Is Multi-Vendor Extension for WooCommerce - WC Vendors Pro a standalone plugin?
Since it is a known fact that WooCoomerce does not support multivendor architecture it requires third-party extensions to fulfill these requirements and from the analysis, it is profound that none of the available extensions provide the multivendor capability to the full extent of the features are paid and are too costly. There is five major multivendor eCommerce plugin in number that supports WooCommerce and they are WC Vendors, WC Marketplace, YITH Multivendor, Product Vendor, and Dokan.
Each of them has some set of pros and cons associated with them. For example, WC vendors provide many basic operations like store owner commissions, vendor management, theme management, and compatibility with the wooCommerce, shipping, commission payouts, vendor permissions by admin. But, on contrary to that its frontend is not in any upgradation mode anymore. The basic plugin of WC Vendors is suitable when the store owner is very strict with its budget and want minimal of eCommerce multi-vendor features.
WC Vendors have been freemium for use and then back in 2015, they had launched WC vendors Pro at a price of $149 which has increased to $199 now. Talking about what all enhancement does WC vendors Pro came with, mentioned are the areas affected - Product Management, Frontend Dashboard, Orders, Coupon Management, Shipping Management, Single Vendor Store, Commissions, Marketplace Admin, and Customer Support.
Product Management
There is provision for product upload, digital and downloadable products, grouped/ custom packed products, product variant. But, in contrast to it where there was no such feature of creating bookable products like rental cars and rooms whereas WC vendors pro offers this feature at a certain price. No column to create subscription products in both of them. Features like custom product edit form, Disable product submission, product SEO, backorders are present only in the pro version and not in freemium.
Niche Store Features
Where both of them provide the feature to the state store’s description and create custom URLs there are certain features which only Pro version provide.Fetaures like - Vendor announcement which is nothing but a broadcast system implemented by the store owner to publish some news for the vendors registered to their marketplace, Verified vendors where the admin could certify a vendor as a trustable and verified one as it would help encourage the buyers to buy from your marketplace with complete reliability, featured vendors where a vendor pay some extra subscription amount to be displayed as a featured or special category seller. Moreover, Vacation mode, vacation mode disable cart, Store SEO, Social media integration, storefront widgets, store logo, and header, store address, store notice, nearby store search, total sales stats, opening and closing hours, and lastly contact form, all are offered in the pro version only.
Frontend Dashboard
No frontend dashboard for bird’s eye view of orders, product, coupons, ratings, reports, shipping, and other settings in the freemium version. Whereas all of them are offered to full extend in the pro version. Only orders could be tracked marked as shipped or pending only in the freemium.
Shipping Management
Firstly, there was no shipping management in freemium. Then the features which Pro offers are Flat rate, Table Rate, Min/Max Shipping Cost, Free Shipping over x, Product level shipping, Store level shipping, Marketplace shipping defaults.
Orders
Order notes and shipping labels could be added in pro.
Coupon Management
Introduced in the pro.
Commission
When talking of store owner commission out of each sale, it could be only set in percentages in the freemium version. Fixed amount commission, percentage+fee, Fixed amount + fee, category commission, sales by the vendor, sales by the product, and product price by vendors all are offered pro version.
Support
Where it could have been done through posting a query on the Wordpress forum in the regarding anything in the freemium version there is a proper dedicated customer support system being offered through the 1year/2year/3year subscription of the ticketing system in the pro version.
Admin Roles and Responsibilities
Admin can check out the reports, provide vendor approval, multiple dashboard pages, control vendor capabilities in both freemium and pro version. But, features like vendor store widgets, completely disable products, order, coupon management are only offered in the pro version. Vendor membership is not there in the freemium but instead offered as a paid feature in pro.
Now that was the comparison, but what all does WC Vendors Pro has to provide? Of course, pro is the extended version of freemium to provide your vendors and you as a marketplace administrator with tools to create a truly powerful, efficient eCommerce store which has a potential ROI.
With the below-mentioned features, you will find that Pro actually empowers the vendors to leverage marketplace capabilities.
Review form
Customers get an eBay style rating and review forms for the vendor's feedback. Vendors have the complete liberty to handle the reviews by themselves and also review the feeback before poting on their storefront.
Pro-Dashboard
Showcase your vendor's sales report and help you determine who is performing well on your marketplace, what they are selling and how much profit they are owing to you. Special subscription discounts and other privileges could be served to them to maintain their retention period.
Full Support for all product types
Simple, Grouped, Customizable, and product variants could be created by vendors as well.
Fully capable frontend
With pro, a vendor has the capability to add the new products or edit the existing ones.
Identity Management of store
Vendor store banner, icons, and style, color and font could be managed solely by a vendor for their store.
Shipment Tracking
For vendors to handle their shipment through shipment numbers they issue.
Multiple Commission Schemes
As explained above, Fixed amount commission, percentage+fee, Fixed amount + fee, category commission, sales by the vendor, sales by the product, and product price.
