For years, I never seriously considered launching a plugin on the WooCommerce Marketplace. It felt like a place for established development companies with dedicated teams, mature products, and the resources to handle everything that comes with selling plugins at scale.
Today, that barrier feels somewhat lower than ever. If I’m smart enough, AI can help me with coding, documentation, testing, support, and many of the tasks that used to make WordPress plugin development feel intimidating.
Building and maintaining a WooCommerce extension is still hard work, but maybe the WooCommerce Marketplace is no longer out of reach for small founders.
So, if creating a product is technically easier, does it make sense to launch my next plugin there?
Well, a recent tweet from a marketplace vendor brought up concerns I’ve been hearing for years around commissions, visibility, customer data, and reporting. At the same time, the WooCommerce Marketplace offers credibility, distribution, billing, and access to a large WooCommerce audience.
I decided to take a closer look: what does selling on the WooCommerce Marketplace actually look like today, and does it still make sense for small developers like me?
TL;DR
Consider this your official long-form post warning… this is a thorough guide covering everything you need to know about the WooCommerce Marketplace, including case studies, tweets, and short interviews. If you’re short on time, here are my findings:
- I looked into whether the WooCommerce Marketplace still makes sense for new plugin authors, today.
- Distribution, credibility, billing, and discoverability are handled by Woo.
- In return, you give up 30% of revenue and most control over pricing, customer data, and marketing.
- Discoverability is not equal for everyone and often depends on momentum, installs, and brand strength.
- Even successful plugins often sit in a relatively small install range, which may limit long-term scale expectations.
- Different entry points change the experience a lot: solo developers, existing sellers, established brands, and acquirers all operate under very different conditions.
- Alternatives like Freemius and Shopify use different fee structures and customer ownership models.
- The decision is less about whether the WooCommerce Marketplace is “good” or “bad”, and more about what kind of business you want to build.
1. Context
This Post Started With a Tweet
The idea for this piece started with a tweet from a developer who acquired a simple plugin on the WooCommerce Marketplace to better understand how the platform works… from the inside:
What caught my attention was the fact that the complaints felt very familiar. The author mentioned the lack of a proper dashboard, limited reporting, difficulty getting visibility through marketplace listings, and the 30% commission.
According to the thread, even WooCommerce acknowledged that some of these limitations are known issues without being able to provide a timeline for improvements.
Some people pointed out that the marketplace still provides access to a large audience and handles parts of the business that many developers would rather avoid.
Others questioned whether the tradeoffs make sense anymore, especially now that selling independently has become much easier thanks to platforms like Freemius and other MoR (Merchant of Record) solutions.
To be clear, this post isn’t an attempt to criticize the WooCommerce Marketplace. I have never tried to sell a product there, so I’m not writing from experience.
What interested me was the discussion itself. If building a plugin is becoming more accessible, then choosing where to sell it becomes a much more important decision.
So rather than assume anything, I wanted to dig deeper into the different parts of the marketplace experience and hear from people who have actually been through it.
Why I Never Looked at the Marketplace Before Now
For years, the WooCommerce Marketplace felt completely out of reach. I never saw it as a place where an independent developer could casually launch a plugin and “see what happens“ (because this is what we do, honestly).
From the outside, it looked like a marketplace built for established companies with teams, processes, and products that were already proven elsewhere.
Part of that was probably my own perception. When you browse the marketplace, you see extensions from companies that have been around for years. Many of them have large customer bases, dedicated support teams, and vast portfolios. It’s easy to look at that and assume you don’t belong there 🙂
The technical side also felt intimidating. There are strict review processes, high expectations around security and code quality, and ongoing requirements that would take a lot of time to understand and comply with…
As a result, I spent years looking at the WooCommerce Marketplace from a distance.
Hello, AI!
Over the last few months, that perception started to change. Building software is still hard, but many of the tasks that used to slow down small developers are now much easier than they were before. Writing code, reviewing code, creating documentation, troubleshooting bugs, generating test cases, and handling support questions can all be assisted by… AI.
