WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. Launched on September 27, 2011, the plugin quickly became popular for its simplicity to install and customize and for the market position of the base product as freeware (even though many of its optional extensions are paid and proprietary). WooCommerce is developed and supported by Woo and includes contributions from a global community of developers.
WooCommerce was first developed by WordPress theme developer Woo Themes, who hired Mike Jolley and James Koster, developers at Jigowatt, to work on a fork of Jigo shop that became WooCommerce.[8] In January 2020, it was estimated that WooCommerce is used by around 3.9 million websites. In November 2014, the first Woo Conf, a conference focusing on eCommerce using WooCommerce, was held in San Francisco, California. It attracted 300 attendees. In May 2015, Woo Themes and WooCommerce were acquired by Automatic, operator of WordPress.com and core contributor to the WordPress software. In December 2020, WooCommerce acquired Mail Poet, a popular WordPress newsletter management plugin. Subsequently, WooCommerce launched WooCommerce Mobile App for iOS and Android. The app lets WooCommerce store owners view and manage their stores from mobile devices.On October 31, 2023, WooCommerce changed its branding to Woo. Woo is how Automatic starts referring to the brand/company, while WooCommerce is the open-source e-commerce platform for WordPress — Woo’s core product.