As a WordPress developer, I thought keeping an organized list of the best and worst plugins. Here is simply my feedback based on my experience with those plugins. This post hasn’t been affiliated by any of the plugin brands.
Here is my Testing Environment for WooCommerce: https://shop.nicolasrabier.com
Color code:
- ✅ Approved
- ⚠ Some Warnings
- ❌ Don’t Waste Your Time
✅ WooCommerce By Automattic
This is a great eCommerce tool. I love it even though it’s far from being perfect.
Pros
- free
- works with physical or digital products
- compatible with many Themes such as StoreFront By WooThemes (same team as Automattic)
- awesome partnership with Stripe & Paypal plugins
- you can have a simple shop up and running fairly quickly
Cons
- require good knowledge of the tool to set it up properly
- the marketing strategy of Automattic is to use WooCommerce as an entry point to sell the most interesting plugins.
- You would believe for compatibility reason it is better to use only Automattic plugins but this is not necessary true. e.g.
- General knowledge in PHP and specifically in WordPress framework can help you a lot and save you money.
✅ Storefront Theme
Pros
- Front page of the store looks very professional and legit. In order to properly visualize the front page the store needs products and categories in the catalog. Therefore I suggest to import the Dummy Data provided in WooCommerce to have a clear idea of the shop style. Check out this video tutorial that explains how to import the dummy data – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpWZ8jr4Nvw
Cons
- Many extensions aren’t free
Not sure
- Compatibility with CDN. When you develop a website for global market you need to make sure the website is quickly reachable from anywhere in the world and nowadays this is achieved via a Content Delivery Network. I personally use CloudFlare coupled with MaxCDN which are integrated via W3TotalCache plugin.
✅ Storefront Sticky Add to Cart By WooThemes
Love it
✅ Shortcodes Ultimate By Vladimir Anokhin
Best plugin to display information (sliders, box, columns, animations, etc.)
I systematically download it on all my instances of WordPress.
✅ Child Theme Configurator By Lilaea Media
Nothing exciting here but it simply makes the creation of a child theme effortless.
Pros
- Simple and fast
✅ W3TotalCache By Frederick Townes
This plugin speeds up the loading time of websites from anywhere in the world. This is critical to deliver the best experience to your impatient audience.
Cons
- Does its job well coupled with CloudFlare and MaxCDN.
- General website speed improvement. You can verify the statistics with PingDom tool: https://tools.pingdom.com
Pros
- Require good technical knowledge
- Quite challenging to setup. Check out a tutorial here – https://makeawebsitehub.com/how-to-setup-w3-total-cache-with-a-cdn/
❌ WooThemes
Cons
- Poor documentation
- Support is unreliable
- Expensive
Note reviews on Theme Grade – http://www.themegrade.com/woothemes-rating/.