The eCommerce industry has blown up over the past few years. Each year, more and more buyers choose to buy online instead of going to a brick and mortar store. According to eMarketer, in 2012, the global B2C ecommerce sales were estimated at $1 trillion, with a 21,1% increase from the previous year. And this trend is not only seen in the leading countries like US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, etc., but in developing countries too, like Brazil, China, Russia, etc., where the ecommerce market growth is even stronger.

With the launch of Hudson, our latest eCommerce WordPress Theme, we try to help business owners sell easier their products and services and turn their websites into efficient online stores, without advanced knowledge of web development.

WordPress is probably the best CMS for running an eCommerce related website, as its system of themes and plugins allows you to customize and manage your online store as you wish. There are hundreds of eCommerce plugins and tools to help you out, and we decided to make a list of the best ones:

1. WooCommerce

Downloads: 1,290,505 Ratings: 4.1 out of 5 stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Woocommerce is a powerful, yet a simple to use ecommerce toolkit that allow you to easily sell your products and services online. It became very popular over the past years and is already considered an industry standard. It is a fully customizable WordPress plugin that works with a wide variety of themes and includes powerful ecommerce features like: Advanced Store Management, Reporting, Tax and Shipping options, Marketing features, Payment Gateways (PayPal, Authorize.net, eWay, etc.), account panel, one page checkout, ratings, shipping calculator and much more. Also, you can add some extra functionality by getting additional extensions. TeslaThemes recommends WooCommerce! Check out Hudson – our Premium eCommerce WordPress Theme compatible with WooCommerce.

2. WP e-Commerce

Downloads: 2,528,217 Ratings: 2.8 out of 5 stars ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

WP e-Commerce is a free WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin that has been downloaded over 2,5 Million times. It is a 100% customizable ecommerce plugin that includes a lot of powerful eCommerce features like: Different Payment Gateways (Paypal, Authorize.net, Google Wallet, Manual Payment, etc.), Marketing options (discounts, free shipping, social media buttons,..), multi-language support, shipping, orders management, catalog management and more. It is rated 2.8 out of 5 stars, probably because of its age and some documentation/support issues.

3. Jigoshop

Downloads: 261,773 Ratings: 3.9 out of 5 stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Jigoshop is a WordPress eCommerce plugin intended to help you easily set up and run your eCommerce website. It is build upon core WordPress functionality and is packed with a wide range of great features like: advanced reporting,  a multitude of product types, manage stock, widgets and shortcodes, additional extensions, etc. Technical support and help is a priority for Jigoshop creators, that’s why a Community Forum and a premium technical support is available on their website.

4. eShop

Downloads: 534,200 Ratings: 3.8 out of 5 stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

eShop is an accessible shopping cart plugin for WordPress that was built by some passionate folks, that started out as Open Source software supporters. Their development work turned into a successful plugin (downloaded a half of Million times). eShop is packed with various eCommerce features like: product listings, sales data, various shipping options, automatic emails, stock control, discount options, statistics, etc. A dedicated website is available for support, including: documentation, forums,  wikis, videos and more.

5. Easy Digital Downloads

Downloads: 134,541 Ratings: 4.8 out of 5 stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

If you’re dealing with digital downloads, this WordPress plugin is probably the best solution for your website. Easy Digital Downloads is created by Pippin Williamson (a leading web developer providing a wide range of free and premium plugins). This plugin provides the features you really need and is meant to make the process of selling digital downloads easy and complete. It includes: cart system for buying multiple downloads, payments gateways (PayPal and Manual included by default), payment history, sales charts, data export, Affiliate System integration, multi-language support and much more.

Hope that this info will help you grow your online sales and increase your brand’s exposure. If you know another great eCommerce tools or plugins for WordPress, don’t hesitate to share them in our comments.