There are very few places where people can find niche communities that match their interests without being bombarded by advertisements and dark tactics to get them addicted.

This is a massive opportunity for website owners.

Whether you sell products or services, teach online courses, or run a non-profit, you can easily build a community around your brand. This can help you quickly boost user engagement and loyalty.

In this guide, we will show you how you can create your own private community with WordPress, set it up, and make money from it.

Here is a quick list of topics we will cover in this guide:

Why Create an Online Community with WordPress?

In our experience, creating an online community can significantly enhance user engagement and loyalty.

Over the years, we have learned that highly engaged customers are more likely to purchase and be vocal promoters of your brand.

An online community provides a space for users to interact, share ideas, and participate in discussions, creating a sense of belonging and connection to your brand.

Communities also offer valuable support and feedback. Members can share knowledge, provide insights, and help each other, which can lead to a more vibrant and dynamic environment.

This, in turn, increases retention and can even create new revenue streams through membership fees and exclusive content.

Why Use WordPress?

There are many online platforms for building communities. However, WordPress offers unparalleled freedom and extensibility.

Here are the top reasons to pick WordPress:

• Flexibility: WordPress offers many themes and plugins, allowing you to customize your community to fit your business model.
• Cost-Effective: WordPress is free, needing only investment in hosting and premium features if needed.
• User-Friendly: It is easy to use, even for beginners. This means that you can manage content and settings without any coding knowledge.
• SEO-Friendly: Built with SEO in mind, WordPress plugins like All in One SEO can help you optimize your site for search engines.

New to WordPress? See our detailed WordPress review with pros and cons.

Getting Started

To get started, you will need the following things:

• A domain name
• A web hosting account
• A WordPress community-building plugin

First, you will need to sign up for a web hosting account and register a domain name. Web hosting is where your website lives on the internet, while the domain name is the address that users will type in to visit your online community.

Normally, you can get a domain name for $16/year, and web hosting plans start at $7.99 per month, paid annually.

However, our friends at Bluehost are offering WPBeginner users an exclusive discount and a free domain name.

Basically, you can get started for just $1.99 per month.

Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world. They are also an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Simply visit the Bluehost website and click on the ‘Get Started Now’ button.

Follow the on-screen instructions to choose a domain name and complete your purchase.

After that, you will be able to log in to your web hosting account dashboard.

Bluehost will automatically install WordPress for you. You can simply click on the ‘Edit’ Site button to log into WordPress admin area.

Setting Up BuddyBoss WordPress Community Platform

For this tutorial, we will be using BuddyBoss to create an online community platform with WordPress.

BuddyBoss is the best WordPress community-building platform. It offers all the features you need to build an engaging community, including the ability to:

• Transform your website into a social media platform.
• Add forums, activities, and social groups to your site.
• Allow users to connect and interact with each other.
• Integrate with popular LMS plugins and WordPress membership plugins.
• And more.

For example, here is how an online community built with BuddyBoss could look like:

BuddyBoss also offers a free version. However, this free version has limited features, and you will need the paid version, BuddyBoss Pro, to take full advantage of the platform.

To get started, simply visit the BuddyBoss website to sign up.

After signing up, you need to download both the BuddyBoss Platform and BuddyBoss Platform Pro plugins on your site. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you will need to enter your product license key. You can find this information in your account on the BuddyBoss website.

Configuring BuddyBoss Settings

After installation, you need to set up the BuddyBoss plugin to your own requirements.

Activate BuddyBoss Components

BuddyBoss comes with a powerful set of features. Each core feature is called a Component, and you can activate or deactivate it based on your needs.

Simply go to the BuddyBoss » Components page. There, you will see a bunch of components activated by default.

You will need to review the component list and activate any additional components that you want to see on your site.

Here is a list of available components and what they do:

• User Profiles: Allow members to create and customize their profiles.
• Profile Fields: Customize your community with fully editable profile fields.
• Account Settings: Allow members to modify their account and notification settings.
• Notifications: Send notifications to members about relevant activities.
• Social Groups: Enable the creation of social groups where members can join and interact.
• Forums: Set up discussion forums for structured conversations.
• Activity Feeds: Provide activity streams to track and display member activities.
• Media Uploading: Let members upload and share photos, videos, and files.
• Private Messaging: Allow members to send private messages to each other.
• Member Connections: Allow members to make connections with one another.
• Email Invites: Allow members to send email invitations to non-members.
• Moderation: Allow members to block each other and report inappropriate content.
• Network Search: Allow members to search the entire network.

When you activate a component, you may see options to set it up just below the component title.

For instance, under the ‘Profile Fields’ component, you will see the option to Edit Fields.

This will take you to the ‘Profiles’ section, where you can add or remove profile fields.

You can also organize your profile fields into Field Sets by clicking on the ‘New Field Set’ button.

You can then configure components by looking for actions below it or by going through different tabs under the BuddyBoss menu.

Set Up BuddyBoss Pages

Once you have activated the components you need, the next step is to set up pages for different areas of your online community.

Switch to the BuddyBoss » Pages tab, and you can select the pages you want to use for those areas.

To create a page, simply go to Pages » Add New in the WordPress admin area.

Provide a title for the page and click ‘Publish’ to save it. Then, you can select that page under the plugin settings.

For more details, you can see our tutorial on how to create a page in WordPress.

Setting Up a Theme

In WordPress, themes control how your website looks on the front end to your users.

BuddyBoss is designed to be theme-agnostic, which means it will work with any good WordPress theme.

However, an online community is not like other WordPress business websites. You’ll need to find a theme that allows you to showcase your community and social features properly.

