO deals, free shipping, and even sell gift cards.
  • Support and Documentation – There is excellent documentation available online for WooCommerce. Apart from documentation, there is a knowledge base, help desk, and community forums available.

Cons of Using WooCommerce

  • Too Many Options – WooCommerce is very easy to use, but the number of options available on the settings page can be quite intimidating for a new user.
  • Finding Addons – There are lots of addons available for WooCommerce, sometimes a user may not find the right addon for features that they need.
  • Theme Support – WooCommerce works with any WordPress theme, but it’s not always as easy to set up or good-looking with all themes. You need a WooCommerce-ready theme to take full advantage of its features without too much hassle. Alternatively, you can use SeedProd builder to create custom WooCommerce pages with drag & drop interface.
  • Scalability – As your store gets larger, you will need to move to a managed hosting provider like WP Engine to scale your WooCommerce store.

WooCommerce is the perfect choice for any kind of eCommerce website. It has a large community of developers and users, a lot of addons and themes, excellent support for multilingual websites, and the best free and paid support options.

2. Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) allows you to easily sell digital downloads online using WordPress. It’s very easy to use and comes with powerful features to create a beautiful and functional digital goods store.

We use Easy Digital Downloads to sell our software like WPForms and MonsterInsights, so we can easily say that it’s the best eCommerce platform for your site.

With Easy Digital Download’s growth, there are now even managed EDD hosting offerings that comes with EDD pre-installed.

Pros of Using Easy Digital Downloads

  • Designed To Sell Digital Goods – Easy Digital Downloads is built from the ground up to sell digital downloads. Unlike eCommerce plugins that can be used to sell all kinds of products, EDD provides a far better experience for selling digital goods.
  • Easy To Use – Easy Digital Downloads is very easy to use, from the start you would instantly figure out how to add products and display them. This is really useful for the first-timers.
  • Extensions – There are hundreds of extensions available for Easy Digital Downloads including addons for payment gateways, email marketing platforms, and other marketing tools.
  • Themes – Easy Digital Downloads works with almost any WordPress theme, however, if you have not chosen a theme yet, then Easy Digital Downloads has themes built specifically for the plugin.
  • Software Licensing – Easy Digital Downloads comes with robust software licensing support that allows you to sell plugins as well as SaaS products with proper digital rights management.
  • Affiliate Management – You can easily add built-in affiliate management to Easy Digital Downloads using AffiliateWP and create your own referral program. This helps you avoid paying middle man fees.
  • Ecommerce Growth Tools – Easy Digital Downloads seamlessly integrates with growth tools like MonsterInsights to offer you enhanced eCommerce tracking, AIOSEO to offer you maximum eCommerce SEO growth, and OptinMonster to offer content personalization and conversion optimization features.
  • Awesome Support – The plugin is very well documented, and you have free support forums, videos, tutorials, and even an IRC chatroom. There is also a priority support option for premium users.

Cons of Using Easy Digital Downloads

  • Digital Downloads Only – As the name suggests, Easy Digital Downloads makes it easier to create eCommerce sites for digital goods. But if you want to sell non-digital goods along with digital downloads then it will become quite complicated.
  • Selling External Products – If you want to add an external product or an affiliate product to your EDD store, then you will need to install a third-party add on for it.

When it comes to selling digital products online, we believe that Easy Digital Downloads is the best plugin to do that. We have used Easy Digital Downloads with great success, not only on client sites but also on our own projects to generate tens of millions each year.

You can use SiteGround EDD hosting to start your Easy Digital Downloads store with just a few clicks.

Note: There’s also a free version of Easy Digital Downloads that you can download from WordPress directly.

3. MemberPress

MemberPress

MemberPress allows you to sell subscription-based digital products and services. It’s the best WordPress membership plugin with tons of integration options. It can even integrate with WooCommerce.

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons MemberPress.

Pros of Using MemberPress

  • Sell Subscription-Based Products – This allows you to easily sell subscription-based products, membership plans, pay-per-view content, and more.
  • Powerful Access Rules – Powerful access control allows you to define user access levels and content restrictions. Only users with permissions will be able to access restricted content.
  • Built-in Course Builder – MemberPress comes with a course builder that allows you to create & sell courses by offering your users an immersive online learning platform.
  • Content Dripping – MemberPress allows you to release paid content over time similar to episodes on Amazon Prime shows or other platforms. This feature is known as automatic drip content.
  • Affiliate Management – You can easily add built-in affiliate management to MemberPress using AffiliateWP or Easy Affiliates plugin. This let you create your own referral program. This helps you avoid paying middle man fees.
  • Powerful Extensions – You can integrate it with your WooCommerce store or LearnDash LMS. There are tons of extensions to connect MemberPress with third-party services such as AffiliateWP to create your own affiliate program.

Cons of Using MemberPress

  • Limited Payment Options – MemberPress only supports PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net.
  • Yearly Pricing – Pricing plans are available on yearly terms alone.

