Every day, a community of thousands of WordPress users from all over the world use their websites to solve problems, raise awareness, build communities, and more. They speak different languages, operate in different industries, and support different causes, but they all have one thing in common — they use the Ecwid plugin to power their e-commerce.
30,000 WordPress users and counting (of Ecwid’s 1.5 million total customers) rely on the Ecwid E-commerce plugin every day to let them sell across their websites. Side-hustlers. Activists. Small business owners of all kinds have turned their passions into full-time careers thanks to the simplicity of Ecwid’s WordPress integration. And that’s something we’re proud of.
Here’s what one WordPress small business, Adams Fairacre Farms, had to say about Ecwid:
Getting our store set up with Ecwid was a fantastic, smooth experience. It was a simple process to plug into our existing WordPress site and we were basically all set.
For years, Ecwid has been transforming the world of WordPress e-commerce. Today, we’d like to shed some light on why we’re so passionate about developing exceptional e-commerce for WordPress, and how we built a WordPress shopping cart that makes selling on one of the world’s best site-builders a dream for small businesses.
Supporting WordPress Small Businesses Since 2009
If you’ve ever considered starting a website, there’s a pretty good chance you’re familiar with the website juggernaut known as WordPress. WordPress is a content management system that’s grown to become the most popular way for businesses, organizations, and non-profits of all sizes to create and manage their websites. In fact, WordPress powers 34.8% of the entire internet! 50,000 plugins and over 3,500 themes allow users to create and modify any type of website, from a blog to an e-commerce site.
WordPress.com became one of Ecwid’s earliest partners when we created the Ecwid Shopping Cart WordPress plugin back in 2009. Since that time, the Ecwid Shopping Cart plugin has been downloaded more than 1 million times.
Fast forward a decade and Ecwid can be seamlessly added to almost any website. But even though we’ve expanded our plugin capabilities, we never stopped developing and optimizing our dedicated WordPress plugin. And just this year, we integrated our plugin with Gutenberg, WordPress’ latest-generation block content editor that hides the code to make it even easier for non-techies to build beautiful and functional web-pages.
It [Ecwid] provides a quick way for a new seller to get everything working without having to do anything besides add the plugin.
Receiving a pat on the back from the WordPress community always means a lot to us. And in December 2018, we received a shoutout from the man himself. Matt Mullenweg, a founding developer of WordPress, took the stage for his annual "State of the Word" talk at WordCamp US. Matt Mullenweg highlighted the Ecwid E-commerce Shopping Cart in his speech and shared a short screencast showing the plugin in action:
Ecwid E-commerce Shopping Cart demo at Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word
"E-commerce has been early adopters of blocks. This is Ecwid Store. By the way, I love that preview. It embeds the entire store right there." — Matt said.
So why does the Ecwid plugin work so well for small businesses? Because, when we designed it, we were a small business too. Being a small business owner means being nimble, budget-minded, and goal-oriented. And our plugin was designed with those ideas in mind.
We may be operating in a couple extra timezones these days, but we’ve never forgotten our start-up roots. And that start-up experience has been driving our mission ever since.
When we started our journey, our plugin was designed by small business, for small business. And our dedicated team is committed to continuing that mission, to make selling across the internet easier for entrepreneurs around the world.
The Ecwid team at CloudFest in Rust, Germany
Getting our priorities straight :)
Just like any team of kindred spirits, we love to socialize
Ecwid E-commerce and WordPress Today
Our continued focus on small business owners combined with 10 years of experience with WordPress has helped us to create a product that meets the core online needs of non-technical entrepreneurs:
- Simple setup and maintenance. Most small business owners will do everything themselves in the early days — that means setting up and maintaining their stores on their own — and not everyone has the time to figure out how to customize every detail of their store. With Ecwid, merchants can set up their own stores on WordPress without any outside help or web development experience.
- Customer support by email, chat, and phone. While some more difficult WordPress e-commerce plugins don’t offer any customer support at all, we’re committed to supporting our merchants and answering questions long after their stores are up and running. We may be designed for easy set-up and customization out-of-the-box, but if you’ve got a question, we’ll be ready with an answer.
- Bank-level security. Ecwid is PCI DSS Level 1 certified, which ensures both merchants and their customers can feel safe about their data.
When you carry the sole responsibility for your business success, you need to be cautious about the services you choose. We’re proud to have earned the trust of 1.5 million small business owners around the world who use Ecwid to sell products on their WordPress websites, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, eBay, and more.
Staying Connected to the WordPress Community
One of the best things about WordPress is the sense of community that’s developed among its users, developers, studios, and fans. And we love staying in touch with that community at WordPress conferences throughout the year. So far this year, we’ve spoken at WordCamp Saint Petersburg, and we just returned from WordCamp US in November where we had a great time hanging out with some of the biggest players in the WordPress world.
If you’d like to connect with us offline, check out one of the upcoming WordPress events near you.
Launching a new small business is tough. And, unfortunately, there’s no magic spell we can offer to make you successful without putting in the work. But what we CAN offer is the support and guidance of an experienced team who understands your needs.
At Ecwid, we’ve already helped more than 1.5 million small business owners begin their e-commerce journeys, and we’d love to be a part of your story as well. So, if you’re new to site-building or e-commerce and want to create your own online store, consider joining the Ecwid ranks. We can’t always promise it’ll be easy, but we’ll have your back every step of the way.