The Best WooCommerce Multi Vendor Plugins

What is a multi vendor store?

We’ll start by answering the question - “what is a single vendor store?”. In eCommerce, a single vendor store is simply a website which sells the products or services of one retailer. Apple’s website for example sells products from one vendor - Apple.

Amazon on the other hand is a multi-vendor website because it allows multiple vendors to sell from just one site. eBay would be another example.

How can I start a multi vendor store with WordPress?

To start with, you need to get WooCommerce set up. WooCommerce is an insanely powerful eCommerce plugin for WordPress that is pretty much the goto when it comes to making an eCommerce store with WordPress.

WooCommerce does a kick ass job at turning a website into a webstore but you’re going to have to use further plugins to introduce multi vendor functionality.

So which plugins should you use? Well if I was you, I would use one of the following…

Dokan Multivendor

Dokan manages to hit the nail on the head by achieving the rare combination of power and simplicity.

It works well with nearly any theme you can think of, and most probably with the one you already use which is a win straight off the starting line.

It makes it very simple for vendors to sign up to your site and manage their store while simultaneously giving you lots of granular control over the vendors like how much commission you make from their sales (gotta get yours!).

Vendors and customers alike are provided with front end interfaces to deal with all aspects of buying and selling products on your store.

Most importantly, it just works. It’s reliable, simple to use and jam packed with powerful features.

Regarding costs, there are a variety of annual subscriptions available to cover most use cases with a free one to give you a taste and satisfy your needs until you need to scale. I obviously recommend dipping your toes in the free version before committing, not that the paid packages are that expensive to be fair.

WooCommerce Marketplace

Definitely a competitor for Dokan due to how incredibly versatile and powerful WooCommerce Marketplace is. It has nearly all of the features but in many cases takes them to the next level with even more granular control of things like shipping, commissions and having the same product sold by different vendors, just like Amazon. This is called Single Product Multi Vendor.

You can include things like badges for vendors to certify them how you see fit and emphasis authority in your favored or well deserved vendors.

Of course, front end interfaces are also included for the vendors to manage their products, orders, coupons, customer support and commissions.

Another factor that makes it a competitor for best multi vendor WooCommerce plugin is it’s pricing. It uses the more and more common strategy of giving you the plugin for completely free and then you pay for the add ons if needed. The base installation is so powerful that for many people it will do the job. If you do need extra functionality then their selection of add-ons is very reasonably priced too. Well worth looking into.