9 Essential WooCommerce Plugins to Elevate Your Online Store in 2025

WooCommerce powers over 28% of all online stores, making it the most popular eCommerce platform globally. 

That said, WooCommerce is at its best when combined with additional plugins that introduce new features and capabilities. 

WooCommerce has a thriving plugin ecosystem that includes options for nearly every area of the site. 

Whether you’re optimizing for SEO, scaling into a multivendor marketplace, or boosting marketing efforts, the right plugins can transform your store’s performance.

In this guide, we’ll explore 9 essential WooCommerce plugins that cater to critical needs like automation, user experience, and revenue growth. 

Let’s dive in.

Key Takeaways

  1. Critical Plugin Categories: Prioritize plugins for design (ShopPress), marketing (Omnisend), referrals (ReferralCandy), SEO (Yoast), and multivendor support (Dokan).
  2. Free vs. Paid: Many tools like Yoast SEO and Dokan offer robust free tiers; upgrade for advanced features.
  3. User Experience Matters: Plugins like YITH Essential Kit and ShopPress enhance navigation and reduce bounce rates.
  4. Automate & Scale: Omnisend and ReferralCandy streamline marketing and customer retention.
  5. Balance Performance: Avoid plugin overload—opt for lightweight bundles (e.g., YITH, Booster) to maintain site speed.

Must-have WooCommerce Plugins for Your Store

These are a few of the must have WooCommerce plugins for WooCommerce vendors.

ShopPress – Elevate Design & Functionality

ShopPress – All-in-One WooCommerce Addons for Elementor

ShopPress empowers entrepreneurs to create stunning, user-friendly online stores with its all-in-one WooCommerce plugin for Elementor.

Designed for simplicity and flexibility, it offers drag-and-drop builders for shop pages, product displays, wishlists, carts, and checkout—all without coding.

Enhance customer experience with features like quick-view popups, product comparisons, mobile-optimized layouts, and dynamic filters. Replace costly plugins with ShopPress’s lightweight, speed-optimized tools, including variation swatches, size charts, and real-time style editing.

Trusted by global retailers, it integrates seamlessly with popular themes and plugins while prioritizing page speed and security.

Backed by 24/7 support and a 14-day guarantee, ShopPress is your go-to solution for building a reliable, visually appealing eCommerce site. Elevate your store’s potential today—no technical expertise required.

Key Features

  • Shop Builder: Customize product pages without coding.
  • Product Comparison: Let users contrast items side-by-side.
  • Quick View: Enable instant product previews.

Benefits

  • Improve UX with AJAX filtering and wishlists.
  • Seamless integration with Elementor’s drag-and-drop editor.

Pricing: Free core version; premium extensions start at $49/year.

Omnisend: Automate Marketing & Drive Sales

Best woocomerce plugins

Omnisend is an extremely powerful marketing solution, and it offers all the tools most small to medium-sized businesses need to develop effective campaigns.

It streamlines the management of nearly every aspect of the customer journey including tools like data gathering, audience segmentation, and marketing automation.

Omnisend is designed for omnichannel campaigns, and you’ll achieve more with the service if you leverage the benefits of multiple channels.

You can use Omnisend to set up interactions via text, email, social media, push notifications, and more.

Furthermore, the platform provides templates and preset designs to help you optimize your content.

The Pro plan starts at just $16 per month, but there’s also a free subscription that’s limited to email marketing for a maximum of 15,000 emails each month. Like Modern Events Calendar and ReferralCandy, Omnisend offers a free trial for up to 14 days.

Key Features

  • Pre-built workflows for cart abandonment, welcome series, and post-purchase follow-ups.
  • Advanced segmentation to target customers by behavior, purchase history, or demographics.
  • Drag-and-drop email builder with mobile-responsive templates.

Benefits

  • Increase repeat purchases with personalized campaigns.
  • A/B test subject lines and content to refine strategies.
  • Free plan available (15k emails/month), with Pro plans starting at $16/month.

Pro Tip: Use Omnisend’s SMS campaigns for time-sensitive offers—SMS has a 98% open rate, outperforming email.

ReferralCandy: Turn Customers into Advocates

Best woocomerce plugins

Referrals are one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways to grow your email list, and ReferralCandy offers robust tools for referral programs.

With ReferralCandy, you can generate a significantly higher ROI while spending less time managing referral benefits.

The application works with WooCommerce and a number of other platforms including BigCommerce, Shopify, and custom stores.

It gives you the opportunity to customize nearly every aspect of your referral strategies. You can adjust everything from rewards and sign-up forms to web pages and email content.

ReferralCandy is available at two price points aimed at businesses with different needs. The Premium plan costs $49 per month plus a variable commission depending on your sales volume.

Enterprise subscriptions cost $3999 each year without an additional commission. You can also try the application for up to 30 days to see if it’s right for your business.

Key Features

  • Customizable rewards (e.g., discounts, store credit) for referrers and referees.
  • Real-time tracking of referral links and conversions.
  • Integrates with WooCommerce, Shopify, and PayPal.

Benefits

  • Acquire high-quality leads at a lower cost—referred customers have a 37% higher retention rate.
  • Premium plan ($49/month) includes advanced analytics and priority support.

