WooCommerce
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 3 ecommerce platforms by recommenders
Free open source WordPress store plugin with a large ecosystem and low running costs, cheaper than many hosted options. Caveat: hard to administer, and key features sit behind paid add-ons.
Free open source WordPress store plugin with a large ecosystem and low running costs, cheaper than many hosted options. Caveat: hard to administer, and key features sit behind paid add-ons.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 19
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 73%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 19 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Cheap to run yourself
“I have not yet seen an alternative for Wordpress + woocommerce for a simple e-commerce site that is not more expensive”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Exploit brokers pay $500k for WordPress RCEs. I found one with GPT5.6 and $25” “Woocommerce on WP is STILL one of the few ways to self-run a ecomm shop for next to $0”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave” “there's woocomerce, shopify, FB marketplace. All dirt cheap and fast.”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “I don't care how well your "AI" works” Self-hosted on your own host
“WooCommerce is what you need to host an online store on hosting of your own choosing”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave” “There are self-hosted options for almost everything (e.g. WooCommerce).”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Shopify Is Down” “Ecommerce went from self hosted (Magento, Woocommerce, Prestashop)”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “FFmpeg at Meta: Media Processing at Scale” Free open source with large ecosystem
“Not that fun to administer but it's a complete open source store with a huge ecosystem”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Mullenweg has returned as CEO after attempted board ouster” “plugins trusted by the community (ACF, WooCommerce, Yoast...)”
Comment from 4 Apr 2026 in “EmDash is not what the WordPress community requires” Feature-rich and widely regarded as strong
“WC is quite feature rich and has many payment gateways. It's also owned by Automattic and locks things like the richest subscription features behind paid plugins.”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave” “Woocommerce is nearly unrivaled.”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: Is WordPress the best way to create new websites for beginner”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Tedious to administer and maintain
“It's definitely not the most fun thing to configure and administer, but it's not Magento at least.”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Mullenweg has returned as CEO after attempted board ouster” “the bane of my existence that has inexplicably paid my rent for a gigantic chunk of my adult life”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Matt Mullenweg tells Automattic staff in Slack he's back in control after ouster” “Not that fun to administer but it's a complete open source store with a huge ecosystem”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Mullenweg has returned as CEO after attempted board ouster” - Comment from 21 Oct 2026 in “Security advisory: Critical remote code execution vulnerabilities, update now”
Key features locked behind paid plugins
“WC is quite feature rich and has many payment gateways. It's also owned by Automattic and locks things like the richest subscription features behind paid plugins.”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave” “Run something like WooCommerce and install a bunch of plugins to get the functionality that WordPress and WooCommerce should have built-in”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Cloudflare Turnstile requiring fingerprintable WebGL” Weaker than Shopify and other platforms
“It isn't, in the context of business, it doesn't belong in the same conversation as Shopify or any other serious commerce business.”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Mullenweg has returned as CEO after attempted board ouster” “isn't WooCommerce an absolute also-ran compared to Amazon, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Mullenweg has returned as CEO after attempted board ouster” Concerns over Automattic ownership
“WC is quite feature rich and has many payment gateways. It's also owned by Automattic and locks things like the richest subscription features behind paid plugins.”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave” “Kept WooCommerce after consolidating it into his empire - woo hoo?”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Matt Mullenweg tells Automattic staff in Slack he's back in control after ouster”
Other ecommerce platforms people recommend
The two most recommended other ecommerce platforms, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 3 ecommerce platforms, rankedWhat people said
26 of the 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“not to mention WooCommerce”
“It's amazing for what it is but it is a bit of a nightmare to keep going.”
“WP/Woo and even linux servers (I tend to use Debian) are giving me a lot of anxiety with the security situation”
“WC is quite feature rich and has many payment gateways. It's also owned by Automattic and locks things like the richest subscription features behind paid plugins.”
“WooCommerce is what you need to host an online store on hosting of your own choosing”
“Woocommerce on WP is STILL one of the few ways to self-run a ecomm shop for next to $0”
“It isn't, in the context of business, it doesn't belong in the same conversation as Shopify or any other serious commerce business.”
“Not that fun to administer but it's a complete open source store with a huge ecosystem”
“WooCommerce isn't bad, acquiring it was a good call for Automattic”
“It's definitely not the most fun thing to configure and administer, but it's not Magento at least.”
“isn't WooCommerce an absolute also-ran compared to Amazon, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace”
“Kept WooCommerce after consolidating it into his empire - woo hoo?”
“the bane of my existence that has inexplicably paid my rent for a gigantic chunk of my adult life”
“I use a tiny subset of its features”
“the one thing you want to do is stop using Woocommerce”
“I have not yet seen an alternative for Wordpress + woocommerce for a simple e-commerce site that is not more expensive”
“Woocommerce is nearly unrivaled.”
“There are self-hosted options for almost everything (e.g. WooCommerce).”
“Run something like WooCommerce and install a bunch of plugins to get the functionality that WordPress and WooCommerce should have built-in”
“plugins trusted by the community (ACF, WooCommerce, Yoast...)”
“well-known and reputable plugins with huge installed bases”
“they solve business problems, even if they are tech problems”
“Ecommerce went from self hosted (Magento, Woocommerce, Prestashop)”
“it connects to a real WooCommerce store”
“I'm not going to reimport my entire catalog into WooCommerce or something just to show a block of 8 products.”
“there's woocomerce, shopify, FB marketplace. All dirt cheap and fast.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.