WooCommerce Review
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- Date Established
- 2011
- Location
- South Africa
Pros
- Free
- Customizable
- Numerous integrations
- Scalable
Cons
- Limited customer support
- Add-ons are often necessary
- Steep learning curve
WooCommerce Overview
If you run a WordPress site (and who doesn’t?), chances are good you’re wondering how to monetize it. There are a few options available to you, but the most popular among them is WooCommerce.
WooCommerce is a free, open-source shopping cart plugin that works expressly with WordPress sites. Since its founding in September of 2001, the WooCommerce plugin has been downloaded over 84 million times. You could say people like it.
Although WooCommerce is free to download, it is not free to operate a WooCommerce store. You can expect to spend a nice sum on web hosting and the extensions you’ll need to run advanced features.
Regardless, it’s clear why so many merchants trust WooCommerce with their online store; WooCommerce offers the features you need at a low price, and it integrates into a platform you’re probably already using.
Read on to see if WooCommerce is the shopping cart for your online store.
Table of Contents
Specific Size Of Business
WooCommerce is great for small to large companies. You should note, however, that if you’re expecting lots of traffic or plan to add thousands of products, you’ll need to find hosting that can keep up with your bandwidth usage.
WooCommerce Pricing
WooCommerce is an open-source WordPress plugin that’s free to download. It does not charge transaction fees, and it doesn’t regulate bandwidth or storage (your site’s hosting will do that).
That doesn’t mean, however, that WooCommerce is free of all expenses. First, to maintain a WooCommerce site, you must purchase hosting for your WordPress.com site.
And to get the best use out of the platform, you’ll have to spring for various add-ons and extensions, which range in price from free to hundreds of dollars. However, because many of these extensions are one-time purchases, you’ll probably come out paying slightly less than you would with some other popular options, such as Shopify.
Cloud-Based Or Locally-Installed
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that can be used with any WordPress.com account. You are responsible for finding hosting for your WordPress site.
Hardware & Software Requirements
WooCommerce integrates into any WordPress.com site, although it works best when it’s paired with a WooTheme (more on this in the Web Design section of this review). You should maintain a strong internet connection and an updated browser.
Server recommendations are as follows:
- PHP 7.2 or greater
- MySQL 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB 10.0 or greater
- WP Memory limit of 128MB or greater
- HTTPS support
You’ll also need to meet WordPress’s minimum requirements, which are nearly the same:
- PHP version 7.3 or greater
- MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.1 or greater
- HTTPS support
WooCommerce also offers mobile apps for Android (5.0 and up) and iOS (11.0 and up). You can use these mobile apps to manage orders, get sales notifications, and view your site’s stats from anywhere.
Ease Of Use
WooCommerce works seamlessly with WordPress, which is great for merchants already familiar with the über-popular blogging platform. In fact, all WooCommerce users must have a WordPress.com account to log into the platform.
WooCommerce connects to your WordPress platform like any other WordPress plugin. Just click “Add New” on the plugins page and search for WooCommerce. Then, click “Install” and “Activate.“
Sounds simple, right? It is.
From there, a setup wizard will take you through the steps of getting started with WooCommerce.
You can then either purchase a premium WooTheme or download the free Storefront theme, which WooCommerce highly recommends.
Then you can begin adding products. Honestly, I find the product editor a little strange (adding products looks just like writing a blog post), but it works just fine. You can also categorize products and add attributes on this page.
Click “Publish” and view your changes immediately.
Additionally, you can access pending orders, shipping settings, product information, and inventory tracking from your WordPress dashboard.
WooCommerce comes with pretty decent shipping functionality right out of the box. There are options for free shipping, flat-rate shipping, local pickup, and domestic and overseas delivery. An automatic shipping calculator is built-in, and you can set different rates based on shipping zones. With a few add-ons, you can access real-time shipping estimates from major carriers, such as USPS, UPS, and FedEx.
Getting started with WooCommerce was not as easy as I had expected or hoped, though it’s hard to say precisely why. I think part of the difficulty had to do with the integration of WordPress and WooCommerce. I’m used to dealing with WordPress, and I’m used to managing eCommerce admins, but I was thrown off by an eCommerce admin that looks like WordPress.
I highly recommend using WooCommerce’s tutorial videos (available in the “Help” drop-down) to guide you through the beginning stages of setting up your WooCommerce store. I wish I had found them earlier.
