WooCommerce, as you probably know, is easily the most popular free eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It’s accrued nearly 10 million downloads (currently it sits at 988K downloads) and it boasts a 4.5-star rating on WordPress.org, with 1000+ reviews.
The plugin was officially launched on September 27, 2011, which makes it just about four years old, to the day!
Now, although the basic WooCommerce plugin is totally free (no strings attached), you do have the option to extend its functionality using one of the 350+ extensions. In fact, if your goal for your e-store is to reach enterprise levels, then it’s probably a good idea to invest in at least a couple of these extensions to help expand your business.
In this post, I’ve taken a look at the hundreds of available extensions and shortlisted 10 of the most useful extensions below. Remember, this is only one man’s opinion — so if you know of any other extensions you’d like to recommend, please feel free to do so in the comments!
WooCommerce Memberships – $149
One of the most popular e-business models is selling access to digital content in the form of memberships. If your website uses that business model, then you can use the WooCommerce Memberships extension to easily restrict content access to premium members.
Features:
- drip content to members according to a schedule
- package a membership along with another product purchase (i.e. buy an eBook and get access to a specific membership level free of cost)
- manually assign memberships (ideal for invite-only sites)
- include a free trial period
- reward members with discounts to other products
The developer, SkyVerge, also recommends purchasing the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension to allow extra functionality like recurring or monthly payments, pausing a membership, membership upgrades/downgrades, etc. However, the plugin will also work just fine as a standalone.
Price: $149 (single site), $199 (5 sites), $249 (25 sites)
Developer: SkyVerge
WooCommerce Points and Rewards – $129
The WooCommerce Points and Rewards extension is an easy way to encourage repeat purchases on your site by giving customers cash back in the form of redeemable points.
For instance, say that you sell a $200 product and you’ve set 10 WooPoints to equal a dollar. You can setup the extension to reward this $200 purchase with 50 WooPoints (equivalent to $5) that customers can then apply to discount any future order they make on your store.
Features:
- control point value
- set maximum discounts
- award points for purchases as well as specific actions (reviews, sign ups, etc.)
- give customers points for any previous purchases
Price: $129 (single site), $199 (5 sites), $299 (25 sites)
Developer: Brent Shepard
WooCommerce Bookings – $249
Are you a doctor, lawyer, resort owner, or spa manager? If so, the WooCommerce Bookings extension could be a game-changer for you.
The extension will allow visitors to easily book and pay for appointments and meetings at a specific date and time (that fits within your defined slots).
Features:
- multi-person bookings
- manual bookings
- send email notifications to customers
- view bookings in list or calendar format
Price: $249 (single site), $299 (5 sites), $449 (25 sites)
Developer: WooThemes
WooCommerce Wishlists – $79
With the WooCommerce Wishlists extension, your e-store can become just like Amazon’s! Well, sorta. Amazon was one of the earliest e-stores to popularize the use of wishlists — so if wishlists work for the world’s second largest online retailer, they could work for you.
However, I wouldn’t generally recommend purchasing this extension if your e-store is still in early growth stages. Because the whole idea behind wishlists is based on social, it might not work if you’re not pulling large traffic numbers.
Features:
- guest customers can create temporary wishlists (lasts for 30 days)
- registered customers can create permanent wishlists
- privacy control for lists
- built-in social sharing
Price: $79 (single site), $99 (5 sites), $199 (25 sites)
Developer: Lucas Stark
Shipment Tracking – $49
As you might have been able to guess from this extension’s name, Shipment Tracking has a simple function: allowing visitors to track shipped purchases on your site.
You can create an unlimited number of custom tracking links for whatever shipping providers you use, but the extension also comes with automatic links for 14 well-known couriers like USPS, FedEx, and DHL.
Features:
- custom tracking links
- show tracking info onsite and in emails
Price: $49 (single site), $79 (5 sites), $149 (25 sites)
Developer: WooThemes
Follow-up Emails – $99
Follow-up Emails is a great extension that makes for quite a powerful email autoresponder. The basic idea here is that you’ll be able to send automated email sequences to both your customers and your prospects to encourage either a repeat purchase or a first-time order.
Features:
- unlimited sends and contacts
- segment list according to customers vs. prospects
- integrate coupons to offer email-only discounts
- detailed reporting on opens, clicks, and replies
- personalize emails with variables for customer and order data
Price: $129 (single site), $199 (5 sites), $299 (25 sites)
Developer: 75nineteen media
Dynamic Pricing – $129
Dynamic Pricing adds a whole new set of advanced pricing options to your WooCommerce store. You can test all sorts of discounts, cost adjustments, and category-based pricing.
Features:
- fixed price and percentage discounts
- bulk discounts when customers purchase X of a specific product
- offer different prices based on user roles
- buy-1-get-1-free
Price: $99 (single site), $149 (5 sites), $249 (25 sites)
Developer: Lucas Stark
WooCommerce Products Compare – $79
WooCommerce Products Compare is a replacement for the now-defunct Compare Products Pro extension with the same basic features.
Simply put, the extension allows customers to compare multiple products from your store at a glance. The product is incredibly easy to setup, as there’s no configuration necessary: just install and activate.
Features:
- compare multiple products
- select products to compare both from dedicated product description pages and from product archive pages
- customize comparison page
- compare products widget
Price: $79 (single site), $129 (5 sites), $179 (25 sites)
Developer: WooThemes
Min/Max Quantities – $29
Say that you’re running out of stock for a specific product, and you want as many people to be able to get one as possible. With the Min/Max Quantities extension, you can setup your store so that each customer is only allowed to purchase one of the limited-supply product.
Conversely, say that you’re offering something at a sizeable discount, but you need customers to purchase at least three of the product at a time to make the sale viable. Once again, this extension will allow you to do that.
Features:
- set minimum and maximum quantity thresholds for specific products
- set minimum and maximum value thresholds for orders
- require multiples (customer has to buy in groups of X)
- apply quantity rules to categories
Price: $29 (single site), $49 (5 sites), $99 (25 sites)
Developer: Mike Jolley
Payment Gateways
The WooCommerce plugin comes with four payment gateways built-in: direct bank transfer, cheque, cash on delivery, and PayPal.
While these gateways are normally sufficient for a beginner e-store owner, any sort of expansion will typically require that you integrate more gateways to accommodate a greater variety of customers. In fact, the demand for more gateways is so high that more than 100 of WooCommerce’s 350 extensions are dedicated to this function.
I’ve listed some of the most popular gateway extensions below (excepting the free Amazon payments extension, all of these are priced at $79/$99/$199 respectively for the single-site, 5-site and 25-site licenses):
- Pay with Amazon
- Stripe
- Authorize.net AIM
- Braintree
- WorldPay
- PayPal Express (allows customers to bypass WC checkouts and go straight to PayPal)
Wrapping Up
With hundreds of other WooCommerce extensions available, there are probably quite a few really useful add-ons that I’ve missed.
So, if you’ve used any helpful extensions to grow your eCommerce store, please do list your recommendations in the comments below!
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