WooCommerce Pricing – Plans That Help You Thrive Building a Robust eCommerce

Does WooCommerce cost money? If so, how much does WooCommerce cost?

These are the two questions that would be triggered in one planning to start an eCommerce store.

WooCommerce is a free plugin on the WordPress platform, which is open-sourced. WooCommerce helps establish your eCommerce store with boundless possibilities. When it comes to WooCommerce pricing, these costs are to be included for the launch of the eCommerce store. Majority choose the best CMS platform “WooCommerce” because of its flexibility, cost, and easy customization.

In this article, we educate you on the WooCommerce pricing that will help plan your expenses in building your eCommerce store.

An Overview of WooCommerce Pricing Plan

Below is the list of features that will add to your overall WooCommerce pricing plan,

WooCommerce Pricing on WordPress Foundation

All services that your eCommerce store would run on, will form the basic infrastructure of your website. The factors that are bonded into are host, domain name, and theme. This section assumes that you have selected WordPress as a platform to host your website. On the other hand, a custom platform may lead to additional costs.

WooCommerce Hosting

Start with choosing a host for your website. It is the fastest and easiest way to get your WooCommerce store up and running. Some of the recommended service providers are Bluehost, SiteGround, and Pressable. Whether it is a new website or eCommerce store migration make sure to work with the host that is a WooCommerce expert.

When you choose your host the following are to be considered,

1. Good customer support
2. Choosing a suitable host is paramount to efficient functioning. A shared host could slow down the process.
3. A higher percentage of server uptime
4. Make sure it offers an SSL certificate in order to run a safe and secure eCommerce store.
5. Automatic Backups, Malware protection, and email spam filters.
6. Look for the performance speed of the host.
7. Make sure it is easy to upgrade which is always better than migration.

The WooCommerce price per month will depend on the charges of the hosting services taken up varying from $3.95 to $5000 per month

Domain Name

A domain name is the address of your website. An online store or website must have a professional domain like .com, .in, .net, etc. Many hosting companies allow domain registrations free of cost saving money. Domain names usually cost $12 to $15 per year when purchased from domain name registrars like GoDaddy, Namecheap, Bluehost, and more. You can also save money by purchasing a domain for an extended period of 5 years.

Themes

Paying for an eCommerce theme is optional. You have options to choose between free and paid themes. Finding freebies may not be a problem but make sure not to compromise with the quality. WordPress themes are one of the greatest perks of launching your online store with WooCommerce on WordPress. A theme drives the entire look and feel of your website and WooCommerce store.

WooCommerce offers Storefront theme that is simple, sleek, professional, and budget-friendly. WooCommerce has various themes designed for different industries which can further be optimized using the WooCommerce Customizer tool. WooCommerce sells these customized themes at prices varying from $39. The eCommerce market also gives you an opportunity to even choose from others like Elegant themes. Many appealing and professional themes can be found at these sites, just make sure it supports WooCommerce.

Alternatively, you can also go for a free theme but make sure it is well-maintained and developed by an expert who is familiar with WooCommerce. Free themes might be good but the quality of free themes may be questionable and technical support is often unavailable. If you are not comfortable with the background tech, it may be a good idea to opt for a premium theme.

Peruse your website requirements and choose the best and reliable theme to build what you want.

WooCommerce Pricing based on the Requirements of an eCommerce store

Once the foundation has been set, the very next step is to add essential functionalities such as extensions, payment gateways, and shipping services to enable your WooCommerece sales.

WooCommerce Plugins

You can extend the functionality of your website using the WooCommerce plugins. These extensions help in enhancing the features of your online store. You can either choose free plugins or invest in premium plugins for the development of your website. It is very important that the plugins are always up-to-date in order to avoid any downtime caused by outdated plugins. Some of the best WooCommerce plugins are,

1. Discount Rules for WooCommerce
2. WPML
3. Yoast WooCommerce SEO and more

With the basic WooCommerce plugins or extensions the following can be achieved,

• Create a store section for your website
• Setting up unlimited product pages and variations
• Managing store inventory
• Display customer reviews or testimonials
• Establish reward systems for your customers
• Selling products at discounted prices
• Enable subscriptions and memberships for your store.
• Create and track WooCommerce coupons and more.

The WooCommerce plugins will not only boost your online store but will add great service quality to your website. Other than these WooCommerce extensions you can also configure third-party plugins which may also add to your overall WooCommerce pricing.

Payment Gateways

The best option is to use WooCommerce payments as the payment process is managed directly on the WooCommerce dashboard. The WooCommerce payments are free to set up and have no monthly charges. With this extension, you may have to pay 2.9%+ $0.30 for every transaction made with US credit cards. If the cards are outside the US then, an additional fee of $1 has to be paid.

The alternative is to use other payment gateways in order to handle your store’s transactions. Most of the payment gateways are free-plugins but include charges for the transactions at the store. Some include monthly charges as well.

Below are some of the best payment gateways with the processing fee,

1. PayPal – free plugin – 2.9%+ 0.30 cents per transaction. PayPal Pro has an additional monthly fee of $30.
2. Stripe – free plugin -2.9%+0.30 cents per transactions
3. Square – free plugin -2.9%+0.30 cents per transactions
4. Authorize.net – paid plugin – transaction set by the credit card merchant.

