What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin that turns a WordPress website into an online store. It adds products, a cart, checkout, and order management to a site the business already owns.
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What it is
WooCommerce runs inside WordPress. Once it is installed, the site gains product pages, categories, a shopping cart, a checkout, customer accounts, and an orders screen for staff. It is developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com.
The core plugin is free. Payment gateways, shipping calculators, subscriptions, and similar features come from extensions, some free and some paid. Because the store lives on your own web hosting, you keep the product data, the customer list, and the order history.
Why it matters to a business
- You own the store: the shop is part of your website, not a rented page on someone else's platform.
- It grows by extension: payments, shipping, tax, and bookings are added as the business needs them.
- It needs upkeep: WordPress, WooCommerce, and every extension must be updated and backed up, or the store becomes a security risk.
- Speed depends on hosting: a store does more work per visit than a brochure site, so cheap hosting shows quickly at checkout.
How KawaConnect works with WooCommerce
When a client's WordPress site needs to sell online, we add WooCommerce to it. The store is hosted on infrastructure we operate, like our other client sites, so it gets the same backups, updates, TLS certificates, and standby copy on a second server. We connect stores to other systems through their APIs, for example sending orders to accounting or printing labels at a packing station.
Related services
Websites
Design, build, and hosting, including online stores.
AI and automation
Integrations that move orders and inventory between systems.
Backup and recovery
Tested backups of the store and its order history.
Learn more
- WooCommerce on WikipediaA neutral overview of the plugin, its history, and how it relates to WordPress.
- WooCommerce websiteThe official site, with the extension marketplace and feature overviews for store owners.
- WooCommerce documentationSetup guides for products, payments, shipping, and tax, written for the people running the store.
Planning an online store
Tell us what you sell and how orders should reach you. We will tell you whether WooCommerce fits and what it takes to run it well.
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