MemberPress is the perfect eCommerce plugin to sell subscription-based products, sell courses, or build a membership website. It’s beginner-friendly and can be easily extended with addons that allow you to take your eCommerce website in any direction you want.

4. BigCommerce

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a fully hosted eCommerce platform that offers seamless integration with WordPress. This allows you to use a scalable eCommerce platform while using WordPress to manage your content and run your website.

It has a powerful integration plugin for WordPress which makes it very easy to embed your products in WordPress. It automatically creates the sign-in, cart, account, and other important pages for you.

Let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of using BigCommerce as your WordPress eCommerce platform.

Pros of Using BigCommerce

  • High scalability – It includes all the features you will need with enterprise-grade security, high performance, and easy scalability.
  • Less Maintenance – Keeping your eCommerce engine separate from other content makes it easier to run your WordPress site.
  • Sell across Multiple Channels – You can use it to sell not only on your website but also on other channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon.
  • No transaction charges – Unlike some other eCommerce platforms, it does not charge you on each transaction. You can choose from dozens of top payment gateways and only pay the payment service provider.

Cons of Using BigCommerce

  • Limited Integrations – BigCommerce integrates with all the top third-party apps and tools. However, its app store is still growing, and you may not find an integration for some less popular apps.
  • Yearly Sales Threshold – They have a yearly threshold on sales for each plan. If you reach that threshold then you’re upgraded to the next plan. This may increase costs as your business grows.

BigCommerce is an incredibly powerful yet very easy-to-use eCommerce platform. It’s a SaaS eCommerce platform, but with their BigCommerce WordPress plugin, you can have the best of both worlds.

It takes away the pains of scaling your hosting requirements as your business grows. At the same time, you don’t have to worry about security, performance, or finding extensions for SEO and caching.

BigCommerce is a rising contender in WordPress for headless eCommerce. It takes care of technology infrastructure, so you can focus on growing your business.

5. Shopify

Shopify Ecommerce Website Builder Software

Shopify is a fast-growing eCommerce platform that handles everything for you. Shopify isn’t a plugin, but it’s an all-in-one solution that’s completely hassle-free. See our guide on Shopify vs WooCommerce for a detailed side-by-side comparison of the two platforms.

Let’s look at the Pros and Cons of Shopify.

Pros of Using Shopify

  • Super Easy for Beginners – No need to worry about the technical aspects of an eCommerce store such as setting up SSL, integrating with different payment gateways, handling shipping, worrying about taxes, etc. Shopify handles it all.
  • Supports Both Digital and Physical Goods – Whether you’re selling physical goods like shirts or digital downloads like music, Shopify can handle it all.
  • Complete Inventory Management – Shopify comes with an inventory editor and bulk importer combined with an order tracker which makes managing inventory a breeze.
  • Payment and Shipping Options – Shopify makes it easy for you to accept credit cards both online and in person. Their shipping system streamlines your fulfillment process with direct integration with popular providers like USPS.
  • Facebook Store and Buyable Pins – Shopify integrates with everything. Whether you want to create a Facebook store or create buyable Pins on Pinterest, you can do it all with Shopify.

Cons of Using Shopify

  • Monthly Platform Fee – Shopify charges you a monthly fee to use their platform which is comparable to purchasing hosting and individual addons using the other plugins in this list.
  • Shopify Payments – Shopify encourages you to use their payment platform which is powered by Stripe and is a very good option for beginners. However, if you want to overcomplicate things and use external systems, then Shopify charges you an additional fee.

If you want to have a powerful platform without having to deal with technical issues, then Shopify is the solution for you. While the monthly fee sounds bad at first, the hassle-free approach and peace of mind are definitely worth it because it allows you to focus on what you do best, your business!

Shopify does not have a native integration with WordPress. Often times, business owners end up switching from Shopify to WordPress to get more features while reducing their overall cost.

Conclusion – The Best WordPress eCommerce Plugin is:

If you want maximum control, flexibility, and features, then WooCommerce is the best solution for you.

If you’re selling digital goods like eBook, software, music, or other files, then Easy Digital Downloads is the best WordPress eCommerce plugin for you. You can use SiteGround’s EDD hosting to get started with 1-click.

If you don’t want to manage all the technical stuff of building an online store, then BigCommerce is the best option for you. It lets you use a SaaS eCommerce platform side by side with WordPress as your content management system.

That’s all we hope this article helped you find the best WordPress eCommerce plugins for your site. You may also want to see our comparison of the best drag and drop WordPress page builders, and our expert pick of the best business phone services for small businesses.

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The post 5 Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins Compared – 2022 first appeared on WPBeginner.

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Eight Premium Shopify Apps Every E-Store Should Have

Let us face reality. We would only be lying if we didn’t acknowledge the fact that online businesses today rapidly emerging as very profitable ventures because of the opportunities that exist for entrepreneurs in e-commerce. Right now, online entrepreneurs are beginning to take advantage of these possibilities due to the more affordable nature of online Read More →

The post Eight Premium Shopify Apps Every E-Store Should Have appeared first on WPArena.