Social Module Integration
Adding of facebook, twitter, google+, and many more.
Vendor Only Coupons
Only vendors can create coupons for only their product. In fact, admin has no rights to create coupons on the vendor’s behalf or for the product sold by a vendor.
Customizable template system
Vendor and store owners are completely independent to configure, style and adjust the look and feel of their storefront and marketplace respectively as they want.
Even when WC vendor has to offer many things they prices are quite high.
$199 – 1 Year License
Access to 12 months of updates and premium support for 1 domain
$349 – 2 Year License
Access to 2 years of updates and premium support for 1 domain
$599 – Lifetime license
Access to lifetime updates and premium support for 1 domain
In fact, when it is offering the many eCommerce multi-vendor feature, WC Vendors Pro. But customers of WC vendors have reported many issues. The reviewer has told that the installation has wiped off all the changes made on the WC vendor platform. Upgrading of plugins is more time taking and could add to your capital expense. In fact, it is been reported that the plugin upgradation failure has caused application down or crashed. A person who desired to buy the WooCommerce pro subscription left it out due to their poor customer support behavior.
Is there a way to get all such eCommerce features that too for free and to full potential? Definitely yes! Sellacious - the open-source eCommerce platform has more than 5000 eCommerce features to offer to any aspirant including the ones for multi-vendor environment. Some of them are as follows:
Shipping and Discount
Setup shipping prices particular to a vendor and discount on the extension plan to extend the retention period for your sellers. Admin can choose multiple shipping patterns to optimize shipping revenue and maximize the Return on investments.
Filters
We provide a filter feature to help the end user to filter out the products on the basis of their search.
Robust Web Hosting with no limit on data storage
Sellacious hosts its customers' store on powerful, robust, and fast servers. We guarantee 99.98% uptime. We assure no limit to the web space required. You can create as many images and create as many pages as you want for the product.
Product and Inventory management
A vendor can upload, add the description, and edit products by logging in. Products can be uploaded in bulk using CSV.
Admin can get a clear vision of the vendor-specific product and keep track of the number available with them. They could also set up rules for notifications to the vendor for stock exhaustion or stock in.
Fast Checkout
Admin can make checkout faster by skipping all the unnecessary steps. No glitches, delays or hassles - with Sellacious, you can engage your customer in an easy checkout process.
Unlimited Bandwidth
Overage charges and traffic limit are the things of the past. We offer the capability to handle any number of visitors at any moment.
Wishlist
Customer can add the products they like to the wishlist in order to buy it later.
Real-Time Tax Calculation and Shipping Charges
Activate shipping all of the major shipping brands including FedEx and DHL etc. Automatically calculate shipping charges based on the rules set by the admin so that your customer is never surprised at checkout. We help store owner create tax rules according to the country their store is located. It can be done really quick and is a customizable setup.
Over Hundred Of Payment Gateways
Provide your buyers in the right to choose. Let them select their payment gateway according to their preference and location. Sellacious takes care of all the issues and things related to payment. There are available plugins that you can use to accept payments.
Easy to Upgrade
Store owners can very easily upgrade their stores from a single vendor to multivendor in no time.
Wallet
Applications that encourage the money added to the online wallet could be created as well. This helps save time and transaction failures. Coupons can be also created by the admin in case of the money for the bought product is paid through the wallet to attract customers.
The owner can also generate discounts in multiple ways like products category, user groups, locations, or shipping to boost sales.
PCI DSS Compliant
Your store can accept Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and other major credit/debit cards with complete security. All because of Sellacious’s certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliance. We always maintain our security standards so that they match the highest requirement mandate for an eCommerce application. In order to keep your customer’s information and business data secure, we issue an SSL certificate. Your store will include 256-bit SSL certificate.
24x7/365 Days of In-house Support
Expectations of what constitutes good customer service are always influenced to a degree by cultural values. At Sellacious, we always welcome customers for support round-the-clock. We always target to uplift our service and maintain high standards. Listen from our customer TopDogTest, about our customer service and support(Link to the case study).
Visit Sellacious ‘Ask Us’ to find comprehensive, step-by-step, easy to understand answers, powered by our support executives.
Sellacious offers the best multi-vendor shopping cart solutions to start a cost-effective, secure, scalable and highly customizable eCommerce Marketplace. Check our exemplary documentation for more details(Link to the documentation).
The core team of Sellacious understands that each business has something unique to offer than the existing service provide and there is a wide possibility that some new feature need to be developed to get the functionality incorporated in the existing marketplace. Getting it developed from the third-party developer could cost you high and besides that installation, maintenance, and up gradation cost can be very much high. All this could be eliminated by available custom development service be the developer team of Sellacious at affordable costs.
In fact, you could earn through Sellacious referrals through our affiliate program. In fact, this could be also used as a feature in a eCommerce store where the vendors could register using the referral provided and the commission is earned by the reference provider.