For example, the folks at BuddyBoss also offer a BuddyBoss theme. It is designed to take full advantage of all the plugin features.

You can find it under your account on the BuddyBoss website. It comes as two separate themes: the main BuddyBoss theme and a child theme.

You will need to install both on your website and then activate the child theme. For details, see our tutorial on how to install a child theme.

The BuddyBoss theme is highly customizable. You can configure all options by visiting the BuddyBoss » Theme Options page.

Other Options:

BuddyBoss is based on BuddyPress, which means you can use any of these BuddyPress themes on your site.

Optionally, you can also use any page builder plugin, such as SeedProd, Thrive Architect, and more, to design custom pages for your site.

For more information, see our guide on how to create a custom WordPress theme.

Monetize Your Community With Subscriptions And Courses

BuddyPress allows you to make money from your online community by selling subscriptions, courses, premium content, and more.

It allows you to integrate with any of the top WordPress LMS plugins, including LearnDash, LifterLMS, and more. This allows you to create and make money from online courses on your community website.

You can also sell subscriptions using any WordPress membership plugin like MemberPress, Thrive Apprentice, and more.

Note: If you are using MemberPress, then you can install their BuddyPress addon to easily integrate with the BuddyBoss platform.

How Does This Monetization Work?

The BuddyBoss integrations let you use a membership plugin to restrict access to members-only content on your website, accept payments, and sell subscription plans.

Similarly, you can use an LMS plugin to create courses and educational materials, manage students, and more.

BuddyBoss adds online community and social media features to boost engagement.

Adding Gamification to Boost Community Engagement

One thing we learned from online games is that they are highly engaging and can help build a community spirit.

Marketers use the exact same game design principles to engage and motivate members to participate and interact more actively online.

BuddyBoss leverages the free GamiPress plugin to gamify your online community by integrating point-based rewards, badges, and achievements.

You will simply have to install and activate the GamiPress plugin on your site.

This integration allows community managers to set up various rules for earning points by posting, commenting, or engaging with your community activities.

Members can also unlock badges and achievements for their participation, which enhances motivation and engagement.

Grow Your Community With a Mobile App

Many users prefer to use social media platforms on their phones using apps.

BuddyBoss offers a mobile app for both iOS and Android (sold separately). The app allows your BuddyBoss community to interact on the go.

Users can access their online courses, post updates, and interact with course creators and other students.

It automatically syncs with your BuddyBoss web platform so that users can access their profiles and courses and interact with other users just like they would on the web.

Growing Your Online Community

Now that you have set up your online community, the next step is to promote and grow it.

Luckily, with WordPress and BuddyBoss, you have access to excellent tools and plugins for growing your business.

Our team tested the best WordPress plugins that work seamlessly with BuddyBoss.

Here are some of those plugins that will help you quickly grow a thriving online community.

• All in One SEO for WordPress – The best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It allows you to easily optimize your WordPress community for better search rankings and more traffic.
• SeedProd – A beginner-friendly yet powerful drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress. Enables you to easily create professional landing pages for your online community.
• WPForms – The best WordPress form builder plugin, which allows you to easily create on-demand forms and add them anywhere on your site.
• MonsterInsights – Wondering where users spend most of their time in your community? MonsterInsights lets you track website analytics so you can make data-driven decisions to grow your community.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create an online community with WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to make $5000 of passive income every month or take a look at these resources on growing an online business on a limited budget.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create Your Own Private Community with WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

Creating your own online store is great, but you could potentially earn more money by letting other sellers rent a small part of the space. With multi-vendor plugins, you can turn your eCommerce site into a professional-looking marketplace, such as eBay, Amazon, or Etsy.

In this article, we will go over the best WooCommerce multi-vendor plugins so that you can allow other sellers to promote their products on your website.

Why Do You Need a WooCommerce Multi Vendor Plugin?

A WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin allows you to turn your store into a marketplace where vendors can easily sell their products. It adds a feature to your WooCommerce site where other users create their own stores and manage products, payments, and orders.

Rather than trying to tinker with code, WooCommerce multi-vendor plugins are the fastest way to get started.

Creating a marketplace might be useful if your website has a large audience who wants to buy certain products. Maybe you can drive traffic to the marketplace but don’t have the products to sell.

In that case, you can just bring sellers onboard to your marketplace and earn a commission for each sale.

Here are just a few advantages of building your own eCommerce multi-vendor website:

• Earn a commission: As mentioned, you can piggyback on the sales generated by vendors on your site. This is similar to dropshipping, where you can make money online without having to deal with the hassle of managing inventory or shipping.
• An expanded audience: The more sellers on your eCommerce platform, the more customers you’ll have. Each seller brings their own word-of-mouth contacts, established customer base, and social media presence, which means more visitors to your platform.
• Sell a wide range of products: Every seller can add their own unique products or services. This can be either physical or digital products. It’s a win-win for everyone because customers have more products to choose from.
• Save on costs: Creating a marketplace usually takes a huge upfront investment, such as hiring developers to code a website that offers multi-vendor functionality.

With all that said, let’s look at the top WordPress multi-vendor plugins available so you can create a beautiful marketplace that attracts both buyers and sellers.

1. WC Vendors

WC Vendors is the best WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin out there, and it has all the features you need to convert your online store into a marketplace and begin selling third-party products online.

You can easily accept registrations from potential vendors. That way, they can hop on board and start selling on your platform. You can require admin approval, or vendor submissions can be approved automatically.

That said, if you require a more comprehensive application process, it’s best to use a dedicated form builder.