WooCommerce Features
WooCommerce offers features in a Core+Extensions model. The platform comes with all the core features you need, and it’s possible to start selling immediately with the basic WooCommerce package. However, if your business requires more advanced shipping or checkout features, you are going to have to drop some money on add-ons.
Here are some of the features you get for free with every WooCommerce download:
- Mobile-Friendly Design: Both your storefront and your admin work great on mobile devices. Your customers can shop on the go, and you can manage their orders from anywhere.
- Sell Digital & Physical Products: Just check a box to show that your digital products don’t require shipping.
- Geo-Location Support: Geo-location detects your customers’ addresses to streamline shipping and tax calculations.
- Organize Your Products: Group your products by category, add variations to each product, and sell affiliate products.
- Inventory Management: Use WooCommerce’s built-in inventory management to track your stock level, hold the stock if an order gets canceled, and hide out-of-stock items from your storefront.
- Shipping Options: Offer a shipping calculator on the shopping cart page, so there are no surprises at checkout. Let customers choose between pickup, local delivery, and shipping.
- Search Engine Optimization: Benefit from WordPress’s built-in SEO best practices.
- Create Coupons & Discounts: Make your discounts apply to only one item or all of them.
- Checkout Options: Allow your customers to create an account on your site or check out as guests.
- Enable Product Reviews: Let customers post reviews of your products. You can even ensure that those comments come only from verified customers.
- Analytics: Integrate Google Analytics for in-depth analysis.
There are more features available with WooCommerce. These are just the few I deem most important. You can view the full list on the WooCommerce website if you’re interested in more information.
Web Design
Although WooCommerce can technically integrate into any WordPress.com theme, I recommend using a WooTheme for a couple of reasons. First, using a WooTheme reduces the headaches involved with applying WooCommerce updates to your store. Second, WooCommerce’s web ticket support only applies to Woo products. Read WooCommerce’s Support Policy to learn more.
WooCommerce provides its free Storefront theme to all users. It also offers 17 child themes, twelve of which are priced at $39, two cost $79, and three are available for free. While Storefront is not the most exciting template I’ve ever seen, it’s alright for a free theme that works smoothly with all WooCommerce updates.
WooCommerce also offers a Storefront Powerpack extension ($59 for a single site). Storefront Powerpack gives you the ability to make changes to the look and feel of your Storefront site without touching any code. You can also look into purchasing a more complete package, the Storefront Extensions bundle, at $69.
If you’d prefer even more control over the look of your store, you can always add plugins or child themes or edit the HTML and CSS stylesheets. Because WooCommerce is open-source, there are no limits to the customizations you can make to your platform. However, you should be aware that you’re less likely to benefit from WooCommerce’s web ticket support if you customize your store’s code.
WooCommerce Integrations & Add-Ons
As I’ve said before, WooCommerce takes a Core+Extensions approach to its platform. Any advanced features you may need come via extensions, typically at a price.
WooCommerce’s app store features over 400 extensions. I recommend researching extensions in the same way you’re currently researching eCommerce shopping carts. Take your time and find out what you need. Then, read lots of product reviews and comparisons to find out what will serve your company best.
(Note: I’ve compiled my own list of the Top 10 Add-Ons For WooCommerce.)
Take a look at the full list of WooCommerce’s extensions on its website. This list includes tools for store management, marketing, payments, shipping, subscriptions, and more.
Keep in mind that WooCommerce also comes with a REST API and lots of documentation. If you can’t find what you need, you can always pay someone to build a connection for you.
Payment Processing
WooCommerce comes with five built-in payment options, but if that isn’t enough for you (and if you experience any significant growth, it won’t be), additional payment gateways are available as extensions.
Some of WooCommerce’s out-of-the-box payment capabilities include PayPal, Stripe (Apple Pay is available through Stripe), direct bank transfer, check payment, and cash on delivery.
You can also find 100+ additional payment processors available as add-ons. Check out the full list of payment processors on the WooCommerce website to see if your favorite is available.
WooCommerce Customer Service & Technical Support
As in the case with most free, open-source options, WooCommerce comes with limited personal support. You won’t be able to get help through social media, email, or phone, although you can submit a web ticket. WooCommerce will occasionally respond to these web tickets through a live chat. WooCommerce’s support hours are Monday-Friday, 8:30-17:00 (South African Standard Time or GMT+2). Reps claim to respond to queries within 24 hours.
Support options are further limited if you choose to customize your site with lots of non-Woo products. WooCommerce support reps will ask you to disable those third-party products before they can provide any aid.