These are just a few of the many payment processors you can use with WooCommerce. Remember to consider these costs in your overall WooCommerce pricing. Have a look at the payment gateways options available in the market.

Shipping Services

Flat rate shipping or free shipping or local pickups are the options that an online business could have and are easily offered by WooCommerce. Direct connections to USPS and Canada post is possible with WooCommerce shipping at free of cost. The extension even allows you to print the shipping labels directly from the WooCommerce dashboard which is a handy feature.

You can even ship via other services like UPS, FedEx, or DHL using shipping extensions like Table Rate Shipping, Carrier-Specific, Shipping Easy, ShipStation Integration, Distance Rate Shipping, ShipperHQ, and more. These plugins cover a range of costs which adds to your WooCommerce pricing plan.

WooCommerce Pricing on Marketing features

A primary cost for running an eCommerce website is the marketing costs. This includes the cost of integrating Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing, and Social Media integration. The ultimate goal of these investments is to drive more sales and customers to your WooCommerce store. The marketing features aren’t in-built with WooCommerce but can be easily added using respective plugins.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an effective way of advertising your online store by sharing your products, promotions, and sales-driven content for both existing and new customers. The email marketing services have plugins that work seamlessly with WooCommerce by collecting email addresses and customer information using pop-ups and banners. Email marketing tools like MailChimp, Drip, Constant Contact, Jilt can be integrated with WooCommerce for the betterment of your store. These plugins might be free of cost, or for paid plugins, choose the suitable one by considering their cost to your WooCommerce pricing plan.

Email marketing should be implemented in the right way to reach your customers. Encouraging repeat purchases, recovering abandoned carts, and transactional emails are common ways to configure marketing services in the most effective way to drive more sales. The transactional emails and cart recovery emails can be customized using the best WooCommerce Email Customizer.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, All-in-one SEO, provide several tools that help in improving your Google search rankings. These plugins offer both free and paid plan upgrades. Using SEO plugin, you can craft better site content and product descriptions that target relevant keywords and import data from Google Analytics to help you understand shopper behavior, identify popular products and content pages, and much more.

Security

Most of the hosts are security-conscious but, it is always good to add another layer of security using a Website Application Firewall in order to protect your website from suspicious requests. Both paid firewalls like Sucuri as well as free plugins like WP All in One Security are available in the market.

Jetpack is also recommended for the security purpose of your store which is easily available in WordPress free of cost. Jetpack, when combined with WooCommerce, easily integrated attack protection, and downtime alerts are available. Its premium version includes additional security functions and real-time backups.

A website with an SSL certificate is always safer and ranks high in search engines with added safety for your customers. The SSL certificate encrypts and secures sensitive information like the user’s credit card details. It is usually provided by the host, free of cost. Alternatively, it is available at costs ranging from $8 to $65 per year.

Social Media Integration

Social media plugins help in integrating your WooCommerce product pages to the social media accounts which helps to reach globally. The integration can be implemented in multiple ways, the social buttons can be displayed in the product pages, connect the list of social media comments and ratings directly to the product pages or you can even sell via social media pages by simply posting your products.

There are many social media plugins that help in exploring your business some of them are Easy Social Sharing, Facebook for WooCommerce, Pinterest Automatic Pins, and more. Both free and paid social media plugins are available, choose the best suitable one to grow your business.

WooCommerce Pricing on Add-Ons

The above discussed features are the essentials in your WooCommerce pricing plan but, as you grow you may require additional functionalities to your business and in that case, WooCommerce plugins and extensions can fill in the gaps.

Check out some of the below add-ons to your WooCommerce store,

• Increase your customer management by enabling wishlists to your online store using the plugin Wishlist For WooCommerce.
• Offer exciting discounts and coupons using the best discount plugin Discount Rules for WooCommerce. The plugin allows you to create dynamic pricing discounts, bundle discounts, product discounts, and more to your WooCommerce store.
• Reward your customers by counting their actions using the plugin Loyalty Points and Rewards for WooCommerce.
• Recover abandoned carts using the plugin Retainful to have better customer retention.
• Enable subscription products at your store using the plugin WooCommerce Subscriptions.
• Attract new and existing customers with promotional messages through popups using the plugin Optinly-Goal Based Popups.
• The plugin WooCommerce Store Locator helps the customers to locate your website within no time.

The above are some of the add-ons that can be integrated into your WooCommerce store. These plugins may be free and some may add costs to your overall WooCommerce pricing. But, you can shop for the best deal among many plug-ins and pick the suitable ones to get the job done. To see more plug-ins and extensions, visit WooCommerce, and Envato Market. Also, look into the free extensions offered by WooCommerce.

Developer Costs

Another aspect to be considered is the cost to developers which may range from $10 to $100+ per hour, depending on the requirements.

WooCommerce provides a list of WooExperts knowledge in WordPress and WooCommerce for your convenience.

This is just an outline to help you assess how much it will cost in setting up a WooCommerce store. The customization of your WooCommerce store includes the cost of developing and running it. Make sure to analyze the functionalities and the cost of every feature that is required for the betterment of your WooCommer store. Remember to include only the necessary additional cost to your WooCommerce pricing plan before you start with your establishment.

Wishing you Good Luck.