Case Study: Beardbrand saw a 40% increase in sales after launching a referral program with ReferralCandy.

Modern Events Calendar: Host Engaging Events

modern event calendar

WordPress and WooCommerce events are used in a variety of situations, and Modern Events Calendar provides the advanced features marketers need to take full advantage of calendar events. You can set up single-day, multi-day, and all-day events and sync them to Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook, and other calendars.

If you’re interested in using events to promote your brand, this WordPress event calendar is one of the best ways to manage your campaigns. It works well with a wide range of other plugins and solutions for seamless implementation with your existing strategies.

A single Modern Events Calendar license costs just $99 and includes a full year of premium support. There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can download the plugin at no risk. Modern Events Calendar also offers several helpful add-ons if you need additional features.

Key Features

  • Flexible event formats: single-day, recurring, or virtual events.
  • Ticket sales integration with WooCommerce payments.
  • Sync with Google Calendar and Outlook.

Benefits

  • Monetize events directly from your store.
  • Boost engagement with RSVP features and reminders.

Pricing: Yearly license cost $99, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Dokan Multivendor: Build a Marketplace

Dokan

If you’re using WooCommerce to enable eCommerce features on your WordPress site, the Dokan Multivendor plugin will turn your single store into a fully functional marketplace with a few clicks only.

Dokan is a fast and feature-rich multi-vendor marketplace solution powered by WooCommerce. With Dokan, you can build almost any type of marketplace.

It lets you include specific features in your niche-based marketplace to serve the audience in a better way. Such as booking or rental platforms, all types of digital/physical product-selling platforms, auction sites, and so many others.

Inside Dokan, the setup and configuration process is also simple and user-friendly. Right now, 70k+ businesses rely on Dokan to serve their clients with great expertise.

Most amazingly, all the basic features are completely FREE in Dokan. But you have the flexibility to unlock the premium features of Dokan as your business gets growing. Dokan has 30+ powerful modules to support its users. Premium packages of Dokan start from $127/year.

Key Features

  • Frontend dashboard for vendors to manage products, orders, and earnings.
  • Flexible commission structures (percentage, flat fee, or tiered).
  • Supports physical/digital products, bookings, and subscriptions.

Benefits

  • Expand product variety without inventory costs.
  • Free core plugin with premium add-ons from $127/year.

Success Story: Over 70,000 marketplaces use Dokan, including top brands like WP Swings.

Yoast SEO: Dominate Search Rankings

Yoast SEO

SEO is one of the most important factors for any eCommerce vendor, and even minor adjustments can make your store significantly more visible. Brands that fail to consider SEO principles when building their websites are at a major disadvantage relative to the competition.

Yoast SEO works for both WooCommerce and WordPress, so you can use it for content on your store, blog, or website. It allows you to optimize your content for keywords and check other potential issues like readability. Downloading Yoast SEO is one of the simplest ways to improve your content strategy.

Yoast SEO’s free plan is surprisingly powerful, giving you the chance to optimize for one keyword, identify outdated content, and monitor readability. You can access the premium subscription for $99 that includes a year of support and updates. Premium users can optimize for up to five keywords, view internal linking suggestions, and use a number of other tools that aren’t available with a free subscription.

Key Features

  • Real-time content analysis for readability and keyword usage.
  • Automatic XML sitemap generation.
  • Schema markup integration for rich snippets.

Benefits

  • Free version covers basic SEO needs; upgrade to Premium ($49/year) for 5-keyword optimization and internal linking suggestions.
  • Improve CTR with meta description templates.

Did You Know? Stores using Yoast see a 20% increase in organic traffic on average.

Booster for WooCommerce: All-in-One Customization

boost for woocommerce

While some plugins are intended to address specific areas, Booster for WooCommerce comes with over 100 modules that cover a variety of critical functions.

Its most important tools allow you to customize prices, currencies, and other settings much more thoroughly than is possible with the base WooCommerce platform.

Rather than selling each product for the same price, for example, you can configure custom pricing tiers based on volume purchases.

This is incredibly useful for businesses that sell to retailers or other companies in high quantities. Similar options are available for things like currency conversion, product add-ons, related products, and more.

Booster for WooCommerce is completely free to use, but you can get even more features with a Booster Plus license. Booster Plus comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can cancel your subscription for any reason.

Booster Plus access costs $50 for one year and $80 for a lifetime license on one website, or more if you need a license for unlimited sites. Many effective modules are limited to Booster Plus users, so check out the subscription comparison to see if you’d use the additional tools.

Key Features

  • Multi-currency support with real-time exchange rates.
  • Custom price labels (e.g., “Limited Stock!”).
  • Checkout field editor for capturing buyer details.

Benefits

  • Reduce plugin overload and site bloat.
  • Free core features; Booster Plus ($50/year) unlocks advanced tools.

Use Case: Offer bulk discounts to wholesale buyers with tiered pricing modules.

MemberPress: Monetize Memberships

memberpress

Many eCommerce vendors have digital products that are difficult to sell through WooCommerce. MemberPress makes it easy to accept payments and restrict content to specific groups of users.