Although personal support is limited, WooCommerce lets you access lots of self-help options. These tools include:
- Documentation
- FAQs
- Blog
- Forum
- WooExperts for hire
Remember that while WooCommerce integrates with WordPress, the two are not the same. If you have any questions regarding WordPress, be sure to contact WordPress Help instead of WooCommerce.
WooCommerce Reviews
Negative Reviews & Complaints
Because WooCommerce is the force behind so many online stores, there are plenty of customer reviews available online. As a whole, those reviews tend to be positive, but there are still things even the most enthusiastic WooCommerce user would like to see improved. The following are a few of the most popular complaints:
- Extension Costs Can Add Up: WooCommerce comes free, but its extensions do not. Some extensions are priced as one-time purchases, and others are monthly subscriptions. Do your research.
- Limited Support: Most of WooCommerce’s support is available in the form of self-help resources. Response to web tickets is reportedly quite slow.
- Less Theme Flexibility: While, theoretically, you can use any WordPress theme, you probably shouldn’t. WooThemes work best with WooCommerce.
- Steep Learning Curve: Some disagree with this one, but I found it to be true. I had a hard time figuring out how to begin.
Positive Reviews & Testimonials
There are lots of customers singing WooCommerce’s praises, earning WooCommerce a solid 4.3 out of 5 stars on the G2 Crowd. Here’s what customers discuss most often:
- Attractive Themes: WooThemes offers 17 mobile-responsive options, and they’re all clean and image-focused.
- Scalable: WooCommerce can grow with you.
- Excellent Selection Of Extensions: With over 400 available, you’re bound to find the add-ons you need to run your store the way you planned.
- WordPress Community: When you download WooCommerce, you join a large community of shop owners who help each other find solutions to technical issues. Furthermore, because WooCommerce is such a popular open-source option, you can expect developers to be continually adding to the pool of features and extensions.
- Free: Free is a very good price.
Security
Because WooCommerce is self-hosted, your site’s security rests largely upon your shoulders. Sure, WordPress comes with some built-in security features, and third-party payment gateways reduce some of your personal risks, but you’re still in charge of guarding your site against security breaches. Choose a secure web host, purchase a good SSL certificate, and make sure you stay on top of all security patches.
Final Verdict
Are DIY projects right up your alley? If so, WooCommerce might be your kind of platform.
WooCommerce is a low-cost solution (assuming you keep your extensions reasonably priced), and it does an excellent job of harnessing WordPress’s SEO and functionality for your benefit. And if you’re willing to work through technical issues with mostly just guides and forums to lean on, WooCommerce could be the right option for you.
Ready to join the WooCommerce community? Click the link below.
Liz Hull
Liz Hull is a writer for Merchant Maverick. In her three years with Merchant Maverick, she has tested and reviewed over 40 eCommerce platforms and published two ebooks on the topic of online selling. Liz has also been published in Startup Nation and Home Business Magazine Online. Liz has a BA in English and Spanish from George Fox University.
Latest posts by Liz Hull (see all)
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The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆
WooCommerce  |
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After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see WooCommerce for yourself.
The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆
WooCommerce |
|---|
After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see WooCommerce for yourself.
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Organization Name: Fancy paws pet salon
Great company
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Thanks for this great rundown. I made a website using woocommerce for someone, but I didn’t know about PCI compliance until now. According to the Woo site, using the Authorize.net gateway means I don’t need to worry about PCI because I don’t store any info on my site. However, from what I can tell reading on Merchant Maverick, I still need to worry about compliance. Can you give me some guidance?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi, Tony!
You are correct in that the gateway makes a huge difference. However, it’s still really important to understand the landscape, where the business fits in it, and how to maintain the best practices. Check out our post The Quick, Easy Guide To PCI Compliance to help alleviate concerns and get the information you need. Hope this helps and best of luck!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Riviera Apts
I cant imagine anyone actually downloading and using woo commerce after reading all the customer reviews!!
I am running a hundred miles away but really not sure what im going to do. I want to use my web site name, which is the same as my ebay store to host my own site using my items from etsy and ebay integrated. seems simple. i use square for my brick and mortar store. this really should be a no brainer.
but it sure isnt. any suggestions i would gladly welcome.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Michele,
If you’re already using Square for your brick and mortar store, Square Online Store makes a lot of sense as an option. Square Online Store is essentially Weebly, if you’re familiar with that website builder software (Square recently acquired them). Square Online Store isn’t a perfect solution since it has some limitations, but it’s really easy to use and very easy to integrate with your brick and mortar. Square Online Store is a SaaS solution, so you wouldn’t be able to host your own site on this platform, but it is fairly affordable.
