The 10 most important WooCommerce plugins: More boost for your shop

There are hundreds of thousands of plugins for WooCommerce, for every conceivable purpose. However, it is not so easy to assess the quality of the extensions. We present the most important WooCommerce plugins that you need for common shop projects. But also free alternatives.

The variety of plugins for WordPress and WooCommerce is a great advantage. This means you don’t have to hire developers or an agency for every special function in your shop. In many cases, existing solutions can be customised to meet your specific needs with relatively little effort.

However, whether an extension is actually of high quality or even represents a security risk sometimes only becomes apparent at second glance. This is especially true if it is offered free of charge, for example on the largest marketplace WordPress.org. Because despite many a free solution that works well and is stable: Support is not available to you there to the same extent as it should be with paid plugins.

What makes a good WooCommerce plugin?

Indications of a high-quality solution include

• Number and type of reviews on WordPress.org or marketplaces such as codecanyon.net
• Response time and scope of responses in the provider’s support forums (or also on WordPress.org)
• Number of downloads
• Support in your language, ideally from a local support team
• How quickly are updates provided after an update of WordPress or WooCommerce
• How often is the plugin generally revised
• If there were critical security gaps in the past, how quickly were they fixed?

You can also ask in specialist groups for WooCommerce what experiences other users have had with a particular extension. For example on Facebook. See our sources and notes on the community.

You can find WooCommerce’s in-house extensions on the portal of the provider Automattic. These also include free tools. For example, for the simple connection of PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay or Google Analytics.

Below I will introduce you to some well-known premium plugins and their free alternatives. These add functions to WooCommerce that experience has shown to be in particularly high demand. From shop operators, but also from agencies.

WooCommerce Memberships

If you sell memberships instead of physical items, or only sell your goods exclusively to selected customers, then WooCommerce Memberships is worth a look. With this extension, you can implement membership sites, closed customer areas, premium content shops and much more (Image: © WooCommerce):

The options range from limited access to products and special content areas to free trial memberships. Create different plans such as “Silver”, “Gold” or “Platinum” subscriptions.

Members can be rewarded with certain special offers and vouchers. In conjunction with WooCommerce Subscriptions (more on this in a moment), they can also upgrade or downgrade their memberships.

Mailchimp for WooCommerce

With Mailchimp, you can send newsletters and automate your marketing emails. The extension for WooCommerce integrates your online shop into this workflow. Include your newsletter at various points in the checkout. But that’s just the beginning. The following use cases can be realised with an extended integration:

• Synchronise the email addresses of your buyers with existing lists
• Segment your customers according to the products in their shopping basket or the frequency of their purchases
• Analyse the success figures of your product and marketing emails in detail
• Integrate ad campaigns from Facebook and Instagram
• Send product recommendations or vouchers based on the purchases made
• Remind your visitors by email of shopping baskets that have not been completed

Incidentally, there are also similar extensions for MailPoet, the newsletter plugin for WordPress. Although not quite as comprehensive.

WooCommerce Subscriptions

Selling products in a subscription model is possible with WooCommerce Subscriptions. This is because it is not possible to automatically collect recurring payments in the WooCommerce standard version. You need these if you sell software with monthly fees, other services or regular deliveries. The plugin allows you to, among other things:

• Flexible payment periods per product
• Integration of payment services such as PayPal, Stripe or Amazon Pay to process payments
• Creation of the corresponding invoices per cycle
• Your customers can switch between different subscription models or take out several subscriptions at the same time
• Set reminders to renew subscriptions by email, or even discounted subscriptions or free trial periods

You can measure at any time how many subscriptions have been taken out and when, when they are due to mature or expire, and how much turnover you are generating now or in the future. Based on these figures, you can then plan appropriate marketing campaigns and new models.

WooCommerce Bookings

Is your business model based in whole or in part on the sale of events, training courses, rentals, consulting, holiday, health and wellness offers, webinars, etc.? WooCommerce Bookings extends the shop system with functions for appointment-based services. Including modules for event planning (Image: © WooCommerce):

Your customers can specify preferred dates, while you specify free and blocked slots. Bookings are made by the day, hour or even minute. You can book individual sessions as well as group appointments and limit the minimum or maximum number of participants.

Offer discounts for teams, for early bookings and for certain target groups. Or charge higher prices at weekends or at certain busy times. The plugin even supports different time zones if your customers are booking from abroad. You determine how the bookings are confirmed or whether and how reservations can be cancelled. Reminders for appointments can be sent automatically by email.

WooCommerce Product Bundles

WooCommerce does support the creation of so-called grouped products in order to display simple product packages (“bundles”). However, the standard functionality does not have any deeper product logic. For example, grouped products allow your customers to add only some of the included products to their shopping basket.

If you want to offer product packages that contain a price advantage or that only make sense together, you have gained nothing. Furthermore, logical conditions such as “Product A excludes product B” or “Product A may only be included x times” are not possible in the basic function. WooCommerce has designed the paid extension Product Bundles for all these cases.

