The search for the best WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin can leave you confused with too many options. Multi vendor marketplaces have become very popular after the success of eBay, Etsy, Alibaba, Amazon and what not. The trend of online retail websites has now upgraded to high traffic e-commerce marketplaces where multiple vendors can operate their individual stores. The main theme of such markets is that customers can buy products from different vendors in a single marketplace.
So Many Options: Narrowing It Down
Enthusiastic and ambitious entrepreneurs always want better options to build the best marketplace they can offer to their customers. With this view, they constantly search for ways to fulfill this purpose and there are so many options out there. To narrow things down, we choose WordPress for this review because it is the best platform where you can start this marketplace. Why? WordPress is now the number 1 CMS, has the highest growth rate and almost half of the websites are built with it. WooCommerce is also internationally famous for their powerful eCommerce plugin. So, people who are planning to start a new multi-vendor marketplace often ask-
“What is the best WooCommerce multi vendor plugin for WordPress?”
You may have the same query in your mind. There are many tools available for creating a multi-vendor marketplace, but it is tough to determine which one is the best choice for your marketplace. To ease your pain, we have made the great list and compared them.
5 Best WooCommerce Multi Vendor Plugin
For WordPress, we have researched the market and found five plugins that are most suitable for creating the perfect multi vendor marketplace based on WooCommerce. They are:
- Dokan Multivendor Marketplace
- WC Vendors Pro
- WC Marketplace
- YITH Multivendor
- WooCommerce Product Vendors
In this article, we will review each of the plugins and finally determine which one could be the best choice for entrepreneurs to create the perfect multivendor marketplace for their business.
At first, we will discuss these plugins individually. Then, we will prepare a comparison list so that you can choose the best one by yourself.
Dokan Multivendor
Dokan is one of the most powerful multi vendor plugins powered by WooCommerce. It has advanced features to create your own Amazon, Shopify, eBay like multi-vendor marketplace within just 30 minutes. Dokan is one of a kind and provides a successful implementation of bringing WooCommerce capabilities to the frontend.
If we talk about the pro's of Dokan, the first thing that comes to mind is the rich set of admin features and a great frontend vendor dashboard. It can surely take the number one place for best WooCommerce multi vendor plugin by the sheer number of features it has and also for design. You can create the ultimate multi vendor marketplace with Dokan plugin and its premium modules. Nothing will fall short.
WooVina Theme is fully compatible with Dokan plugin, you can download it and play around with Dokan Lite before decide to buy Dokan Pro.
WC Vendors Pro
A popular multi vendor marketplace now on the market is the WC Vendors Pro. WC vendor is similar to Dokan Multivendor is many ways. However, Dokan started its journey before them. WC Vendors became popular with their unique marketing strategy and support.
They have many useful features that can provide you with a working multi vendor marketplace. WC Vendors comes with the same price as Dokan. However, the frontend is not in the rolling stages anymore. If you want the minimum capabilities of a multi-vendor marketplace with front-end feature and have a tight budget, then this plugin is the most suitable one for you.
WC Marketplace
Another new multi vendor plugin for WooCommerce is the WC Marketplace and they are also doing good. You can create a complete online marketplace using this WordPress plugin. The best part is, WC Marketplace provides its core functionality for free and you can purchase extensions if you want frontend capabilities.
WC Marketplace supports PayPal and Stripe payment gateways. They also have some more features like Dokan and WC vendors. WC Marketplace has all the core features like vendor approval capabilities, additional options for admin control, automatic scheduling for payments and also payment on withdrawal request.
Being one of the multi vendor plugins to come to the market late, they are relatively doing good.
YITH Multivendor
YITH Multivendor is another plugin that allows you to create a marketplace where other people can sell their products and get commissions for each sale. They specialize in downloadable products. Unlike Dokan and WC Vendors, YITH multivendor does not have front end dashboard for vendors. Besides that, they do not have the capabilities of adding or updating products from the frontend. However, they have another extension ‘YITH Frontend Manager for WooCommerce'. It provides frontend functionalities, but it costs additional $60 for one site.
YITH Multivendor only has PayPal payment gateway available for its customers. On the other hand, Dokan and WC Vendors supports all the WooCommerce compatible payment gateways.
WooCommerce Product Vendors
This plugin also provides multi vendor options for your WooCommerce store and an original product from WooCommerce itself. It has been updated on 2017-12-11 and much feature has been added in the last update. However, it still has a long way to go for competing with the other three.
WooCommerce Product Vendors works on the backend of your site, just like WooCommerce. It does provide multi vendor capabilities to your store, but only admin can create or update products. So, this plugin makes it hard for the Admin. However, you can install Frontend addon for this plugin with additional price and get frontend capabilities. Dokan or WC Vendors has more options than this plugin.
Detailed Feature Comparison
We have prepared this section just for you so that you can easily differentiate the top 5 WooCommerce multi vendor plugin. From there, you will get a detailed insight about each of the plugins. The following table illustrates a feature comparison between these plugins. After going through the list, you will be able to decide which one from our list is the best WooCommerce multi vendor plugin for WordPress.
*Dokan Multivendor has other premium packages with advanced modules like vendor staff manager, single product multiple vendors, export-import, seller vacation, store support etc.
*WC Marketplace offers different add-ons for individual pricing. Their frontend manager add-on is $100 and all the features mentioned in our list is worth around $240.
Which one is the best WooCommerce multi vendor plugin? Here are the results!
We have provided you with a detailed list of features that are required to operate a fully-functional multi vendor marketplace. You can easily figure out the features you are missing out on your current WooCommerce multi vendor plugin.
From the comparison table, we can give points to each of the plugins.
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Dokan Multivendor: 45 out of 45
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WC Vendors: 35 out of 45
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WC Marketplace: 41 out of 45
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YITH Multi Vendor: 32 out of 45
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WooCommerce Product Vendors: 30 out of 44
Now, you decide!
I hope this comparison blog was helpful for you. May you create the best marketplace!