Honestly, if you’re looking for a site that you can host yourself, WooCommerce is one of the best options. It’s pretty common to see a lot of negative customer reviews (we take them into consideration in our Negative Reviews & Complaints section), but in WooCommerce’s case, the majority of customer reviews we’ve seen have actually been positive. I’d say don’t count out WooCommerce just yet. If you’re interested in the platform, I’d suggest trying it out a bit. It’s free to download, so the only cost is the time you put into testing it.
Best of luck!
Liz
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Baker pink sheets Odell LLC
Can you tell us more about this? I’d like to find out more details.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi there,
If you want more info than our in-depth review offers, I’d suggest checking out the WooCommerce website and see what you think!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
You want to start an online store. The single most important part is the shopping cart. It absolutely has to run without a glitch or you lose very real money and very real customers.YooCommerce is the only reason I bother with WordPress. I started with Joomla, but the lack of any cohesive and comprehensive shopping cart app made me quickly jump ship. Yes it costs a bit… but I am completely happy to pay for dependability.That said, there have been some recent events that are cause for concern.. The first is the decision to charge 100% every year rather than honor the previous 50% for loyal customers. This seems like a money grab, and a money grab is not easy to do when you build your house on open source soil.The second (and the reason I’m wasting time posting) is the fact that their updates now require extensive testing for every new dot version. On one hand, I’m glad they alert users to potential problems. On the other hand, they’re asking full price every year for expensive extensions. So the price goes up and the service goes down. I expect them to put forth a bit more effort to make sure their extensions work, especially the ‘sponsored’ extensions that SkyVerge and others produce.I’ve given 4 stars because everything still works, but unless I see an outreach to users who have put their trust in this platform,, I will drop this to three or fewer
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Customer service used to be great when it was WooThemes, but now that they have been bought out, i’ve seen a huge drop in support. Just spent over an hour in their chat trying to cancel an annual subscription renewal for their Sensei theme and its been the equivalent of being at the DMV.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Nicely written Article and good reviews.There are some recently posted comments on this review.Thats make me little bit worried because I am just going to launch an e-commerce website in this month with woo commerce….
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
They charge too much for plugins/extensions. You must spend several thousand $$$$ in order to achieve the same functionality that most other shopping carts have as standard, with their basic plans of just a few $ a month.Also the support isn’t very responsive.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
It seems like woocommerce has been getting gradually worse over the years. I’m at the point now where I gave up on them. I’m now dumping thousands of dollars into developers pockets in order to switch to shopify.Some of my biggest pain points:1.) Little to no customer support2.) Broken payment gateway plugins with no sign of fixes. C’mon Mike Jolly. These are essential to run a business.3.) Slow loading cart and checkout page (due to AJAX technology). God the load time is SOOO Bad.4.) Woocommerce itself constantly breaks websites with every update5.) Extremely slow backend (woo dash, searching customers, ext.)6.) Extremely unreliable plugins. Nearly everyone of their plugins needs some type of modifying or tweaking in order to get it to work properly. NONE of their plugins work right out of the box.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I purchased two extensions from Woo, but they came with very little documentation in regards to how to implement them and use them to customize my client’s website. My support ticket went unanswered for more 6 days. I gave up and I decided to use their 30-day money back guarantee, which of course, requires you to fill out another support ticket. That, too has gone unanswered.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I wish I had it all to do over again. WOO commerce is fine for you if you don’t need much. If your business is growing and becoming more sophisticated and you are adding new products and are of high service and want to offer loyalty rewards, for example. it’s not a good move to choose WOO. Each time you add a plugin, your site will go down. There are constant conflicts. WP updates your site will go down soon after. One of 18 plugins will suffer a conflict and it is YOU who has to figure out which. Today, Ignite WOO has taken my site down more than 45 times. NO notice. No obvious reason why. Nothing different, except a WP update in the last week or so, as far as I know. The thing that troubles me the most is a phone call, and emails have fallen on deaf ears. One of the calls was a few weeks ago. You just don’t know what you are going to get every time you up your game in a WOO site. In the case of Ignite WOO, my developer tells me it was poorly coded. Totally unacceptable. It’s like the wild-west. Anyone can hang out a marketing site and put only positive feedback up (read: that is a red flag!) and sell plug-ins. I strongly recommend an alternative if you are in a growing business. We are deep in and have spent so much time energy and money, we feel stuck. There are better alternatives today.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.