Other highlights of the plugin: Increase your cross-selling sales with functions such as “Frequently bought together”. You know these from shopping giants like Amazon.

You can also add additional products to the bundles, which can optionally be added to the shopping basket. For example, care products for clothing or cables and accessories for technical goods. You specify how the sub-products are to be displayed in the shopping basket, in the checkout and in the order emails (grouped or individually).

WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing

You can use variable products in WooCommerce to set different prices for different product variants. The “blue” T-shirt is then cheaper than the “red” one. The shop system’s voucher function is also quite sophisticated. Discounts can be controlled according to minimum order value, for example. Or certain products must be included in the shopping basket for the discount to apply.

For complex discounts directly on the product itself, however, you need the additional Dynamic Pricing plugin. It implements the following scenarios, among others:

• Grant a 5 percent discount on a product if it is added to the shopping basket x times (graduated prices)
• Increase this discount to 10 per cent for certain WordPress user roles, such as “Gold Members”
• Discount a product when your customers add another product from the same category
• There is a special discount on x products from the same product category

Some of these promotions can also be linked together. For example: “Discount for category A when Gold members purchase x products from category B”. Used correctly, the extension is a powerful marketing tool.

Product Add-Ons & Gravity Forms

The sale of personalised goods is on the rise. Whether it’s shoes in your favourite colours, self-assembled muesli or engraved jewellery. With the WooCommerce Product Add-ons extension, you have the option of allowing your customers to customise product data before they click the “Buy” button.

The plugin adds the necessary input fields and checkboxes to the product display. Customised prices for special requests can be implemented just as easily as uploading graphics, assembly instructions, samples and sketches. You can even offer additional services. For example, gift wrapping, a special delivery or a dedication or signature for works of art.

In addition to the two paid extensions, there are also free tools such as the Personalised Product Option Manager (PPOM for WooCommerce). Although this is not quite as comprehensive, you can also use it to add additional modules to your product pages. For example, text and selection fields, checkboxes, date or number fields:

You can try out the plugin to gain experience with individual products. If the range of functions is not sufficient, you can always switch to a Pro plugin. However, the product data entered by your customers up to that point cannot be transferred.

Table Rate Shipping

With the so-called shipping classes of WooCommerce, you can determine very individually who has to pay how much for shipping in which case and with which products. Setting up these classes looks quite complicated at first. However, with a little trial and error on your test system, you will quickly understand the principle behind them.

In some cases, however, the standard solution is not sufficient. Especially when the following scenarios occur:

• You need to further subdivide the shipping classes, for example by region, which cannot be mapped in WooCommerce itself
• The shipping costs should be based on the weight
• Or the number of goods contained in the shopping basket plays a role
• Shipping costs vary depending on the order total

Then you should take a look at the Table Rate Shipping extension.

With Advanced Flat Rate Shipping (“Flat Rate Shipping Plugin For WooCommerce”) there is also a free solution here. You can also use it to set special shipping costs per product or for individual categories and countries.

Do you just want to link the “free shipping” option in WooCommerce to certain conditions? For example, depending on the products, the quantity, the weight, the dimensions, the shopping basket total or the WordPress user role? Then WooCommerce Advanced Free Shipping could be right for you.

The plugin can help if some customers order very bulky or heavy goods, while you normally do not charge shipping fees. However, make sure that there is now an updated version of the plugin that has been tested with your version of WordPress. Otherwise, a plugin can quickly become a security risk for your online shop. See our tips on selecting plugins for WordPress and WooCommerce.

Plugins for Germany, Austria and the EU

There are numerous legal requirements in the European Union that you must take into account for WooCommerce. Especially in Germany and Austria. One wrong move and you run the very real risk of receiving a warning – from competitors, competition organisations or authorities. This is especially true if:

• The registered office of your online shop is in the EU or
• If you sell from your shop to countries in the EU

In both cases, you cannot operate WooCommerce as standard. This also applies to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Fortunately, there are several plugins and service providers that can help you with legal security for WooCommerce. You can find out more about these extensions in our article Making WooCommerce legally compliant.

More WooCommerce plugins

In addition to the well-known extensions, there are numerous little helpers that make your life with WooCommerce easier. This saves you time-consuming custom development. But be careful: too many plugins installed at the same time can slow down your WordPress system. Or the extensions can paralyse each other. If you are unsure, ask a service provider.

This makes it all the more important that you test each plugin thoroughly on a separate test system before you activate it in your live shop. The same applies to updates for WordPress, WooCommerce and third-party plugins.

Equally important is high-performance WordPress hosting that is fully geared towards WooCommerce. This is the only way to handle the many processes that your visitors carry out simultaneously in the shop. See our article 4 factors for WooCommerce hosting. Are you developing online shop projects for your customers? Then take advantage of our free hosting for WooCommerce in the development phase.

You can find more tips on WooCommerce in our 70+ page e-book WooCommerce for professionals: Online shops with WordPress. It is aimed at freelancers, agencies, WP professionals and beginners.