WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the leading open-source ecommerce platform, delivered as a free plugin that turns any WordPress website into a fully functional online store. Because it is open source and runs on WordPress — which powers a large share of the web — WooCommerce offers unmatched flexibility and ownership: you control your store's code, data, hosting, and design, and can extend it endlessly with themes and thousands of extensions. It handles the core commerce needs — products, cart, checkout, orders, coupons, taxes, and shipping — out of the box.

Its strength and complexity both come from the ecosystem. The core plugin is free, but a production store typically combines paid hosting, a theme, payment gateways (WooPayments, Stripe, PayPal), and extensions for subscriptions, bookings, advanced shipping, and marketing — so total cost of ownership varies widely. WooCommerce gives merchants full control and no forced transaction fees on the platform itself, but requires managing hosting, security, updates, and performance (or using managed WooCommerce hosting). It integrates deeply with the WordPress content ecosystem, making it strong for content-plus-commerce.

WooCommerce serves small businesses, content-driven brands, and developers who want an owned, customizable store rather than a hosted SaaS. Pricing: the core plugin is free and open source; real-world stores commonly cost from about $50/month for small setups to thousands per month at scale, covering hosting, themes, extensions, and payment processing fees. It competes with Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, and Adobe Commerce (Magento), differentiating on open-source flexibility, WordPress integration, and ownership.