For example, WPForms would allow you to create a multi-page user registration form to collect all the information you need. You may want to ask sellers about the types of products they sell, their current revenue, and whether they already have a retail store.

In addition, the plugin offers plenty of customization options. Individual vendors can create their own storefronts, and they have the ability to easily upload products, manage inventory, and fulfill orders.

Best of all, you can set the commission rate to a fixed or percentage rate. You can even set up a tiered system where you reduce commission rates for top sellers to incentivize them to keep selling on your website.

If you are not ready to commit to a paid plan, then WC Vendors offers a free version to help you get started. You can easily allow vendors to register, and you can set up a commission rate for sales. Beyond that, all vendors have the ability to publish products.

That said, if you want more advanced features, such as creating service or digital product marketplaces, offering more SEO compatibility, adding auction capabilities, and creating membership plans, then you need to install the Pro version.

Pros:

• With its launch wizard, WC Vendors is easy to set up.
• WC Vendors make it easy to accept vendor registrations.
• You can accept customer reviews and ratings on each product page.

Cons:

• While there is a free version, the best features are paid.

Pricing: Starts at $99.50 per year.

Why We Recommend Using WCVendors: We recommend WC Vendors as the best choice for turning your online store into a highly profitable marketplace. It has all the features needed to sell physical products, handcrafted and second-hand goods, digital products, services, and more. Plus, since the plugin supports many WordPress themes and plugins, you can easily integrate all sorts of marketing apps to boost sales and conversations.

To learn more about its features, check out our complete WC Vendors review.

2. Dokan

Trusted by over 60,000+ marketplaces, Dokan is one of the most popular WooCommerce multi-vendor plugins on the market. Like WC Vendors, it lets you create your own online marketplace, similar to Amazon, eBay, or Magneto, in under 30 minutes.

What’s great about Dokan is that each vendor gets their own customizable dashboard on the storefront. They can easily control and navigate each aspect of their store, like creating product listings, managing orders, creating coupons, and viewing sales reports. However, the backend access is restricted to those with admin access only.

Dokan has arguably the most available payment gateways, with over 100+ integrations, including Apple Pay, Stripe Express, Google Pay, Razor Pay, and more. Vendors can enjoy automatic payment distribution, meaning that the plugin automatically calculates and distributes payouts with the commissions already included.

Also, vendors can easily manage shipments as well by selecting their own shipping zones or setting flat-rate shipping. It’s a good idea to have a built-in shipping calculator at the checkout page so customers can view the final price to avoid unexpected surprises.

Pricing: Free to get started with limited features. But if you want a full-featured marketplace with product bulk edits, multiple commission types, and reporting, the plans start at a one-time fee of $559.

Pros:

• Dokan has 20+ extensions, allowing you to add a lot of different functionalities to your marketplace.
• The plugin has a built-in order tracking system so vendors and customers can see the status of their shipments.
• It is an easy-to-use plugin with an intuitive interface.

Cons:

• Dokan’s paid plan is more expensive than WC Vendors.
• It doesn’t have advanced commission settings like WC Vendors.

Why We Recommend Using Dokan: It’s hard to argue against Dokan, especially with all of its add-ons and integration capabilities. Dokan also provides all the essential features you need, like commission settings, vendor customization, and more.

3. MultiVendorX

MultiVendorX is one of the best plugins for creating a niche marketplace. What’s cool about MultiVendorX is that you are not limited to making just an eCommerce marketplace.

You can also add subscriptions, auction features, or even a rental marketplace. Let’s say you wanted only to sell handmade goods, similar to how you would use Etsy. With MultiVendorX, you are in total control.

MultiVendorX gives you a wider range of monetization strategies than other platforms. While you can charge a commission fee, you can also charge subscription fees, listing fees, pay-per-contact, pay-per-action, or a mixed model. Pay-per-contact and pay-per-action would be best suited to a service marketplace.

For example, when a user books a table at a restaurant through your marketplace, you would get paid for that.

MultiVendorX also offers an easy-to-read analytics dashboard so that you can view sales performance. You can filter by vendors, products, product categories, and more.

There’s even a Google Analytics integration that allows you to track your traffic sources. That being said, we recommend using MonsterInsights to get insights from Google Analytics directly in your WordPress dashboard.

Pricing: Free to get started, but if you want advanced features, plans start at $399 per year.

Pros:

• Lots of available monetization strategies.
• Vendors can create a product catalog.
• You can create many types of niche marketplaces.

Cons:

• Paid plans are more expensive due to their diverse feature set.

Why We Recommend Using MultiVendorX: If selling products isn’t your main focus, then MultiVendorX might be the perfect solution. It allows you to create niche, subscription-based, and auction marketplaces. So whether you want to be the next eBay or Craigslist, there’s something for everyone. The plugin offers many monetization options, so you are not just limited by charging commissions, either.

4. WooCommerce Product Vendors

WooCommerce Product Vendors is an official plugin from WooCommerce that allows you to turn your store into a powerful marketplace. At its core, the plugin lets you:

• Build a diverse community of sellers.
• Set a commission rate for each vendor.
• Receive detailed earnings and sales.

While vendors don’t have the same level of customization over their storefronts as plugins like WC Vendors or Dokan, they do still have some control. For example, they can manage their shipping rules, view sales performance, control their public profiles, and send customers tracking numbers.

The biggest advantage to using this plugin is that it’s a part of the vast WooCommerce ecosystem. It allows you to sell anything from digital downloads and handmade products to music, themes, photographs, and more. You could even sell services and have customers book appointments using WooCommerce Bookings.

