WooCommerce
Free, open-source WordPress store plugin from Automattic for physical and digital products, extended with free and paid extensions from the Woo Marketplace.
Free WordPress connector for Ecwid by Lightspeed, a hosted store you embed in WordPress. Paid plans start at $5/month with no sales fees.
Ecwid, now Ecwid by Lightspeed, is a hosted eCommerce service. Its WordPress plugin embeds the store in your site. Products, orders, customers and payments live on Ecwid’s servers and are managed from the Ecwid control panel, which the plugin shows inside WordPress admin. The same catalogue can also sell on other websites, Facebook, Instagram, marketplaces and Lightspeed POS.
The plugin is free, but Ecwid retired its free plan in 2025, so a store now needs a paid subscription. Starter is $5/month for 10 products and covers the basics. Venture ($35/month, or $29/month billed yearly) adds 100 products, digital goods, discount coupons, automated tax, custom checkout, App Market access and reports. Business ($65/month, or $49 yearly) adds 2,500 products, subscriptions, abandoned-cart recovery, a multilingual store and marketplaces. Unlimited ($149/month, or $119 yearly) adds unlimited products and POS. Ecwid charges no fee per sale on any plan, so you pay only your payment provider.
It is SaaS, so your store data is not in your WordPress database, and the monthly fee never ends. Product limits on the lower plans are tight. Subscriptions and abandoned-cart emails need the $65/month Business plan. The storefront is an embedded widget, so it is harder to customise with WordPress themes and plugins than WooCommerce. WordPress plugins that hook into WooCommerce will not work with it. Customer accounts can sign in to WordPress through single sign-on, but Ecwid manages them.
Who should pick it: small merchants who want a store on their WordPress site without running WooCommerce, or who also sell on social, marketplaces or in person. Stores that want full ownership of their data and deep WordPress customisation should look at a self-hosted plugin.
Best for: Small merchants who want a managed store embedded in WordPress, especially if they also sell on social, marketplaces or in person.
Ecwid is a polished hosted store that drops into WordPress with little maintenance and no per-sale fees. Since the free plan ended, you pay monthly for features that self-hosted plugins include free, and you give up ownership of the store data. It suits merchants who value convenience and multichannel selling over WordPress-native control.
What Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart highlights on its WordPress.org page and its own website, split by version.
19 of 23 features we track in eCommerce Plugins, feature score 89/100
Sell shippable goods with stock and weights.
Physical products on all plans, within each plan's product cap (10 on Starter).
Sell files with secure, expiring download links.
Downloadable e-goods up to 25GB per file, delivered after payment.
Sizes, colours and other variants with their own price and stock.
Product options and variations with their own SKU, price and stock; the pricing page does not map this to plans.
Sell products or services that renew automatically.
Recurring subscriptions; needs Lightspeed Payments or Stripe.
Track stock levels and low-stock alerts.
Stock tracking, including per variation, with low-stock alerts and sync across channels.
Issue licence keys for software or plugins.
No built-in licence-key generation in the feature list.
Major payment gateways work without paid add-ons.
PayPal, Stripe and 70+ other payment providers with no paid add-ons.
One-tap wallet payments at checkout.
One-tap Apple Pay and Google Pay checkout via Lightspeed Payments or Stripe.
Change checkout fields and layout, or build custom checkout pages.
Custom checkout with extra checkout fields; the hosted checkout layout itself is fixed.
Discount codes and automatic discounts.
Discount coupons on Venture; scheduled promotions such as BOGO and bulk pricing on Business.
Offer extra products at checkout or after purchase.
No checkout order bump or post-purchase upsell is listed on the pricing or features pages.
Email shoppers who leave without paying.
Automated abandoned-cart recovery emails.
Show prices and take payments in several currencies.
Neither the features nor the pricing page describes selling in several currencies.
VAT and sales tax rules or automated tax calculation.
Automated tax rates for the US, Canada and EU VAT, plus a TaxJar integration.
Zones, flat rates, live carrier rates or labels.
Live rates from USPS, UPS, FedEx, Canada Post and Australia Post; shipping labels too.
View, edit, refund and fulfil orders in WordPress.
Manage, edit and create orders in the Ecwid control panel, which is embedded in WP admin.
