WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free, open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress: you install it on your own WordPress site and get products, a cart, checkout and orders, then add payments, shipping, subscriptions and other features as extensions.
It suits founders who already run a WordPress site, or want to own the store's code and choose their own host and payment provider.
The plugin is free; WooCommerce puts hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores and paid extensions at $29 to $299 a year each, as checked on 30 October 2026.
Reviewed by the IndieHacked team
- What it does
- Turn a WordPress site into an online store with a free, open-source plugin, then add payments, shipping and other features as extensions.
- Our take
- Founders who already run WordPress, or who want to own the store outright. The plugin is free and open source, the store runs on a host you choose with any payment provider, and you add only the features you need, from over 1,000 extensions or your own code.
- Pricing
- FreemiumThe WooCommerce plugin is free to download, use and modify, with no monthly fee, no plan tiers and no share of your revenue. What you pay for sits around it, as checked on 30 October 2026: a WordPress host, which WooCommerce puts at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, and paid extensions at $29 to $299 a year each, such as WooCommerce Subscriptions by Woo at $279 a year. Extensions are yearly subscriptions for updates and support, refundable within 30 days. Payments cost only the provider's processing fees; WooPayments, Woo's own, charges 2.9% + $0.30 per card payment in the United States.
The IndieHacked breakdown
What it does
WooCommerce is a plugin that adds a store to WordPress: products, a cart, checkout and orders, with no limit on products or orders. Woo names physical products, digital downloads, services, bookings and subscriptions among what stores sell, some of them through extensions, and you design the store with WordPress themes. Because the code is open source, a developer can change anything, using WordPress hooks, filters and the REST API.
Features beyond the core come as extensions from the Woo Marketplace, which lists over 1,000, some free and some paid. Woo's own include WooPayments for cards and local payment methods, WooCommerce Shipping for discounted labels in the US, WooCommerce Tax and WooCommerce Subscriptions. The free mobile app runs orders and products and takes in-person payments with Tap to Pay. An MCP integration, in developer preview, lets AI clients run product and order tasks through WordPress's MCP Adapter plugin.
Who it suits
Founders who already run a WordPress site and want to sell from it. The store lives in the same install as the blog and its pages, and WooCommerce points to WordPress's SEO and built-in blogging for bringing in free traffic. WooCommerce recommends hosts from WordPress.com's Commerce plan, with WooCommerce preinstalled, to managed hosts such as Pressable and SiteGround.
It also fits a founder who wants to keep the costs and the data in their own hands. There is no platform fee or revenue share, any payment gateway works without a penalty, and you own the site, its code and its data, on a host you can change. A store that needs one specific feature pays for that extension and nothing else.
Not the right fit for
Founders who want a store running without choosing a host, installing plugins or keeping them updated. Shopify, reviewed here, hosts the store and its checkout for a monthly plan, and WooCommerce's own comparison grants that "Shopify makes it relatively easy to set up a basic store."
Founders who sell a handful of digital downloads and have no website yet. Gumroad, reviewed here, gives you a storefront and a checkout with no host to set up, and takes a share of each sale instead of a monthly fee.
Also on the shortlist
- ShopifyE-commerceHosted for you, with Shopify Payments, in-person sales and an app store, from $39 a month after a 3-day trial.3-day free trial, then from $39 a month, as checked on 30 October 2026
Report an error. Spotted a factual or language mistake? .