Pricing: It costs $119 per year.

Pros:

• You can tailor the appearance of vendor pages to align with your brand.
• Woo Product Vendors allows you to onboard new sellers easily with a customizable registration form.
• Vendors can manage their product listings, orders, and inventories.

Cons:

• Vendors must have PayPal accounts to use the plugin’s automatic payout feature, which can be very limiting for sellers in certain regions.
• It doesn’t allow vendors to customize the front end of their store.

Why We Recommend Using Product Vendors: WooCommerce Product Vendors is a simple solution that lets you easily turn your store into a multi-vendor site. You can enable commissions based on a set amount, percentage, store, product, vendor, or individual. Beyond that, you can set payouts to send on a schedule like weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.

5. YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor / Marketplace

YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor is a beginner-friendly WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin that allows you to create and manage an eCommerce marketplace similar to AliExpress, SHEIN, or Amazon. It comes with both free and paid versions, so you can test the tool before making a commitment.

What’s unique about the YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor plugin is that you can customize what appears on the vendor side. For example, you can perform actions like setting the seller’s header size and color, customizing the related products section, and more.

You also get instant compatibility with all of the YITH plugins. For instance, if you wanted to add reviews of all products to each listing, then you could connect your site to the YITH WooCommerce Advanced Reviews plugin.

Pricing: It costs $149.99 per year.

Pros:

• You can easily set up your marketplace.
• The plugin allows you to customize the registration form and approve or reject vendor applications.
• As the marketplace owner, you can set vendor permissions.

Cons:

• Vendors don’t have a lot of customization options to personalize their own store.

Why We Recommend Using YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor: We like the YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor plugin because it gives the owner a lot of control over what vendors can and can’t do. You can set the commissions and permissions. for instance, you can decide whether you want to allow them to generate coupons, manage reviews, or limit the number of products they can publish.

6. WCFM Marketplace

WCFM Marketplace is a free marketplace plugin from the WordPress repository. It has a lot of the essential features you’d expect, like flexible commissions, vendor registration, bulk product uploads, and more.

Vendors have a lot of control over their shipping rates. They can set them by zone, country, distance, weight, country, and even zip code.

The plugin also gives the marketplace owner a lot of control. For instance, you can set the rules for withdrawals and disbursements. It also supports reverse withdrawals in the event that a customer requests a refund.

You can configure the refund settings for vendors. For instance, you may want refunds to be auto-approved or set up to enforce a threshold number of days for permissible refunds.

But if you want additional features, then the WCFM Marketplace has a wide range of paid add-ons. For example, the WooCommerce Frontend Manager addon allows you to set store hours, store vacations, add reviews, and more.

The Analytics addon gives you the ability to analyze visitors and sales by product category, specific products, traffic sources, etc.

Pricing: Free to get started, but they offer a variety of premium extensions available that range between $19 to $249+.

Pros:

• Marketplace owners have a lot of control over setting rules for operating their multi-vendor stores.
• It is a relatively affordable plugin with a free plan.
• Vendors can configure the store’s SEO by placing appropriate keywords.

Cons:

• There are complaints about the quality of customer service.
• You need to pay for add-ons to allow vendors to customize and manage the front end of their stores.

Why We Recommend Using WCFM Marketplace: WCFM Marketplace is a good option with a wide range of feature sets for both the marketplace owner and vendors. Plus, unique customizations such as seller verification and badges are available. The verification ensures a seller verifies they are a real person, and the badge will showcase the best vendors on your site.

7. Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads is a popular plugin for selling digital products like ebooks, courses, audio, pdf, templates, and more.

While it’s not a WooCommerce plugin, it’s the best choice for people looking to turn their website into a digital product marketplace.

With the Frontend Submissions addon, you can configure your own eCommerce store for selling third-party products. Once configured, you can allow anyone to sell digital products through your store, similar to Etsy or Gumroad.

On the front end, vendors can register to become sellers in your marketplace. Upon approval, they’ll be given access to a vendor dashboard, where they can create new products, add product pages, manage orders, access revenue stats, and communicate with customers.

What’s also cool about this addon is that it integrates with the Reviews extension. That way, customers can rate and leave reviews on the products they’ve purchased. Vendors get valuable feedback about their products and can leverage these reviews as social proof for more orders.

Everything is drag-and-drop, so vendors can easily build out their product listings without writing code. All they do is add a product description, upload images, and set their pricing.

For a full tutorial, check out our complete guide on how to create a digital product marketplace in WordPress.

Pricing: Starts at $99.50 per year.

Pros:

• Easy registration process for vendors.
• Vendors can easily create their own storefronts since everything is drag-and-drop.
• Vendors have the power to track their stats and communicate with customers.

Cons:

• Easy Digital Downloads is geared towards selling digital products, not physical products.

Why We Recommend Using Easy Digital Downloads: If you plan on selling digital products, then Easy Digital Downloads is the perfect choice. While it’s not a WooCommerce plugin, it still works for all WordPress websites. Easy Digital Downloads also comes with a wide range of extensions like multi-currency capabilities, email marketing service and payment gateway integrations, add-to-cart pop-ups, and more.

Other Useful Plugins for WooCommerce Websites

Besides having a WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin to simply create the marketplace, you might want to download a few additional tools to help provide sellers and buyers with a better user experience.

Here are a few tools to consider.

8. TeraWallet

TeraWallet is a free WordPress plugin that lets your customers easily store money in a digital wallet on your multi-vendor marketplace website.

