WooCommerce Review

WooCommerce is a free, open-source ecommerce plugin for WordPress that powers roughly 25% of all online stores. It offers unmatched flexibility and complete ownership of your data and code. The trade-off is that you need your own hosting, and the total cost of ownership can surprise merchants who expect "free" to mean "cheap."

WooCommerce inherits the WordPress learning curve, which is manageable for bloggers but steeper for ecommerce beginners. Setting up products, shipping zones, and tax rules requires more manual configuration than hosted platforms. The Gutenberg block editor has improved the content editing experience significantly.

WooCommerce supports physical products, digital downloads, subscriptions, bookings, and memberships through extensions. The REST API is comprehensive and well-documented. Variable products with multiple attributes, inventory management, and coupon systems are all built into the core plugin.

The plugin itself is free, but realistic costs include hosting ($10-$50/mo), a premium theme ($50-$100), essential extensions like subscriptions or bookings ($100-$200/year each), and potentially a developer for customizations. A well-equipped WooCommerce store typically costs $50-$150 per month to run.

WooCommerce scales well with proper hosting infrastructure. Moving to managed WordPress hosting or a dedicated server handles traffic spikes effectively. The lack of platform-imposed limits on products, orders, or bandwidth gives large stores more headroom than hosted alternatives.