If you’re a business owner exploring e-commerce solutions, you’ve likely heard of WooCommerce. It’s a WordPress plugin that enables you to turn a regular website into an online store.
WooCommerce launched in 2011, as an open-source plugin for WordPress. It was created by a small team at WooThemes and quickly became popular for its ease of installation. Within two years of its launch, WooCommerce surpassed one million downloads.
Today, WooCommerce is one of the most widely-used e-commerce platforms in the world. It powers millions of websites. By some estimates well over 5 million websites worldwide are built with WooCommerce accounting for nearly 39% of the global e-commerce market share.
WooCommerce’s open-source nature is a key part of its appeal. Open-source means the code is publicly available for anyone to view, modify, and enhance. WooCommerce itself is free to download and use. You just need to invest in web hosting, a domain name, and any optional add-ons or services. This lowers the barrier to entry for starting an online store. You also have full control and ownership of your store’s code and data. There’s no vendor lock-in, so you can customize the platform as needed and even move your store to a different host if you wish.
One of WooCommerce’s greatest strengths is its flexibility. Because it’s a plugin for WordPress, you can shape your online store however you want. WooCommerce allows you to customize every aspect of your store – from the design and layout to specific functionalities. You can choose from thousands of customizable WordPress themes (including many e-commerce-focused themes) to define your store’s look and branding, or even have a custom theme developed.
On the functionality side, WooCommerce is often praised by developers for its customization and flexibility. You can add code or use hooks and APIs to integrate virtually any feature or external service. In practice, this means WooCommerce can support a wide range of business models: you can sell physical products, digital downloads, services, subscriptions, or memberships, all on the same platform.
As your business grows, WooCommerce scales with you – it can handle an unlimited number of products and orders with the right hosting environment, so you won’t outgrow it easily. In fact, experts note that WooCommerce offers “virtually unlimited scalability, making it an ideal choice for businesses with ambitious growth plans”. This level of customizability ensures that whether you run a small boutique or a large catalog store, WooCommerce can be tailored to meet your needs.
In 2015 WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic a well established company and a major contributor to the WordPress open-source project. They have a large team dedicated to improving WooCommerce. The software benefits from Automattic’s experience in scaling WordPress for millions of users, as well as their focus on security and performance.
Out of the box, WooCommerce provides the basics for an online store. Fortunately, you can likely find an existing extension for almost anything you want to add. On the WooCommerce marketplace on WooCommerce.com offers over 1,000 official extensions for all sorts of features. The wider WordPress community has created thousands of third-party WooCommerce plugins. A quick search of the WordPress.org plugin repository shows well over 2,000 plugins with “WooCommerce” in their name.
WooCommerce combines a rich feature set with the freedom of open-source software. Its history of rapid growth and widespread adoption shows that it has proven itself as a reliable platform. With Automattic’s backing, continuous improvements, and a huge ecosystem of plugins and developers, WooCommerce offers a stable, flexible, and secure foundation for your online store. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to expand an existing business into e-commerce, WooCommerce provides the tools and community to help your store succeed.