Returning buyers can add money to their wallets using a variety of payment methods and later use it to make purchases. With this plugin installed on the website, customers won’t have to fill in their payment details every time or for every vendor they purchase from.

Beyond the core wallet functionality, TeraWallet has a useful cashback and rewards system that allows you to provide discounts to customers based on their purchases.

For instance, you can set cashback rates for specific categories or products and even provide bonus cashback during special events or seasonal promotions. This is a great way to build customer loyalty and drive more buyers to your marketplace.

Pricing: Free to use

Pros:

• The plugin is free to use.
• Customers can deposit funds, transfer money to other users, and make purchases with their wallet balance.
• Customers can even make partial payments with the balance and the remainder with their credit cards.

Cons:

• It’s not a multi-vendor-specific plugin, so it works for regular WooCommerce and online stores, too.

Why We Recommend Using TeraWallet: We like TeraWallet as a plugin to improve the user experience. If you want your customers to keep returning to your website, then it’s a good idea to ensure a seamless checkout experience. With TeraWallet, customers can keep an account balance, and sellers can reward them with cashback.

9. Product Feed PRO for WooCommerce

Product Feed PRO for WooCommerce is a plugin that helps you set up better eCommerce marketing campaigns.

It helps you add product feeds to your marketing channels, such as Facebook, Google Shopping, Bing Ads, and others. Adding these feeds will help you showcase your top sellers, which help you boost their sales. Best of all, this plugin has an unlimited number of products you can put in your product feeds.

In addition, you can set various filters and rules to show only your vendor’s most profitable products. You can exclude products that are low on stock, have low-profit margins, or only include products on sale.

Pricing: Free to use

Pros:

• Free and paid versions are available.
• Filter rules so you can show the best products for your marketing campaigns.
• 100+ templates included for marketplaces and comparison shopping engines.

Cons:

• It is not designed explicitly for multi-vendor sites, so each seller does not get their own control set.

Why We Recommend Using Product Feed Pro for WooCommerce: We like Product Feed Pro for WooCommerce because it’s a good way to help advertise your marketplace. Adding product feeds to your Google Shopping campaigns will allow you to showcase some of the most popular products on your website and, in turn, help out your vendors.

How to Choose the Right WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Plugin

Not all WooCommerce multi-vendor plugins are made equal. That’s because you may have specific needs that are different from those of other eCommerce marketplaces.

But still, here are some key features and factors to consider when making your decision.

Vendor Management Tools

At the heart of a successful eCommerce marketplace is the ability to easily manage multiple vendors. So, you’ll want to look for vendor management features such as:

• Unlimited product uploads and variations
• Inventory management
• Sales data and reporting dashboard
• Shipping management
• Vendor Registration

For instance, WC Vendors provides a full vendor dashboard so you can see all of your orders and shipment status.

The idea is that the plugin should be able to handle all multi-vendor activities, contributing to smoother operation.

Individual Vendor Stores

Your branding plays a vital role in attracting vendors and customers. That means your chosen platform offers a high level of customization.

These customization options may include things like flexible layout designs, adjustable themes, and personalized storefronts for vendors. Each vendor must have its own independent storefront with unique URLs that customers can send.

On top of that, vendors should have the power to add custom dashboard logos, unique headers, and product descriptions.

Commission Structure

Since you are responsible for driving all the traffic to your marketplace, it’s a good idea to have a commission structure in place.

The best multi-vendor plugins offer a flexible commission system. Under this system, you can charge vendors a fixed or percentage fee for every successful sale made through your platform.

For instance, WC Vendors allows you to set multiple commission types. You can even offer tiered commissions based on product price, product sales, or total sales.

Essentially, it allows you to take a small cut to provide the customer base, infrastructure, and platform so that vendors can sell their products or services.

Payment Gateways

Without convenient payment gateway options, there’s a good chance your visitors will abandon their shopping carts.

No matter how many pop-ups, social proof, countdown timers, or other trust badges you add, customers need a reliable payment option they can trust, like Stripe and PayPal.

These are trusted WooCommerce payment gateways available in most countries. They allow you to process credit card payments. Furthermore, customers know they can always contact these payment providers should a problem arise with their order.

Integration and Third-Party Apps

Your multi-vendor plugin is just one part of your entire eCommerce ecosystem. You’ll need other third-party apps such as inventory management systems, email marketing services, accounting software, and help desk plugins.

For example, adding various WooCommerce shipping plugins is probably helpful so that customers can calculate extra fees before checkout and track their orders after making a purchase.

WC Vendors offers integrations with UPS and FedEx shipping plugins, which is helpful for getting accurate shipping costs and handling returns.

Navigation and Search

When customers land on a marketplace site, they expect a smooth shopping experience. Slow website performance or a lack of mobile responsiveness are a few factors that could increase bounce rates.

But beyond that, it’s helpful to have a search bar on your site along with a filter option. For example, WC Vendors provides a sorting feature so users can easily sort through products by rating, price point, and popularity.

They also have an intuitive search functionality so shoppers can find the products they’re looking for without needing to scroll through pages of product listings.

Documentation and Customer Support

When an issue comes up, getting the error fixed should be the top priority. That’s why you want to look for a multi-vendor plugin with a dedicated support team that you can easily reach.

It should also provide a comprehensive knowledge base with documentation showing you how to perform every single function offered by the platform. Ideally, there should also be a way to submit a support ticket or a live chat feature where you can speak with a customer service representative.

Frequently Asked Questions About WooCommerce Multi Vendor Plugins

What is the best multi-vendor plugin for WooCommerce?

