There are a ton of reasons why you’d want to be capable of accepting payments through your website. Maybe you run an online store and need to process orders? Maybe you want to accept donations for a worthy cause. Or maybe you want to sell digital products like plugins, themes, or ebooks? Regardless, equipping your site with this capacity can make converting customers easier.

Since PayPal is one of the most popular payment gateways, giving potential customers the ability to pay using it is a surefire way to improve your odds of getting more sales. And you can add this ability to your WordPress site with ease thanks to plugins.

Yes, there are several plugins out there that provide comprehensive e-commerce solutions. However, these aren’t necessarily the best option, especially if you only plan on selling a couple of products, you’re a small-time operation, or you want to maintain a very simple site structure. In these cases, a hyper-focused PayPal plugin would be best.

Here are 12 plugins that are easy-to-use and provide straightforward PayPal integration for your site.

WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart

 

It’s all in the name, really, WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart offers a straightforward way to add an “Add to Cart” button your site for specific products you want to sell. Once this lightweight plugin is installed, you can include this button on any post or page you want. That way, you don’t have to go through a third-party provider. Just install the button, sync it with your PayPal account and you’re pretty much good to go.

You can create a different button for different products and integrate them easily with shortcodes. Display your shopping cart in the sidebar of your site so users can see how many items are currently in their cart. This added functionality lets customers change item quantity and add or remove items on the fly.

This plugin allows you to sell pretty much any tangible product, service, or media file you want directly from your site. It sends customers a confirmation notice providing the download link for media sales and even integrates with PayPal sandbox for quick testing.

On the backend, you can view an orders menu that displays all the orders you’ve received thus far and you can change up what appears in the emails your customers receive following a purchase. Set up discount coupons with an expiration date, add SKU numbers to product shortcodes, customize the add to cart button image, track coupons, and more.

You can even use WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart with NextGen Photo Gallery for added product shots. Not bad for a free plugin, I’ve got to say.

WP Easy PayPal Payment Accept

 

Another option for accepting PayPal payments on your site is to use WP Easy PayPal Payment Accept. This makes it super simple to accept payments for products, services, or donations on your site in your posts and pages and even in your sidebar.

Once this plugin is installed, you can quickly create Buy Now buttons and embed them using a shortcode. Set up different buttons for each of your products or services. You also have the option of choosing from different currencies, letting users pick how much they want to pay you, setting language preferences, a cancel URL, and more.

Additionally, this plugin lets you open the payment window in a new tab, collect tax, create a payment widget, and choose between text or image-based buttons.

Ready! Ecommerce Shopping Cart

 

If running an e-commerce store is a part of your livelihood, then you’re more than likely going to need a dedicated plugin to streamline operations. Ready! Ecommerce Shopping Cart may very well be that plugin.

This plugin comes with a free e-commerce theme and numerous payment gateways. Of course it has PayPal and PayPal Pro, but it also works with Google Wallet, 2Checkout, SagePay, Authorize.net, Skrill, eProcessing Network, checks and money orders, POD, and more.

This plugin also opens your site up to a world of shipping opportunities including USPS, UPS, and FedEx extensions as well as flat rate shipping. Ready! also gives you plenty of flexibility to work with in terms of customization. Change up the product options, create product variations, configure tax options, create widgets, and more. It also comes with sale, gifts, and coupons for added functionality.

Sell Digital Downloads

 

If your focus is on selling digital products like ebooks, MP3s, PDFs, or videos then Sell Digital Downloads might be a good option for you. This plugin is extremely lightweight and is designed for use with PayPal.

It works like this: upload the files you want to offer for sale via the standard media uploader. Then you can create a new product associated with each of these files. When you sell a download, the customer will receive an email automatically confirming the order and once payment is processed through PayPal, he’ll receive the download in his inbox.

You can create as many products as you want and can even set up custom orders. Managing products is simple and conducted through the main WordPress dashboard. Each product is handled just like a post or page thanks to the custom post type this plugin configures. Plus you can add thumbnails to your downloads, create a product display box, and more.

Paid Memberships Pro

 

If you want to offer subscriptions or memberships to some aspect of your website, you can do so using Paid Memberships Pro. This plugin lets you partition off posts, pages, categories, downloads, videos, and even support features so access is restricted to the general public. Then, only those who go through the payment gateway gain access.

Speaking of, this plugin works with PayPal, Stripe, Braintree Payments, and Authorize.net, so don’t let anyone tell you don’t have any options! It works with any theme and can be configured to support an unlimited number of membership levels. For instance, you can set up free, paid, or recurring subscriptions that renew annually, monthly, weekly, or even daily. You can offer trial periods, too.

