WooCommerce

WordPress site owners who want to add a fully customizable storefront to their existing site without migrating to Shopify or BigCommerce

Ecommerce ★★★★☆ 4.2/5 Free plugin; hosting and extensions extra Visit Website

Core plugin is free and open-source with no transaction fees, revenue caps, or product limits baked into the software itself
59,000+ WordPress plugins and 1,000+ WooCommerce-specific extensions cover subscriptions, bookings, memberships, product bundles, and multi-vendor marketplaces
Full code ownership means you can modify checkout flows, product pages, and email templates at the PHP/HTML level without platform restrictions
REST API with full CRUD access enables headless commerce builds where a React or Next.js frontend consumes WooCommerce as the backend
WooCommerce Payments (powered by Stripe) offers built-in card processing at 2.9% + $0.30 with no monthly fee and multi-currency support in 135+ currencies

Requires self-managed WordPress hosting ($10-50/month), SSL certificate, backups, and security patches; total cost of ownership often exceeds Shopify Basic at $39/month
Performance degrades noticeably beyond 10,000 products and 500+ orders/day without dedicated WooCommerce hosting, object caching, and database optimization
Premium extensions for subscriptions ($199/yr), product bundles ($49/yr), and bookings ($249/yr) add up quickly beyond the free core
No official phone or live chat support for the free plugin; troubleshooting relies on community forums, documentation, and paid developer help

Key Features

Product management for simple, variable, grouped, affiliate, and downloadable products with inventory tracking
Flexible payment gateways including WooCommerce Payments, PayPal, Stripe, Square, and 80+ regional processors
Built-in coupon engine with percentage, fixed-cart, and free-shipping discounts plus usage limits and expiry dates
Shipping zones with flat-rate, free shipping, local pickup, and real-time carrier rate extensions for UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL
Tax calculation with automatic rates by location via WooCommerce Tax (powered by Jetpack) or manual tax class configuration
REST API v3 with OAuth 1.0a authentication for headless builds, ERP integrations, and mobile app backends
Reporting dashboard with revenue, orders, products, categories, coupons, and customer analytics with date-range filtering