Based on our experience and testing, WC Vendors is the best multi-vendor plugin for WooCommerce. Its combination of user-friendliness, customization, and diverse feature sets makes it the most popular choice for building your own online marketplace.

Why create a multi-vendor marketplace?

Creating your own marketplace allows you to stand out from the pack. You can create niche multi-vendor platforms to serve a specific audience, such as a marketplace for hand-crafted goods or an online booking system for online contractors. The possibilities are endless. By creating a multi-vendor site, you can earn an additional income stream with commissions and serve a niche audience.

With all that in mind, WC Vendors is the best overall multi-vendor plugin for WooCommerce since you can sell physical goods, digital products, services, and subscriptions. That said, MultiVendorX offers multiple monetization methods like charging a subscription model, listing fees, or pay-per-action.

We hope this article helped you find the best WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin for WordPress. You may also want to check out our curated list of the best WooCommerce plugins for your store and the best WooCommerce WordPress themes.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 9 Best WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Plugins (Compared) first appeared on WPBeginner.

The good news is that there are easy and automated ways to stop contact form spam in WordPress.

In this article, we will share the best ways to reduce and block contact form spam in WordPress.

Why You Need to Block Contact Form Spam in WordPress

Contact form spam is usually automated by bots. This means even smaller WordPress blogs and websites are often targets.

These spambots crawl websites and look for non-secure forms so that they can email you spammy links. These links often send you to revenue-generating ad websites or phishing sites.

They may also try to break into your website’s login form using brute force attacks. If a bot does manage to log in to your WordPress account, then they could take control of your website. This is one reason why WordPress security is so important.

Sometimes, they can even look for vulnerabilities in your site’s forms and hijack them to send malware or spam to other people. Spammers can install malware, leaving your visitors and website at risk. They can even steal personal information, which is very dangerous for online stores with sensitive customer data.

On top of that, if spammers use your contact forms to send spam messages via email, they could also send spam to your email list. They often look like an email you sent.

Unaware that it could be spam, users can open these emails and click on the links inside. This would increase traffic and engagement on that site and reward the spammer in the process. Plus, it could hurt your relationship with your readers.

This means that spam isn’t just a nuisance. Those spambots can be dangerous to your website, your visitors, and your reputation.

That being said, let’s take a look at some proven methods for preventing contact form spam on your WordPress site. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to learn about first:

1. Choosing the Right WordPress Form Plugin to Combat Spam

Many WordPress contact form plugins don’t come with built-in spam protection. Even if a plugin has basic spam protection features, these often aren’t very reliable or easy to use.

The most effective way to block contact form spam is by choosing the best WordPress contact form plugin.

We recommend using WPForms because it comes with a built-in spam protection token that protects your forms without affecting the visitor experience.

WPForms also has built-in reCAPTCHA and custom CAPTCHA features that help you fight contact form spam. We will be going through the different options you can use.

You can read our complete WPForms review for more details.

First, you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin. If you are not sure how to do that, then take a look at our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the WPForms plugin is activated, you’ll need to create a contact form.

To get started, simply head to WPForms » Add New, where you’ll be taken to the drag-and-drop editor. Then type a name for your contact form into the ‘Form Name’ field.

WPForms comes with 1300+ ready-made templates that you can use to create all kinds of forms. You can use these form templates to collect registrations, create an email newsletter, and even accept credit card payments on your WordPress website.

Since we are creating a contact form, you can go ahead and select ‘Use Template’ under the pre-made ‘Simple Contact Form’ template.

WPForms will now automatically create a basic contact form for your WordPress website.

This form template already has fields where the visitor can type in their name, email address, and message.

By default, WPForms will automatically protect your forms with a secret anti-spam token. This token is unique to each form submission and invisible to both spambots and visitors.

In the past, WPForms used to use the honeypot technology, but this new anti-spam token is far superior and is one of the reasons that WPForms is the market leader.

Since spambots can’t see this secret token, they get stuck and can’t submit the form.

Some anti-spam features can hurt the visitor experience, particularly if they ask the visitor to perform some task before submitting the form. As a result, fewer people may complete your contact form.

Since the WPForms token is created and submitted automatically, it does not impact the visitor experience, which is great for your form conversion rates.

The WPForms anti-spam token is automatically enabled on each new form that you create.

Want to check that this setting is enabled on your form?

Simply head over to Settings » Spam Protection and Security. The ‘Enable anti-spam protection’ slider should already be enabled.

On top of that, you can choose to enable the Akismet anti-spam protection. It can automatically detect and block suspicious form submissions to stop fake entries.

Now, some spammers are persistent, which can lead to a few spam submissions still coming through your contact form.

If this is the case, then you can use any of the methods below to stop spammers from using your contact form.

2. Use reCAPTCHA Checkbox to Block Contact Form Spam

One straightforward way to stop the spambots from getting through is to use reCAPTCHA. This method also works with the lite version of WPForms.

reCAPTCHA is a free tool available from Google, and we use it in combination with WPForm’s built-in anti-spam token system.

To add a reCAPTCHA checkbox to your contact form, head over to WPForms » Settings in your WordPress dashboard.

Then, go ahead and click on the ‘CAPTCHA’ tab. Next, you need to select ‘reCAPTCHA’ by clicking on it.

Once you’ve done that, scroll to the ‘Type’ section.

Then click to select the ‘Checkbox reCAPTCHA v2’ radio button.

WPForms will now ask you for a Site Key and Secret Key. To get this information, simply head over to Google’s reCAPTCHA setup page.