Customer area with orders, downloads and subscriptions.
Customers sign in to view their orders; optional single sign-on with WordPress users.
Revenue, product and customer reports.
Built-in reports on Venture; advanced reports and analytics on Business and up.
No extra fee on sales beyond the payment processor's.
Ecwid charges 0% per sale on every plan; only provider fees apply.
Products, orders and customers stored in your own database.
Hosted SaaS: products, orders and customers are stored on Ecwid's servers.
Large library of official and third-party extensions.
App Market for marketing, shipping, accounting and other apps; access starts on Venture.
Product, cart and checkout blocks for the block editor.
About ten Gutenberg blocks: store, category, product cards, buy button, search, cart and checkout.
API and webhooks for custom integrations.
Public REST API and webhooks for orders, products and stock sync.
Unlimited
Up to 10 products, add the store to any site, email support. The WP plugin is free but needs an Ecwid plan; the free plan was retired in 2025.
Unlimited
$29/month billed yearly. 100 products plus digital goods, coupons, automated tax, custom checkout, App Market, reports.
Unlimited
$49/month billed yearly. 2,500 products, subscriptions, abandoned-cart recovery, marketplaces, multilingual, 2 staff accounts.
Unlimited
$119/month billed yearly. Unlimited products, POS integration, unlimited staff, priority support.
Prices are list prices from the vendor's site, checked 14 Oct 2026. Many vendors discount the first year.
Free installs from WordPress.org, the vendor's own claim, and our estimate of paid installs.
Active installations reported by WordPress.org.
Paying customers claimed by the vendor. source
Our estimate, see method below.
How we estimated this: The free connector plugin has about 25K active installs and needs a paid account; assuming 60% are on a paid plan gives 15K. Likely range: 7.5K to 30K. This counts sites running the paid version, including sites whose licence has lapsed. Estimates are rough and based on public figures as of 14 Oct 2026.
2,097 downloads last week, 3M all time
| Version | 7.0.10 |
|---|---|
| Last updated | 1 Oct 2026 (32 days ago) |
| Tested up to | WordPress 7.1.4 |
| Requires | WordPress 4.4+ |
| Support threads (2 months) | 0 of 1 resolved |
| On WordPress.org since | 21 Oct 2009 |
| Paying customers claimed | 100K+ (source, 11 Oct 2026) The WP.org page says hundreds of thousands of sellers in 175 countries, across all platforms (not only WordPress). |
|---|
Free, open-source WordPress store plugin from Automattic for physical and digital products, extended with free and paid extensions from the Woo Marketplace.
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No. Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart is a premium plugin. Paid plans start at $5/mo.
WordPress.org reports 20K+ active installations of the free version. We estimate around 15K active installs.
Yes: included. Physical products on all plans, within each plan's product cap (10 on Starter).
Yes: paid version (Venture). Downloadable e-goods up to 25GB per file, delivered after payment.
Yes: included. Product options and variations with their own SKU, price and stock; the pricing page does not map this to plans.
Yes: paid version (Business). Recurring subscriptions; needs Lightspeed Payments or Stripe.
Yes: included. PayPal, Stripe and 70+ other payment providers with no paid add-ons.
Yes: paid version (Venture). Automated tax rates for the US, Canada and EU VAT, plus a TaxJar integration.
Yes: included. Live rates from USPS, UPS, FedEx, Canada Post and Australia Post; shipping labels too.
Yes: paid version (Venture). Built-in reports on Venture; advanced reports and analytics on Business and up.
Yes: included. Ecwid charges 0% per sale on every plan; only provider fees apply.
The plugin is free, but Ecwid removed its free plan in 2025. Stores now need a paid plan, starting with Starter at $5/month for up to 10 products.
No. Ecwid charges no fee per sale on any plan. You still pay your payment provider's processing fees.
On Ecwid's hosted platform. The plugin displays the storefront and the control panel in WordPress, but products, orders and customers are not stored in your WordPress database.
Both need the Business plan ($65/month, or $49/month billed yearly). Coupons, digital goods and automated tax start on Venture.
Yes. The plugin includes import tools for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Selz and Easy Digital Downloads, including products with options and variations.
Last updated 11 Oct 2026. Spotted something wrong? Suggest an edit.