WC Vendors Review PROS & CONS (2024) – Better Than Competitor Options?

Is WC Vendors plugin the best choice for creating a multi-vendor marketplace? What features does it offer, and what separates it from the competitors? In this WC Vendors review, you will get more info about the plugin and see if it is the right choice for your needs.

There are plenty of WordPress plugins that can help website owners create their own unique multi-vendor marketplace platforms. WC Vendors is one of them. It provides all features you will need to run a successful store.

The plugin allows you to customize vendor registration forms, manage commissions, utilize an intuitive interface, and much more. Sellers can sell digital items, physical goods, and services. Anything that’s sold on your store site will be eligible for commissions paid out to the vendors.

NOTE: Be sure to check WC Vendors vs Dokan and WCFM Marketplace vs WC Vendors comparison.

 

WC Vendors Review

Thanks to WC Vendors, you can easily create site like Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Etsy, etc. Vendors can manage all activities through their own individual dashboards. They can see their total sales, current and paid commissions, recent orders, products they are selling, and other relevant information with the date and time filters option.

 

 

With the help of integration with WooCommerce Bookings, sellers can also offer digital goods such as photos, fonts, video and audio components, and bookings in addition to physical products.

 

User Interface

As an admin, you can see vendor sales data from a single dashboard. This will display sales by date and product, store status, and other helpful information.

 

 

After registering using the registration form, each vendor can effectively manage all of the products that they sell. The “Add Product” option works similarly to the same option when you use WooCommerce. Product listings, reviews, social accounts, and logos will be included on each vendor’s profile page.

 

SEO Features

You don’t need other third-party plugins for search engine optimization as WC Vendors offers basic SEO features. If you need more options, the plugin also supports integration with plugins such as Rank Math and Yoast.

 

Storefront

Each vendor gets its own customizable storefront. They can even send their own unique store URL to clients.

 

 

WC Vendors’ default storefront is rather basic and similar to traditional Facebook profiles. All visitors will see are limited details about the vendor or storefront and a profile picture. The presented content is not assembled in any logical order and may seem a bit unprofessional.

Fortunately, vendors can customize their storefronts, but this usually requires some design knowledge.

 

Payment Solutions

Announcements

Updates about the marketplace, changes that can impact vendors, etc., admins can communicate via announcements to vendors. Adding new payment gateway or new site functionality are common examples of announcements that vendors can receive.

This is not a complex announcement system. However, site admins can send notices when necessary, and vendors can use their dashboards to view that information.

 

Earning, Sales Reports & Vendor Statements

Knowing various performance details is important to both site administrators and vendors. They should be able to see updates on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to know which items sell better than others and other relevant data.

WC Vendors doesn’t provide advanced vendor reporting tools at this time, but the admin can use the default WooCommerce backend to see those reports.

 

Vendor Management & Commissions

 

 

 

Withdraw System

Once a customer has paid for their order, the site owner (admin) can pay the vendor its earnings.

How and when vendors are paid will be your decision. Vendors can be paid instantly or on a certain schedule. Current WC Vendors’ payment methods are MangoPay, Escrow, Stripe, Mollie, PayPal, and Square.

 

Handle Taxes

Included tax classes are supported in WC Vendors’ free and paid versions. Enhanced tax plugin is included for free with WC Vendors Pro.

With this extension, your marketplace can calculate sales tax automatically at the checkout by integrating with Avalara or TaxJar tax calculation service. You can also use a third-party addon called Global Tax Commission for WC Vendors.

 

Coupon Management

WC Vendors comes with an option for vendors to provide coupons with either fixed or percentage discount. Coupons can be modified for use only on specific products or have other restrictions.

 

 

Vendor coupons are created and applied per product level and can’t be applied to the cart as a whole.

 

Stock Management

Thanks to the stock management option, vendors can manage inventory levels from their dashboard. They will notice that their product edit forms will have inventory tabs with stock notification emails that can be sent to vendors.

 

Widgets

There are 9 specialized widgets that come with WC Vendors Pro. These widgets can improve customer and vendor experience and interaction on your marketplace platform.

Those widgets include Store Total Sales, Store Categories, Vendor Search, Store Social Media, Store Short Description, Store Search, Store Ratings, Store Address and Map, Recent Products, and Contact Store.

 

Addons

WC Vendors has 6 addons and several third-party plugins to extend its features.

 

Reviews

Customers can review different items that they’ve purchased. The store profile page from the vendor will receive an overall store rating after all reviews have been accumulated. This information can help prospective customers decide whether or not to shop with this particular vendor.

The reviews can be used to compare different vendors, which is a nice feature that can enhance customer satisfaction and improve revenue and sales.

 

Shipping Management

WC Vendors uses a per-product shipping system where individual items will have shipping settings applied to them.

 

 

 

Flat rate and table rate shipping methods are available. WC Vendors Pro and WC Vendors free are incompatible with WooCommerce shipping zones. The default shipping system can be overridden on a vendor-by-vendor basis if necessary.

 

Order Tracking

Vendors can add tracking numbers to orders. This means shipments can be tracked so customers can be informed about each step of the shipping process. After receiving, customers can mark their items as received using the customer interface.

 

Contact Forms

Email Contact Form, Email Address, Phone Number, Store Name, and other important information can be included in the widget that WC Vendors uses for contact forms. A selected widgetized area of the individual vendor’s store page is the only place where the contact form will appear.

 

Bookable Products

WC Vendors allows sellers to list and sell bookable items through WC Vendors WooCommerce Bookings. The online marketplace can be turned into a booking and reservation website in no time where many different types of bookable products can be listed and sold.

 

Store Support

Unfortunately, there isn’t a way for customers to avoid potential spam and effectively communicate with sellers. Vendors can only be reached by email.

 

Theme & App

WC Vendors lacks an official theme or app. Storemate is an effective third-party theme that can be used.

 

Pricing Plans

There are free and paid versions of WC Vendors. The free version comes with basic features. It consists of a simple commission system and doesn’t have frontend management. The support is through community forums on WordPress.org.

The WC Vendors Pro Annual plan is for use on 1 website and can be purchased for $199 per year. With it, you get a frontend vendor dashboard, flat rate and table rate shipping, vacation mode, order management, and coupon management features. A full year of premium support and updates is also included.

For $599, you can buy the WC Vendors Pro Lifetime plan. Lifetime updates and support are the only difference between this option and the annual plan. With this plan, you get only WC Vendors Pro plugin, but not the separate addons.

The Pro Bundle at $397 annually comes with the WC Vendors Pro plugin and all current addons. The Extensions Bundle at $287 per year consists of just the addons.

For more info about the differences between the free and pro version of the plugin, you can check this comparison.

 

WC Vendors Review Summary

People who want to create their own multi-vendor marketplace can benefit from WC Vendors. It lets you start making extra income almost immediately. Even novices can easily understand how this plugin works without prior technical training or experience.

WC Vendors Pro is a good option for those serious about developing a thriving multiple vendor online marketplace. Its support, pricing, features, and simplicity are far beyond other similar solutions. WC Vendors was well-created and designed with regular updates, constantly bringing new features.

There are many great WooCommerce multi-vendor plugins. As alternatives to WC Vendors, you can check MarketKing, WCFM Marketplace, Dokan or WC Marketplace plugin.