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WooCommerce: Disadvantages You Should Know About

Preface

Creating an online store using WordPress and WooCommerce is, at first glance, a simple task. You don’t have to delve into the depths of programming, because the creator is provided with plugins, templates, and page builders that don’t require writing code.

It is also good that WP is free for commercial use. There will always be infrastructure costs, but these are relatively modest amounts, especially if the project is small. It is enough to rent a virtual server from some hosting , buy a domain , install and configure a template and a couple of plugins - the store is ready.

A test store that can be created in five minutes

But is everything so rosy? Not really.

The ease of creating an online store does not guarantee that it will work well. The shortcomings of WordPress and its plugins can hinder the development of the project.

I believe that this combination solves only one business problem: to quickly launch sales of a small amount of goods. The key word is "quickly". Forget about "convenience" and "reliability" - they are not a priority.

The problem is that WordPress is not for online stores. It is a content management system for blogs. Imagine that WordPress is a locomotive, and the rails are a niche of sites with posts, news and other creative content. Such a locomotive, albeit with smoke, noise, slowly and leisurely, will deliver you to the desired station. You can attach carriages (plugins), paint it (ennoble it with a cool template), use high-quality fuel (use a fast server), but this train will not derail. It will not acquire wheels, will not turn into a steamship and certainly will not take off. Do you understand what I mean?

Despite the fact that WordPress has enriched itself with capabilities over the years of development, it has not learned to competently solve problems not directly related to blogs. To create a stable online store on this platform, you will have to pay money. The funds will go to paid templates and plugins, the work of developers to refine them and create integrations with CRM systems and other necessary services. A convenient ordering system, cool design and many "chips" of large marketplaces cannot be made for free. How much this will cost depends on what you need and how far you need to go beyond the basic capabilities of WooCommerce. Some shortcomings of WP and WC can be critical for those who have a limited budget and (or) do not have competent developers with ready-made crutches and developments at hand.

I am not saying that WP and WC are bad and should not be used. On the contrary, when the budget is very limited, this is not such a bad option. After all, this CMS (content management system, in our case WordPress) allows you to not depend on any platforms - this is important when the project requires self-sufficiency. There is no ideal solution in nature, all platforms have disadvantages.

As for other CMS and platforms for creating online stores, I will not mention them in this article. They exist, some people like them, but this is not the topic of this publication. Now - WordPress and the pitfalls of its use.

About security
If you use only a CMS and a store plugin, as well as a template from a developer who promptly responds to feedback, you may not have any problems with the security of your site. But, of course, such a situation is utopian. You will probably have a hundred and fifty plugins installed from who knows who and that work somehow. How can you consider a site protected from hacking in such conditions - I have no idea.
If you have any thoughts on the topic of security, you are welcome to comment.

2Problems with the Plugin and Template Ecosystem

By ecosystem I mean a set of products that should work in symbiosis. For WordPress, this is the CMS itself, plugins and templates for it (including WooCommerce), additional services when purchasing paid plugins (technical support, refinement, bug fixing).

Over the years, I've gotten the impression that Automattic (owners of WordPress and WooCommerce) lives in an information bubble. In their ideal world, sites run on fast servers, and any innovations like the ability to customize any element of a site are instantly supported by all templates.

The reality is that templates and plugins are not capable of offering a quality solution to problems. And sometimes they are not capable of doing anything at all. And if a spark of enthusiasm lights up in some developer and he decides to turn the situation for the better by creating a simply awesome plugin that will solve all the problems, no one will know about it, because the "Fresh" section in the plugin catalog was cut out a long time ago.

Those responsible for the development of the platform seem to dislike related products, silently deciding to wait until the authors of templates and plugins lose the last of their desire to work with WP and go on to write extensions for other CMS.

What is the current situation with our ecosystem? I will list the most pressing issues. Also wordpress website errors accidently happens.

1. In the WP catalog, a significant portion of plugins are stubs designed to advertise a paid version or require integration with a third-party service (of course, not free). For example, look for short link plugins - of the more or less relevant ones, you will only find integrations with third-party services. The rest are old plugins whose compatibility is questionable. Perhaps you will find a seemingly cool plugin "wp Short URL", which can not only generate short links, but also draw a graph of transitions on shortened links, but it works... but does not work at all.
2. There is no guarantee of stability. Any free plugin can be sold by its authors and the platform is indifferent to this, despite the fact that the new version may be a different product. For example, the once popular plugin "Google Analytics for WordPress" unexpectedly changed its concept and was renamed "MonsterInsights - Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress". Before the change of ownership, it was a self-sufficient solution that only required authorization of an account from Google to work. That is, information about traffic did not leak "to the side". Now, to work, the plugin requires a connection with the third-party service MonsterInsights, which fundamentally changes its essence. Sometimes after such losses, you can find a replacement or fork, independently maintaining compatibility, but the substitution of that plugin turned out to be noticeable, because there was no alternative.
3. No dependency management. This does not solve another problem — WP provides few tools for creating plugins. For example, it is easy to create a settings page in the admin panel, but you cannot make tabs in it, select a color, or display a list of categories using WP. You need to reinvent the wheel or connect a third-party component. And such a component cannot be placed in the plugin catalog so that it is automatically offered for installation along with dependent plugins. There are crutches that do not solve the problem qualitatively. Therefore, as a rule, we get plugins weighing several megabytes, the key logic of which fits into a dozen lines. Such a mess slows down the responsiveness of the site, complicates debugging and harms stability (components are not always compatible or cause a version conflict when different plugins use the same component).
4. Many plugins are written without following standards (more on that later) or work in a way that interferes with other plugins. Authors either invent such an "original" wheel that it only works in specific conditions, or make mistakes that pop up when adding other plugins.
5. The rating cheating in the official plugin catalog is not solved in any way. This means that it is difficult to find a plugin from really good authors. For example, the above-mentioned analytics plugin received a lot of negative feedback after the update, which was later covered by five-star enthusiastic reviews from users with similar profiles.

The WooCommerce plugin, being a child project with a complexity comparable to the parent, brings additional problems. The official marketplace woocommerce.com from Automattic is a very controversial place.

The Extensions Store sells plugins and templates from both WC authors and third-party solutions. It would seem, what could go wrong? It turned out that a lot. I encountered three serious problems with this site, the existence of which I did not suspect until I encountered it myself.

1. The quality of plugin support is not controlled in any way. You can buy a plugin, it will work incorrectly, you decide to clarify this issue with technical support (many authors promise it) - but the answer will be inadequate or you will be ignored altogether. You can be indignant and contact Automattic directly - say, the plugin does not work, support does not answer, to which you will receive a response in the spirit of "we only host plugins, we do not guarantee anything." This is an abnormal position.
2. De facto, the plugins are guaranteed to work only if WooCommerce is installed and only the purchased plugin. Let's say you buy two add-ons from different authors: a widget-filter of products and a component for loading products in the catalog "on the fly" via AJAX. The widget will not work with AJAX, don't even hope. There may be different reasons: perhaps, instead of the usual request for products via documented functions, the author has built his own abstraction that is not compatible with AJAX. Or the plugin "draws" the catalog with products itself, ignoring the template styles. Naturally, the author will not rewrite the plugin to please others. His plugin works, there is no problem for him.
3. There is no guarantee of compatibility with current versions of Worpdess. Yes, that's true. There is a chance to run into a plugin that does not work with a modern version of the CMS simply because the author has forgotten about updates.

by Andrea Wilkinson on 2024-12-24 10:26:30