In contrast to some other membership plugins, MemberPress integrates completely with your WordPress website, allowing you to immediately charge for content. You’ll have full control of access privileges for every page and file on your website. Some of the most popular supported integrations include Stripe, ActiveCampaign, PayPal, and MailChimp.

The MemberPress Basic plan costs $149 per year and limits users to just one site. You can add a second site, sell corporate accounts, and more with a Plus subscription ($249 per year). Finally, Pro plans cost $349 annually and support up to five sites along with exclusive add-ons.

Key Features

  • Drag-and-drop membership tier builder.
  • “Drip content” to release materials over time.
  • Integrates with Teachable, Zoom, and Zapier.

Benefits

  • Generate recurring revenue—members spend 200% more than one-time buyers.
  • Plans start at $149/year for one site.

YITH Essential Kit for WooCommerce

yith essential kit for wordpress

Like Booster for WooCommerce, the YITH Essential Kit offers a set of WooCommerce functionalities that work with each other and your existing solutions. It’s much easier to download the Essential Kit and learn each tool as you go than it is to look for a new plugin whenever you need more tools.

The YITH Essential Kit for WooCommerce includes countless plugins, but a few are truly integral to eCommerce marketing. Its Ajax search tool, for example, is one of the most powerful eCommerce search engines for WooCommerce. The product filter plugin makes it easy for customers to filter searches.

The YITH Essential Kit is one of the top free must have WooCommerce plugins, and it adds numerous features that give you much more flexibility when managing campaigns. Keep in mind that activating too many plugins can slow down your site—remember to deactivate any plugins you’re not using.

Key Features

  • Instantly display relevant results as customers type, reducing search friction.
  • Let shoppers refine product lists by price, category, ratings, and attributes.
  • Enable customers to preview product details without leaving the page.
  • Allow users to save favorite items for later purchases.

Benefits

Faster search, intuitive filtering, and quick-view options boost engagement.

Replace multiple plugins with a single, cohesive toolkit.

Conclusion

If you’re having trouble achieving your WooCommerce sales goals, downloading these must have WooCommerce plugins could boost your campaigns and help you convert more leads. These are just a few of the most helpful free and paid plugins available for WooCommerce vendors.

How to Choose the Best Must Have WooCommerce Plugins

Answer: Follow these steps:

  1. Audit Needs: List gaps in UX, marketing, or functionality.
  2. Prioritize Essentials: Start with SEO (Yoast), design (ShopPress), and marketing (Omnisend).
  3. Verify Compatibility: Ensure plugins work with your theme and each other.
  4. Test & Optimize: Use free trials, then remove underperforming tools.
  5. Focus on Speed: Avoid plugins that slow your site—opt for lightweight bundles like YITH Essential Kit.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the most essential WooCommerce plugins to install first?

Start with plugins that improve critical areas like SEO (Yoast SEO), design (ShopPress), and marketing automation (Omnisend). If you plan to expand into a multivendor marketplace, Dokan is a must-have.

Are free WooCommerce plugins good enough, or should I invest in premium versions?

Many free plugins, like Yoast SEO and Dokan, offer powerful features. However, premium versions unlock advanced capabilities that can improve sales, automation, and overall performance. Start with free versions and upgrade as needed.

How can I prevent plugins from slowing down my WooCommerce site?

Choose lightweight, well-coded plugins, check user reviews for performance concerns, and avoid installing too many at once. Bundles like YITH Essential Kit and Booster for WooCommerce help reduce plugin overload.

What’s the best WooCommerce plugin for automating marketing and increasing sales?

Omnisend is an excellent choice for automating email, SMS, and social media marketing. It offers pre-built workflows for abandoned carts, welcome sequences, and post-purchase follow-ups.

Can I create a multivendor marketplace with WooCommerce?

Yes, Dokan Multivendor turns your WooCommerce store into a fully functional marketplace. It allows vendors to manage their own products, orders, and earnings from a user-friendly dashboard.

How do I set up a referral program for my WooCommerce store?

ReferralCandy makes it easy to reward customers for referring new buyers. You can customize incentives like discounts, store credit, or cash rewards to increase word-of-mouth marketing.

What’s the easiest way to improve my WooCommerce store’s design?

ShopPress offers a drag-and-drop builder for customizing shop pages, product layouts, and checkout experiences—no coding required.

How can I improve my WooCommerce store’s SEO?

Yoast SEO helps optimize product pages and content for search engines by providing keyword analysis, readability checks, and automatic XML sitemap generation.

How do I monetize my WooCommerce store with memberships or subscriptions?

MemberPress allows you to create membership tiers, restrict content access, and charge users on a recurring basis. It integrates with payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal.

How do I choose the best WooCommerce plugins for my store?

Identify your store’s needs—SEO, design, marketing, or multivendor features. Test free versions of popular plugins, ensure they don’t slow down your site, and upgrade as needed for advanced functionality

    Avatar for Doris Cooper
    1Comments
    Avatar for Doris Cooper
    Heena VOctober 10, 2019
    |

    We use Yoast SEO on our website. It has been working very well from last 2 years.