The admin side of things is particularly easy to set up thanks to an intuitive interface. Determine membership access by post, page, or category; export members via CSV file; set up your payment gateway, view and download membership reports, establish member discounts; and more.

Paid Memberships Pro also integrates with plenty of other tools like Post Affiliate Pro and MailChimp, too.

PayPal for WooCommerce

 

If you run your site on WooCommerce—or you’re thinking about it, at least—PayPal For WooCommerce is a good plugin option to have tucked into your back pocket. It works with PayPal Express, PayPal Website Payments, and PayPal Payments Pro 2.0.

It’s designed to work seamlessly with PayPal so you don’t have to worry about the details—they’re all taken care of for you. Once installed, you’ll no longer have to click between PayPal and WooCommerce interfaces to manage orders and keep everything organized. Instead, you can manage everything from your WordPress backend, which will include all transactions made and your WooCommerce order information.

PayPal for WooCommerce is designed to handle potential errors with ease and it includes localization, so checkout buttons automatically translate into your default language.

WordPress Simple Ecommerce Shopping Cart Plugin

 

If you need to sell a variety of product types and don’t want to commit to a bulky e-commerce solution WordPress Simple Ecommerce Shopping Cart Plugin might work out well for you. It can be configured to sell products, services, and downloads all from within the confines of your site.

Digital downloads are handled securely thanks to the use of encrypted download links sent via email following purchase. Tangible products are easy to sell, too, with plenty of options select from like color and size. As for services, you can offer service levels with different pricing options to satisfy all of your customers’ needs.

Other features include custom fields, tax shipping, discounts, coupon codes, multiple currency support, robust options for your checkout page, and customizable emails.

PayPal Responder

 

Keeping an air of professionalism is really important for running a business. So, doing everything in your power to appear like a pro is important. That’s why the PayPal Responder plugin is so useful. Once a payment is processed via PayPal, an email responder is sent to the customer. This can contain whatever content you want and a link pointing to whatever destination you want. The idea is to limit the number of pages you have to click through after deciding to make a purchase before the transaction is completed.

A Pro version of this plugin is also available that offers a few additional features like the ability to attach files to the email responders and an unlimited number of responder templates for managing multiple products.

eShop

 

Another great shopping cart plugin is eShop. This plugin is loaded with features that make running an online store smooth sailing. For instance, you can use custom post types to create new products, add options to each product, and offer downloadable items.

You can also give customers the option of signing up for your site, multiple shipping choices, and you can set up email templates for post-purchase autoresponders. Other features include stock control, order handling in the dashboard, custom out of stock messages, discount options, sales tax options, multisite compatibility, and simple statistics for keeping tabs on your sales data.

PayPal Payment Shortcode

 

Need to give your site visitors the ability to pay for your products or services but don’t want to go through the trouble of setting up a full online store? The PayPal Payment Shortcode plugin can be of assistance.

Once installed, you just need to configure the short code for your specific product or service. Then you can include it anywhere on your site, including in the sidebar, to accept payment via PayPal. It only takes a few seconds to set up and you’re off and running.

PayPal Donations

 

Sometimes, you’re not selling anything at all but still would like to accept payment in some form. Since PayPal is such a popular payment gateway, the PayPal Donations plugin is a solid choice. It works by adding a short code and sidebar widget that you can configure for accepting donations on your site.

Just input your PayPal ID and select from a few settings like button style, currency, localization, payment page style, and return page style. Then just drop the short code or the widget onto your site and you can start accepting donations for a worthy cause.

Donations Made Easy – Smart Donations

 

Because you should never be limited to just one option, Donations Made Easy is another great plugin that lets you accept PayPal payments for donations on your WordPress site. With it, you can set up the specifics for accepting donations across a wide spectrum of purposes.

The plugin supports five different donations styles including Classic, a traditional PayPal or WePay button that takes a visitor to a payment gateway page; text box, which offers a button and a text box for inputting the donation amount; three-button, which lets visitors select from three pre-defined donation amounts; slider, that a user can scroll through to select the donation amount; and forms, which is a Pro feature that lets you gather additional information from your site visitors.

Set up email auto responders and a donation goal meter, accept multiple currencies, and more.

Wrapping Up

There are many reasons why being able to accept payments through your website is necessary. And being able to accept PayPal payments opens you up to even more opportunities for making sales and meeting fundraising goals. Hopefully these 12 plugins give you plenty of options to choose from when selecting the right approach for your site.

Now I’m curious: do you/have you use(d) any of the plugins described here? What was your experience like? If you use a different solution, I’d love to hear about it as well!

Article thumbnail image by BimXD / shutterstock.com

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