On the Google reCAPTCHA page, click on ‘v3 Admin console.’

If you’re not already logged into your Google account, then you’ll need to type in your username and password or create a new Google account.

Next, you’ll see a screen where you can register your WordPress website. To start, type in a label for your website. This is for your own reference and will not be visible to visitors.

After that, you can go ahead and give your reCAPTCHA for this site a name. Then select ‘Challenge (v2)’ and the ‘I’m not a robot’ radio button.

Next, type your website’s domain name into the ‘Domain’ field.

Once you’ve done that, click the ‘Submit’ button at the bottom of the page.

Next, you’ll see a page containing the site key and secret key for your website.

To start using reCAPTCHA, you simply need to copy this information into your WPForms’ settings page.

Simply copy each key separately and then paste it into the ‘Site Key’ and ‘Secret Key’ fields in your WordPress dashboard.

Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘Save Settings’ button at the bottom of the screen.

After that, you are ready to add the reCAPTCHA checkbox to your contact form.

To start, head over to WPForms » All Forms and click on the ‘Edit’ link for the form that you want to protect with reCAPTCHA.

This will open your form in the drag-and-drop form builder. In the left-hand menu, find the ‘reCAPTCHA’ field and give it a click.

You’ll now see a message that reCAPTCHA has been enabled for the form. To continue, simply click the ‘OK’ button.

Now, you’ll see the reCAPTCHA logo at the top of your form.

This means that you’ve successfully added reCAPTCHA protection to your contact form.

When you are done, remember to save your changes by clicking on the orange ‘Save’ button.

Adding Your Contact Form to Your Website

After all that, you are ready to add the contact form to your WordPress website. To do this, simply open the page or post where you want to show your form and click the ‘+’ button to add a new block.

You can then type ‘WPForms’ to find the right block. Once you click on the WPForms block, it will add the block to your page.

Next, open the ‘Select a Form’ dropdown.

You can now choose the contact form that you just created.

WPForms will show a preview of how this form will look directly inside the WordPress block editor.

You can also preview this page as normal by clicking on the ‘Preview’ button at the top of the page. No matter how you choose to preview the form, you’ll see a reCAPTCHA field.

This field will block all automated spam submissions, drastically reducing the amount of contact form spam you get on your website.

3. Using Google Invisible reCAPTCHA to Block Contact Form Spam

Some website owners don’t want their users to have to check a box to submit the contact form. This is where invisible reCAPTCHA comes in.

Invisible reCAPTCHA works like the regular reCAPTCHA, except there’s no checkbox.

Instead, when the form is submitted, Google will determine whether it might be a bot submitting it. If so, Google will pop up the extra reCAPTCHA verification. If you want to see how it works, Google has a demo here.

You can use invisible reCAPTCHA on your WPForms contact forms. In fact, the process is very similar to adding a reCAPTCHA checkbox, as described above.

The first difference is that you need to select a different option when setting up reCAPTCHA on the Google website.

Rather than pick the ‘I’m not a robot’ checkbox, you must select ‘Invisible reCAPTCHA badge’ instead.

You can then create the site key and secret key following the same process above.

Once you’ve done that, head over to WPForms » Settings in your WordPress dashboard and click the ‘CAPTCHA’ tab. However, this time, you’ll need to select ‘Invisible reCAPTCHA v2.’

Make sure to hit the ‘Save Settings’ button at the bottom of the page.

You can then go ahead and add a reCAPTCHA field to your contact form, following the same process described above.

Every time someone submits a contact form, your WordPress site will use the invisible reCAPTCHA automatically.

Visitors will see the reCAPTCHA logo in the bottom corner of your form, as you can see in the following image. This lets them know that your contact form is protected from spambots.

If the user wants to learn more about reCAPTCHA, then they simply need to click that logo. The logo will then expand to show links to Google’s privacy policy and terms of service.

It’s also a good idea to update your own site’s privacy policy with some information about how you use reCAPTCHA.

4. Using Custom CAPTCHA to Block Contact Form Spam

Some website owners don’t want to use Google’s reCAPTCHA on their sites due to privacy concerns or simply want something not branded.

The good news is that WPForms Pro comes with a custom CAPTCHA addon. This lets you create your own question-based CAPTCHA to block contact form spam without relying on Google.

To activate this addon, simply go to WPForms » Addons in your WordPress dashboard. Then, find the Custom Captcha Addon, and click its ‘Install Addon’ button.

Once it’s installed, go to WPForms » All Forms. You can then find your contact form and click on its ‘Edit’ link to open it in the WPForms editor.

In the left-hand menu, scroll to ‘Fancy fields’ and drag the ‘Custom Captcha’ field onto your form.

We recommend placing this field just above the ‘Submit’ button. This means that visitors will have already completed the rest of the form before they realize they must complete a CAPTCHA field.

By default, this field shows a random math question. Another option is to type in a few different questions and then challenge visitors to enter the correct answers.

If you want to switch to a question-and-answer CAPTCHA, then click on the ‘CAPTCHA’ field to select it.

In the left-hand menu, simply open the ‘Type’ dropdown and select ‘Question and Answer.’

If you choose ‘Question and Answer,’ then we recommend creating a few different questions. WPForms will then rotate these questions randomly so they are harder for spambots to predict.

If you choose the ‘Math’ option, then WPForms will generate random math questions, so it’s much less predictable.

5. Prevent Spam Bots From Seeing Your Form

Don’t want to use reCAPTCHA or a custom CAPTCHA field on your form?

Another way to block contact form spam in WordPress is by stopping bots from even seeing your form. You could do this by password-protecting your contact form or by only showing it to people who have registered with your WordPress membership site.

