The read · 26 Oct 2026
WooCommerce is the market, and everyone else rents space
eCommerce on WordPress is one platform with thousands of tenants. WooCommerce runs on 7M+ sites, about a third of every install in the category, and most of the top dozen behind it exist only because it does. The biggest independent names are all Woo add-ons: checkout editors, wishlists, invoices, swatches and cart recovery. The healthiest of them ship constantly. PDF Invoices & Packing Slips released four days ago and holds a near-perfect rating on 300K+ sites.
Lots of installs, little affection
The weak spot sits right under the leader. Google for WooCommerce and WooCommerce PayPal Payments each run on 800K+ sites, and both rate below three stars once ratings are adjusted. Both shipped within the past week, so the low ratings don't come from neglect. Their reach likely comes from being the default way to connect a store to Google and PayPal, and users seem to tolerate them more than like them. WooCommerce Legacy REST API is starker still: 400K+ installs and a rating close to two stars, which suggests a compatibility layer people keep because removing it would break something.
That's where this category is open. Distribution holds install counts at the top in place, but it doesn't protect ratings, and a well-built payments or product-feed plugin has more room than a newcomer would find in checkout fields, where the incumbent is rated close to five stars.
Small climbers and a cull of payment gateways
The real movement this quarter happened far below the top. Sigmize, an A/B testing and revenue tracking tool for WooCommerce, SureCart and EDD, went from 100+ to 5K+ installs in 90 days, the sharpest climb in the category. Correo Argentino for WooCommerce grew from 200+ to 1K+, which shows local shipping integrations still find an audience. The plugins losing installs are tiny, and so are their losses.
The closures came in a cluster. On 15 and 16 October the directory closed a run of payment gateways, including CCAvenue Payment Gateway for WooCommerce (3K+ installs), Online Payments with iK Pay Gateway (1K+) and Netgíró Payment Gateway (400+), with no recorded reason for most of them. Ultimate Auction for WooCommerce, with 2K+ installs, closed on 16 October, also without a stated reason. Tools for MercadoPago and iPay Payment Gateway closed at their authors' request. The dates line up, but the data doesn't say why.
Category downloads rose 14.7% over the window. That could be stores preparing for the year-end season, but nothing in the data confirms it yet.
