The Top 10 Plugins Every WooCommerce Store needs
WooCommerce is without a doubt the best eCommerce plugin for WordPress and also the most widely used powering over 28% of all online stores at the time of writing. Giving it a larger market share than platforms like Shopify.
Out the box WooCommerce is great sure, but it lacks a lot of functionality you'll want from your online store. Newsletter integrations, PDF invoices, packing slips and more. Let's explore some of the WooCommerce plugins that every store needs, in no particular order. Here we go.
1: Payment Gateways - Stripe - Price $free
Sure PayPal is ok, but with substantial fees and the ability for the buyer to dispute the transaction within 180 days! Stripe is a must-have if you're serious about selling online. Now supported in more countries than ever. Stripe makes it straightforward and painless to accept Credit and Debit cards on your online store.
2: Shipping - Table Rate Shipping - Price $99 (single site license)
Let's be fair; out the box WooCommerce leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to shipping options. Inflexible and annoying for most users. The Table Rate shipping plugin removes all those woes. Giving you the flexibility to define various shipping rates based on location, price weight or even item card. Once you've used Table rate shipping on one store, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it!
Free Alternative
There are multiple free alternatives to the official WooCommerce version. Just go to wordpress.org/plugins/ and type in "table rate shipping." One of the ones that stands out against the others is WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping by JEM. Out the box it offers much of the functionality you'd need which is also expanded on further by the premium version that the developer offers.
3: Pricing - Dynamic Pricing - Price $129 (single site license)
Pricing. The most important part of any online store. If you sell new products that other businesses sell getting your pricing wrong could be the death of your beloved business. That's where dynamic pricing comes in. For example, you can use the category pricing feature to offer a percentage discount if the customer also purchases another item from a specific category. Or set up custom user roles and offer a specific discount to platinum members or gold members.
Enticing people with discounts on multiple purchases or special offers is vital.
Maybe you're a wholesaler? Create a custom Wholesale user role, assign that to your wholesale customer and give them exclusive discounts on your products once they're logged in. Allowing you to run both a wholesale site and a retail site all in one website with no complicated multiple logins.
All this and so much more is possible with Dynamic Pricing for WooCommerce.
Free Alternative
Just like with most WooCommerce plugins there are more than enough alternatives to the one offered on WooCommerce.com. One of those being Pricing Deals For WooCommerce providing a decent set of functionality to get you started out the box. The developer also offers a free version.
4: Invoicing & Packing - Print Invoices, Packing Lists and Pick Lists for WooCommerce Orders - Price $49 (single site license)
Just as mentioned in the intro something WooCommerce lacks out the box is printable invoices and packing slips. If you don't use a plugin like this, you'll be forever copying and pasting or writing addresses by hand. Speed up your workflow with this plugin allowing you to print invoices to include with the order and print packing lists. It couldn't really get any easier unless you had someone packing for you.
Free Alternative
The best free alternative is without a doubt WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips. In my opinion, it may be even better than the premium plugin above. Offering plenty of functionality and everything you need. You can't go far wrong with this one.
5: Shipping - Shipment tracking - Price $49 (Single site)
This one is pretty snazzy. If you've ever bought something from eBay (and who hasn't?) you've most likely noticed that when someone adds a tracking number to your order, clicking it will track the parcel directly on the carrier's website. Using this plugin for WooCommerce, your online store can do the same thing, supporting multiple different carriers out the box. It's $49 well spent.
Free Alternative
You knew they'd be a free alternative didn't you? Well you guessed right. The free WooCommerce shipment tracking plugin offers everything you need and even offers a pro version with support for 70+ carriers.
6: Memberships - WooCommerce Memberships - Price $149 (Single site
WooCommerce memberships is an extremely handy plugin, allowing you to restrict posts, pages, custom post types and more. Perfect for if you sell digital products and want to sell everything in one package and restrict access to documentation or the downloads themselves making sure only verified purchases can have access. Offering support out the box for Drip Content scheduled for when members get access and even allowing category discounts and products discounts to let you set up a purchasing club.
Free Alternative
Unlike most other WooCommerce plugins there is no free alternative that I'd recommend. Most are extremely limiting, needing you to upgrade to their Pro version to get access to features you'd need or want to use. In this instance, if you want memberships on your site, you can't go wrong with the one from WooCommerce mentioned above.
7: Pricing - Name Your Price - Price $49 (single site)
Maybe you've seen sites like HumbleBundle which allow you to enter in the price you want to pay for the product? Give your customers that very same option with Name Your Price. Allowing you to set a suggested price and a minimum price. After all, you wouldn't be happy with $1 for those Macbooks you're selling.
Free Alternative
There is one alternative found here, but most of the functionality is locked off to the premium version and isn't something I'd recommend. Also, we reviewed a free version of a Name Your Price WooCommerce over in one of our earlier articles which, admittedly, is based on very old plugin but the functionality is pretty much the same.
8: Products - Composite Products - Price $79 (Single site)
Composite Products allows you to offer a product creator on your WooCommerce store. Perfect for if you sell either custom products or products that require multiple different components. For example, maybe you sell custom built Gaming PC's and need to allow your customers to select from different sizes and brands of RAM, GPU, CPU, etc. That's exactly what Composite products allows.
Free Alternative
There isn't a single free alternative to this plugin for this type of plugin on WordPress.org. There are a few product bundle plugins, but those are nothing like Composite Products.
9: Products - Variation Swatches and Photos - Price $99 (Single site)
Out the box WooCommerce shows variations as a dropdown which isn't the most user-friendly method especially when it comes to the user experience on mobile. That's where this plugin comes into play. Giving your customers a more visual representation of the different options you offer on your store. Perfect for clothing.
Free Alternative
There is one alternative to this plugin called Variation Swatches for WooCommerce. While not quite as fully featured as the premium plugin above. It offers a decent set of features for a free plugin and still massively improves the user experience over the out of the box experience.
10: Pricing - WooCommerce Subscriptions - Price $199 (Single site)
WooCommerce Subscriptions allow you to... Well, offer subscriptions of course! Add signup fees, make the subscription auto recurring. Set the subscription to charge every month for six months and then expire. The possibilities are endless. A great add-on for if you sell subscriptions boxes or want to set up a buying club.
Free Alternative
There's no free alternative for subscription products with WooCommerce in the WordPress.org repository. For something as complex as subscriptions, I'd always advise going for WooCommerce Subscriptions. It's without a doubt the best one by far.
Now we've shown you our top ten, what plugins do you find are must haves for your WooCommerce store? Let us know in the comments below.
Jack Kitterhing is a WordPress developer from England. His love of WordPress began at age 11 when he set up his first blog. After a stint as WPMU DEV’s Project and Quality Assurance Manager, he’s now a Software Developer at Themeco.