Build-a-store with WooCommerce
Updated February 18, 2021
Build-a-store with WooCommerce
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with WooCommerce
We use WooCommerce to sell various services to our clients, but primarily business cards and websites. The best thing is that everything is in one place and clients can read everything about the service or product and purchase right then and there without having to make an appointment to come in and learn about the items. Clients also love having the ability to pay by credit card rather than a check or cash.
- Payment Gateway - There are many gateways to choose how you get paid and your payments are processed. The most common one is undoubtedly PayPal, but WooCommerce supports many others including Stripe and First Data, to name a couple.
- Extensions - this is both a pro and a con. The good side is that there is an extension for almost nearly any functionality you can think of. Need to specifically book appointments? There's an extension for that. Need to add on different options to your product so that the user can customize their order and the price will adjust accordingly? There's definitely an extension for that. These are just two examples, but the library is pretty extensive.
- The core software is completely free and available to use for anyone. You only get basic functionality, but even so, you can do a lot with it.
- Expense - this is the biggest con for WooCommerce. While the core software is free of charge, the extensions will totally get you. They can be as little as $39/year and run up to something like $249/year for one license for one extension to be used on one domain. And if you have a serious store of any kind, you are going to need a few extensions. Even for payment processing, if you want any other option than PayPal standard, you're going to have to pay unfortunately. Also the fee is not one time, it is recurring annually. I think you can keep using the extension once your year is over, but you will no longer get updates and support. For me, the expense is worth it. But for others it may not be.
- There's a rather specific con that I have that others may not. I utilize the Subscriptions extension along with the Add-ons extension. Both are amazing in functionality separately, but there is no option for me to categorize my add-on as a one time fee for an option or as part of the recurring subscription charges. It automatically rolls the charge in with the recurring fee. Now there is a very roundabout and not that user-friendly way to get around this, but I feel like this is a huge oversight on WooCommerce's part.
- It's MUCH easier for me to advertise my site and have clients go there directly and I can reach more people as well now that I have a store online. Revenue has gone up by 50% in the last 6 months simply from all the customized products I've added to the site.
- An online store also gives my brand credibility.
I evaluated a couple of other e-commerce software before settling on WooCommerce. My main reasons for choosing it over the others was 1. all the flexibility and functionality offered in customizing the store to my needs, 2. easiest to use, and 3. while expensive, it was not as bad as some of the options I looked at.