Note: I haven’t fully embraced AI from a development point of view, but I guess it shouldn’t be that hard (as long as someone is willing to sit down with me and teach me the basics of AI-assisted coding).
Still, that doesn’t mean AI builds successful plugins for you; you still need product ideas, experience, judgment, and a willingness to maintain what you ship. But it does lower the barrier to entry.
For the first time, I started thinking that launching a WooCommerce extension might actually be realistic for solo developers. The marketplace no longer felt like a place reserved for companies with dozens of employees.
So, if building a plugin is becoming more accessible, does selling it on the WooCommerce Marketplace still make sense?
2. WooCommerce Marketplace Business Model
Let’s start with money, because that decision heavily depends on it. We’ve seen CodeCanyon/Themeforest raising the fees to 50% recently. On the other hand, we’ve seen Freemius and Shopify lowering the same. Let’s see what WooCommerce asks for, and what you get in return.
70% of Every Sale, Even If You Sell Elsewhere
One of the first things people (should) notice when looking at the WooCommerce Marketplace is the commission structure.
If you’re familiar with other marketplaces, WooCommerce handles the website, billing, payments (and refunds), customer acquisition, and the trust that comes with being the official marketplace. In return, authors give up a percentage of each sale, which is exactly 30% right now. According to the Vendor Agreement:
2.2. For Products listed on the Woo Marketplace, WooCommerce will pay Partner 70% of the Product Net Revenue that WooCommerce collects in connection with a User’s purchase of the Product from the Woo Marketplace on a monthly basis within thirty (30) days of the end of each calendar month.
Now, that’s way different than it used to be before. Years ago, selling on the WooCommerce Marketplace came with a choice: stay exclusive and keep a larger share of each sale (60%), or sell elsewhere too and earn a much smaller percentage (40%) (ref: https://woocommerce.com/vendor-agreement/ on the Web Archive, Sep 2020. There was also an additional 10% fee in case you handled renewals on your own site).
A lot of developers decided that wasn’t a tradeoff they wanted to make, so I guess this is why WooCommerce changed the commission structure.
Note for WooCommerce: there are developers that still don't know about this new commission structure, especially those who decided not to join the Marketplace years ago because of it. Maybe let's make this "you can also sell your product elsewhere" thing stand out more? A nice TL;DR on top of the Vendor Agreement page would probably help.Quick proof re: the need for better communication (thanks for sharing, Jessica and Stefan, and thanks for stepping in, Adrian!):
Anyhow, even if you’re now free to sell the same product on multiple channels, whether that 70/30 split makes sense depends on what you value most. If your goal is to focus on building products and let someone else handle the commercial side, the arrangement may feel reasonable. If you care about margins, ownership, and building a direct relationship with customers, the calculation may look very different.
What makes this topic interesting is that there is no universal answer. The same commission rate can feel expensive to one author and completely justified to another:
The comparison becomes more interesting when you look at alternatives like Freemius or Shopify. In those ecosystems, the economics are not just about a fixed percentage. They also include tools for pricing control, customer ownership, bundling, upsells, and direct communication with users.
Freemius, for example, typically operates at a 7% fee plus gateway fees, and it also provides deeper access to customer data and built-in monetization features. The tradeoff is not just about percentage, but about how much of the commercial layer you control yourself.
Shopify takes a different approach again. Developers keep 100% of the first $1,000,000 USD in annual app revenue, and 85% above that, while still paying payment processing fees and taxes where applicable. In return, Shopify provides a tightly integrated ecosystem, discovery surface, and billing infrastructure, but still allows developers to maintain direct relationships with merchants through their apps.
When you compare these models side by side, the differences are not just about how much the platform takes. They are about where the business logic lives. In some cases, pricing, billing, and customer relationships are deeply embedded in the platform. In others, those layers remain primarily in the hands of the developer.
