In our previous blog article, we explored the advantages of WordPress – the world’s leading website building platform. As promised, this time we’ll take a closer look at its flexible and convenient e-commerce plug-in, WooCommerce. Together, WordPress and WooCommerce form a seamless solution for managing not only your company’s website and online store, but also wider business processes. Let’s dive in.
Which Platform Should You Choose for Your Online Store?
When a company decides to start selling products or services online, one of the first questions is: which platform should we use? The market offers several well-known options – Shopify, Magento, PrestaShop and WooCommerce, to name a few. Among these, WooCommerce stands out as one of the most reliable choices.
WooCommerce’s popularity and reliability
WooCommerce is the world’s most widely used e-commerce platform, powering nearly 5.7 million active online stores and holding a 34.6% share of the global e-commerce market. It is also trusted by around 22% of the world’s one million largest online stores.
These numbers prove that WooCommerce is a platform relied upon by both small businesses taking their first steps online and global industry leaders.
Some well-known companies using WooCommerce include:
- Nvidia – the world leading graphics card manufacturer using WooCommerce in its online store;
- UPS – a multinational logistics company that has integrated WooCommerce into its service offering;
- Cisco – a major technology company using WooCommerce to sell selected products and services.
Why Is WooCommerce So Popular?
Given that 43% of all websites worldwide are built on WordPress, and that WooCommerce works exclusively on WordPress, it’s no surprise that so many online stores are based on it.
However, the classic chicken and egg question remains: which came first – companies choosing WordPress because of WooCommerce, or adopting WooCommerce because they were already on WordPress?
The answer doesn’t really matter. What matters is that together they offer a strong set of advantages. While we’ve already covered the strengths of WordPress, here are WooCommerce’s biggest benefits:
A Holistic Solution Within WordPress
WooCommerce operates directly within WordPress, meaning your website and online store work as a single unit. All administration is centralized: adding products, creating blog posts, setting up landing pages, launching marketing campaigns – everything can be managed in one place.
For example, you can publish blog articles about how to use your products and link them directly to product pages, seamlessly combining content marketing with e-commerce.
Competing systems often focus purely on e-commerce, requiring external tools for content marketing and other functions.
Free to Start and Low Running Costs
Most e-commerce solutions charge a monthly fee, often with additional transaction costs. WooCommerce itself is free, meaning you don’t need a big upfront investment to get started. Setting up a basic online store involves no license fees – you’ll only pay for web hosting and optional extras such as premium plug-ins, custom design or development.
Flexibility
WooCommerce is highly customizable, allowing you to shape your store to meet your exact business needs and customer expectations. You can adjust the design, choose from thousands of features, configure SEO and marketing tools, and much more.
With over 59,000 plug-ins available, WooCommerce can adapt to virtually any business process. By contrast, other systems often lock you into pre-built environments or require expensive developer input for custom changes.
Examples of Popular WooCommerce Plug-ins
- Payments – bank links, card payments, international services (e.g. PayPal, Stripe, Klarna).
- Shipping – integrations with local and international courier services (e.g. Omniva, DPD, DHL).
- Marketing ja Automation – email marketing (Mailchimp, Brevo), loyalty programs, discount vouchers, abandoned cart reminders, social media integrations.
Strong Local Solutions
WooCommerce also offers excellent regional integrations. In Estonia and the Baltics, for example, there are plug-ins for payments, deliveries and accounting. These can be activated easily in WooCommerce, whereas other platforms would require custom development.
For example, an online store in Estonia can use WooCommerce to offer local bank payments through Swedbank or SEB, deliver orders via Omniva and DPD parcel machines, and boost repeat purchases by sending newsletters with Mailchimp.
By combining these with internationally popular SEO, caching and analytics tools, you can build an even more efficient and competitive store.
A typical Estonian WooCommerce store might use:
- Maksekeskus or Montonio for payments,
- Omniva, DPD and SmartPOST for deliveries,
- SimplBooks, Directo or Merit for accounting,
- Mailchimp or Brevo for marketing.
Unlimited Scalability
Another important advantage of WooCommerce is that it imposes no limits on the number of products or categories, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. Start small and scale as you grow – even into thousands of products and international markets – without needing to switch platforms.
Examples:
- A handmade candle maker could start with just a few products, then later expand to hundreds of items with complex delivery solutions.
- A local fashion brand could begin with a domestic store, then add multilingual support and international payments to reach customers abroad.
Extensive Support
Like WordPress, as an open-source platform, WooCommerce benefits from a massive global community of developers, constant updates, and a wealth of support resources. This ensures that it remains secure, up-to-date, and future-proof.
Conclusion
By combining WordPress and WooCommerce, you get one of the most flexible, scalable and reliable e-commerce solutions available. With no license fees, unlimited growth potential, a strong developer community, and thousands of add-ons, using WooCommerce you can be confident that your business will have a modern, high-performing online sales channel.And if developing a professional online store isn’t your strongest suit, our experienced digital team is here to help. Get in touch, and we’ll create an online store that’s a perfect fit for your business.