So you decided one day to launch an online store. Perhaps as an extension of your blog or as a hobby kind of thing, where the side income helps pay bills and lay food on the table. Or save some money for your children’s education. And then you look into WooCommerce extensions on WooThemes.com and suddenly you realised, WooCommerce extensions are expensive! Fret not, because here’s where our list of best WooCommerce extensions alternative would help you save cash.
Read on after the break for some of the best WooCommerce extensions alternative in the market. This fulfils our 1st out of three posts this week.
WooCommerce Extensions Alternative : An Introduction
For awhile now, WordPress has been the de facto content management system globally. With its easy installation, great editing capabilities and abundance of free and premium plugins and services, WordPress has done well. And the same goes for WooCommerce. Utilising WordPress’ strength as a dominant player for websites, WooCommerce has quickly become the top ecommerce solution globally.
But WooCommerce extensions are expensive. Sometimes, a little too expensive for the small mom and pop shop down the street. Or the struggling entrepreneur that dreams to be the next Ralph Lauren. Or the kid who just wants to trade some PlayStation 4 games and bring in some game console accessories that he thinks everyone would love.
That’s why we are writing this piece on the best WooCommerce extensions alternative. It’s to help you find a similar 3rd Party WooCommerce extension that does as well, or even better than the original.
Let’s get the ball rolling.
1) WooCommerce Extensions Alternative : Extra Product Options
While the original extension, WooCommerce Product Add-Ons retails at $49 and comes with the ability to add-on options to your products, the alternative does the same and more. Extra Product Options is rigorously maintained by ThemeComplete.
With the ability to not just add options, but upload images, have multiple steps and even choose between swatch type buttons, Extra Product Options helps you sell like how AirAsia does. Everything also can charge one-lah.
Find it here
2) WooCommerce Extensions Alternative : Subscriptio
The original WooCommerce Subscriptions extension goes for a whopping $199. As such, unless you have the budget, you might want to consider the alternative, Subscriptio. Subscriptio is made by RightPress, a pretty fine WordPress development house that also made a number of great third party WooCommerce extensions.
While Subscriptio might not come with the power of WooCommerce Subscriptions, it does simple subscription based transactions easily. If you’re still testing out an idea, you won’t go wrong with Subscriptio.
Find it here
3) WooCommerce Extensions Alternative : Woo Import Export
Exporting your orders and customers to a CSV regularly is an important task in managing your online store. While the official WooCommerce plugin, Order/Customer CSV Export goes for a reasonable $79, even cheaper would be Woo Import Export.
At $22, it is a fraction of the official plugin and is already becoming a fast favourite of many WooCommerce store owners. My concern would be the long term updates for the plugin, seeing that the WooCommerce Quick Export plugin by mbcreation has not been updated for awhile. (as of the time of writing)
4) WooCommerce Extensions Alternative : WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts
RightPress appears for the second time in our list with WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discount. With the official WooCommerce extension, Dynamic Pricing priced at $129, the alternative WooCommerce extension comes at a cheap $26.
The WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts extension enables you to offer compelling prices and bundles to entice your customers to buy even more products with your store.
In comparison, the official extension, Dynamic Pricing limits you to offering discounts based on volume, role and category. This is because bundled products are covered by the other extensions sold on WooThemes.com
Find it here
5) WooCommerce Extensions Alternative : WooCommerce Advanced Shipping
We have plumped for Jeroen Sormano’s WooCommerce Advanced Shipping extension. At an affordable $17 (and two extra extensions to further extend your shipping), Sormano’s Advanced Shipping is a snip compared to the official extension, Table Rate Shipping ($99)
Due to the fact that Jeroen Sormano actively build new plugins on ShopPlugins.com, has an extension sold officially on WooThemes.com and is an overall nice guy, you won’t go wrong with WooCommerce Advanced Shipping.
Find it here
6) WooCommerce Extensions Alternative : Compare Products Pro
Having used WooCommerce since 2012, I’ve tested and tried numerous WooCommerce extensions. Eventually, I even picked up Ruby on Rails and WordPress development. However, during that time, I found Compare Products Pro ($99) by A3Rev to be the leading product comparison plugin on WooCommerce.
In comparison, the official extension, WooCommerce Product Compare, retails at $79 and hasn’t been updated since November 2015 .
Compare Products Pro comes with amazing stuff such as a JavaScript front-end in Backbone, RESTful JSON and Sass CSS, making your site faster compared to other WooCommerce Comparison plugins.
Find it here
7) WooCommerce Extensions Alternative : WooCommerce Predictive Search
WooCommerce Predictive Search by A3Rev (again) is our pick for an alternative WooCommerce search extension. In many ways however, we find it superior to the official extension, WooCommerce Product Search. With advanced features such as the ability to search by keywords, live search, a backbone.js front end and Saas CSS, the only thing lacking is a indexing for large stores.
Find it here
Conclusion
The process of finding alternatives for popular WooCommerce extensions isn’t an easy one. While WooCommerce has a number of great extensions, some third party extensions may be better on certain occasions. As of now, it is hard to find alternatives for the following official extensions and more.
- Product Bundles
- Print Invoices & Packing Lists
- Gravity Forms Product Add-ons
- Smart Coupons
- Shipment Tracking
- WooCommerce Bookings
- Follow Up Emails
- Variation Swatches & Photos
- Min/Max Quantities
- Name Your Price
- Sequential Order Numbers Pro
- Composite Products
- Brands
- Product Vendors
Due to a lack of viable alternatives, we recommend that you buy the original, hosted on WooThemes.com, rather than a third party site, which may not be able to provide timely updates nor support.
