WordPress is the best blogging and content management system on the web. It not only gives you the best solution for content creation and promotion, but also allows for multiple plugins and add-ons to enhance the functionality of your website, turning it into a money making platform.
With just a few clicks, you can easily install e-commerce plugins for your site and the rest of the work can be done by the plugins. Among all the options, WP eCommerce and WooCommerce are two famous plugins for e-commerce sites. Both of them are excellent and offer great features. Then, which one of them is better? What should be your choice? In this WP eCommerce vs WooCommerce comparison, you can get an answer.
WooCommerce
To get familiar with WooCommerce, let’s get started from the aspects of marketing and order management system.
Its order management system is quite different from that of WP eCommerce. It is not limited to admin panels. Instead, you can directly access the orders, see the processing and figure out the status of each order via the website back-end. As a webmaster, you can easily change and add orders. You can send email invoices, and you can also check the history section (also, check our responsive and powerful WooCommerce Countdown Timer plugin).
WooCommerce also allows you to put a product on promotion, or to issue discount coupons. You can put the promotion announcements on a banner on your website. WooCommerce keeps the records of customer profiles that help you in collecting reviews, doing research. You can also up-sell and down-sell your visitors.
By the way, you can check out our WooCommerce integrated theme: AmBerd.
WooCommerce Payment Methods
Just like WP eCommerce, WooCommerce offers many payment options including the manual checks, PayPal, and Google checkout. If you want to use other payment methods such as the skrill money bookers, Sagepay, Mijireh, Amazon payments, First Data, Brain Tree and Stripe, then you need to buy the extensions.
WooCommerce Checkout Pages
WooCommerce allows your customers to checkout their orders without the need of registering first. Even the registered users do not need to log in via their username and email address. This single plugin also allows you to create one checkout page that can do all the transactions (also, we recommend to check the best WordPress Coming Soon plugin).
WooCommerce Shipping Methods
This plugin supports global shipping in all courtiers. As compared to WP eCommerce, it sounds like a good feature. But the free version of WooCommerce does not allow UPS, USPS, Australia Post and FedEx. So, if you want to use these features, you have to buy extensions.
WP eCommerce
It is an excellent free plugin. With the free version, you can use the following payment methods:
- Manual Cheque
- PayPal
- Google checkout gateway
- Checkout Ways
- Shipping
WP eCommerce supports UPS, USPS, Australia post and ship wire. Global and domestic rates are available via this plugin. Shopping rate calculators are also available. If you want to change the shipping method, then you have to buy the Pro version of this WordPress plugin (also, you can check our WordPress Pricing table plugin).
Order Management and Marketing
Now, what is the administrative task in this regard? How can you keep a record and manage your transactions and sales? In fact, you can be notified by email when someone places an order. Order history is available to proceed further accordingly. Order list and customer details can also be exported in CSV format.
For the marketing purposes, WP eCommerce allows you a lot of facilities. You can easily feature a product, or you can put it on promotion/discount. Sale coupons can be easily created so that you can sell more and generate more leads.
Disadvantages of WPeCommerce
WP eCommerce has certain limitations. This shopping cart plugin might not be suitable for every type of website. If your blog generates a few sales in a month then, it is okay for you to use this plugin. But if you are planning to build a big e-commerce company, then you might choose something different (also, check The Best WordPress Plugins list from WpDevArt).
WP eCommerce is not a good plugin for those who are software developers. Those people, who want to increase the efficiency of this plugin by changing the code, might feel that this plugin is poorly designed. You can create small e-commerce sites via this plugin, but this free plugin may not work in the right way for some big stores.
Which is the best WordPress eCommerce Choice? – WP eCommerce vs WooCommerce
WP eCommerce and WooCommerce offer quite similar features and advantages. WP eCommerce allows some features in the free version that are not available in the free version of WooCommerce. However, WooCommerce offers clear documentation and great customer support.
Besides, if you are a developer and you want to add some extra features in the plugin, you can easily edit the code according to your requirements to WooCommerce, which is not allowed for WP eCommerce. However, sometimes editing the code in Woocommerce may result into some unknown errors.
In addition, most email integration features are not available in WP eCommerce but are available in the paid version of Woocommerce (also, check the Best WordPress eCommerce plugins list from WpDevArt).
Summary
We think that WooCommerce is the best choice in this case. If you are asking about a bit expensive plugin with better functions, then you should go for WooCommerce. If you want to know which is the cheapest and the most working plugin, the answer should be WP eCommerce.