These methods might be overkill for a standard contact form, but they could work well in other situations.

For example, if you run a monthly Q&A for your email subscribers, then you might create a private form where they can send you questions.

Password Protecting Your Form Using WordPress’ Visibility Options

You can password-protect your entire Contact Us page using WordPress’ built-in tools.

To get started, simply open your Contact Us page in the WordPress editor. Then, in the left-hand menu, next to ‘Visibility,’ click on ‘Public.’

In the popup that appears, click on ‘Password protected.’

You can now type your password into the field that shows ‘Use a secure password’ by default. All visitors will use the same password to access your Contact Us page.

Once you’ve done that, you can either update or publish your page as normal.

Now, whenever someone visits your Contact Us page, they’ll be asked to type in the password.

Once they’ve entered the password, the visitor can click on the ‘Submit’ button and use your contact form as normal.

There are a couple of drawbacks to this method.

First, your contact page will show a default message that isn’t easy to customize.

Second, this method will password-protect your entire Contact Us page and not just your form. This could be a problem if this page has some content that should be visible to all users, such as FAQs, your business phone number, or postal address.

Password Protecting Your Form Using a WPForms Addon

If you are using the Pro version of WPForms, then the Form Locker addon lets you password-protect the form itself and not your entire Contact Us page.

To install Form Locker, simply go to WPForms » Addons. You can then find the Form Locker Addon and click its ‘Install Addon’ button.

WPForms should install and activate this addon automatically.

Next, head over to WPForms » All Forms. You can then find the form you want password-protected, and click on its ‘Edit’ link.

In the left-hand menu, select Settings » Form Locker. You can then turn on the ‘Enable verification’ toggle.

WPForms will now show some fields where you can type in the password you want to use and the message you’ll show visitors.

Your Contact Us page will now be visible to all users, with just the contact form hidden.

In the following image, you can see an example of how your form will look before the visitor enters the password.

Showing Your Contact Page Only to Registered Users

You can also only let users access your contact form if they’ve registered on your site.

In the Form Locker tab of WPForms, you can enable the ‘Logged in users only’ toggle under Form Restrictions. That way, the form can only be viewed by logged-in members.

This is a great option if you want to offer a specific service to members only. There are several great membership site plugins that you could use to do this.

6. Block Spam IP Addresses

If you notice malicious behavior from specific IP addresses, blocking them could be a necessary security measure to prevent potential spam or attacks. It’s a great way to block spammers who may have bypassed your CAPTCHA.

Every user who comments on your site automatically leaves behind an IP address. So, you may see a pattern where you are repeatedly finding similar IP addresses spamming your site. In that case, you can easily blacklist these IP addresses.

All you have to do is go to Settings » Discussion in your WordPress dashboard.

From there, in the ‘Disallowed Comment Keys’ field, you’ll need to type all of the IP addresses that you want to block in the text field. Make sure to only include one IP address per line. ‘

For more details, you can see our guide on how to block IP addresses in WordPress.

7. Restrict Entries By Country

If you are consistently experiencing spam submissions from specific countries, then you can also block entries from those countries. Also, if your website operates in a specific region, then restricting access from other countries will ensure you only receive relevant inquiries.

The good news is that WPForms has a country filtering feature in its advanced spam-blocking methods. Under Settings » Spam Protection and Security you can toggle on the ‘Enable country filter.’ From there, you can choose to allow or deny specific countries.

Once you are done adding those countries to the deny list, you can also customize the message those users will receive.

8. Block Specific Email Addresses on Your Form

Blocking spam from human visitors can be tricky since you’ll need to deploy multiple strategies to stop them in their tracks.

If you notice a common theme of specific email addresses that continually visit your contact forms, then you can manually block them.

Just head over to your contact form and click on the ‘Email’ field. Under ‘Advanced Options’ when editing the field, you can add a list of denied email addresses.

In the text box, just type in the email addresses that you’d like to stop submissions from. You can type in the complete email or use an asterisk * to allow for a partial match.

The feature is incredibly powerful since you can create partial matches in many different formats. For example, here are several examples you can experiment with:

• spammer@spamcompany.com – This is where you block the exact match of the specified email address.
• spammer* – Using this filter will prevent submissions from emails that start with that name.
• *@spamcompany.com – This blocks all email addresses from that domain.
• a*spamcompany.com – You can block email addresses that begin with a specific letter for that given domain.
• spammer@spamcompany.com, spammer2@spamcompany.com – If you know all of the names for that email address, you can add them with a comma between each or add a new line for each email.

If you are also looking to block temporary and spammy email addresses, then see our guide on how to block disposable email addresses in WordPress.

9. Filter Out Spammy Keywords and Profanity in Your Contact Form Submissions

Human visitors may enter all kinds of keywords or phrases to promote their products or links when submitting spam through your contact form.

To deal with this, you can block spammy keywords in your contact form. All you have to do is toggle on the ‘Enable keyword filter’ setting, which is located on the Settings » Spam Protection and Security page.

Then go ahead and click on ‘Edit keyword list.’

Go ahead and enter the list of keywords that you want to be blocked from contact form entries.

You may want to consider keywords related to financial scams, adult content, or health-related scams.

Once you’ve entered your banned keywords, just click ‘Save Changes.’

We hope this article has helped you learn how to block contact form spam in WordPress. You may also want to see our complete WordPress security guide or our expert pick of the best business phone services for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Block Contact Form Spam in WordPress (9 Proven Ways) first appeared on WPBeginner.