When I look at WooCommerce Marketplace through that lens, the 70% is only one part of the equation. The other part is how much of the commercial layer sits inside the platform rather than in the hands of the vendor.
Note for WooCommerce: I find myself wondering whether the economics for new vendors could be slightly more flexible in the early stages. The first phase of any plugin is usually the hardest, and that’s also when the marketplace takes its full 30% share.WooCommerce (Automattic) Responsibilities
Looking at the vendor agreement, it’s also worth asking what that 30% actually pays for.
Automattic is responsible for operating the marketplace, hosting products and documentation, processing updates, providing monthly reporting, and maintaining the overall platform. The agreement also states that Automattic may promote products through marketing activities, rankings, reviews, and other discovery mechanisms, although there is no guarantee that any specific product will receive promotional support.
That’s an important distinction. The marketplace provides the infrastructure, trust, and distribution channel, but it doesn’t promise traffic, visibility, or sales. Authors still compete alongside every other extension in the catalog, including products that may solve the same problem.
Whether that’s a fair exchange is ultimately up to each seller to decide. For some, having WooCommerce handle the platform side of the business may easily justify the revenue share. For others, especially those already capable of selling independently, the value proposition may be harder to quantify.
Note for WooCommerce: one area that might be worth revisiting is early-stage visibility for new plugins. A newsletter mention or a static “new products” page helps, but it doesn’t really solve the cold start problem. New products need to compete immediately with established extensions that already have reviews, installs, and ranking signals. It could be interesting to explore whether new vendors could get a short, structured “launch window” where visibility is intentionally more balanced. For example, dedicated placement in search results, category pages, or a “new but reviewed” section that is more prominent than a static listing.Non-Exclusivity
Another clause that caught my attention is the one about competing products.
The agreement makes it clear that Automattic or a third party can develop, acquire, promote, and sell products that compete directly with yours (they can even add it to WooCommerce core, now). WooCommerce can also recommend alternative solutions to customers, even when those alternatives compete with your extension.
To be fair, this is not unusual for a marketplace. Customers expect choice, and WooCommerce can’t realistically promise any vendor special treatment or protection from competition. A healthy marketplace needs multiple solutions in the same category.
Still, it’s something worth considering as a seller. When you build your business on a marketplace, you’re sharing the shelf with competing products, and the platform itself remains free to invest in that same space. That’s very different from owning your own store, where every visitor arrives on your website and sees only your products.
Again, I don’t see this as a positive or a negative. It’s simply part of the deal. The marketplace provides access to a large audience, but it also reserves the right to present that audience with other options, including products that may solve the exact same problem.
Note for WooCommerce: one thing I'd love to see is more guidance around marketplace opportunities. Today, developers are largely left to guess what merchants need and which categories have room for innovation. Shopify regularly highlights gaps in its ecosystem and publishes app ideas for developers to explore. A similar approach could help attract new vendors while encouraging investment in areas where merchants would benefit most.3. Not Everyone Starts From the Same Place
The value of the WooCommerce Marketplace may depend heavily on where you’re starting from. Here are 4 case studies that may help you understand everything better.
The Existing Plugin Seller: SweetCode’s Pixel Manager Pro for WooCommerce
This is the case of someone already selling a WooCommerce plugin independently. Here, the marketplace becomes an additional channel rather than the foundation of the business. The author can drive traffic from their website, email list, social media, and partnerships while also benefiting from marketplace exposure.
This is what Aleksandar Vucenovic, SweetCode founder, told me about their Pixel Manager Pro for WooCommerce plugin on the marketplace:
For us, the Woo Marketplace currently generates roughly 10 to 20% of the revenue compared to our own channels.
That said, this needs a bit of nuance. We started selling through our own website and in-plugin purchases about two years before listing on WooCommerce.com, so our own channels naturally had more time to gain traction.
I also see value beyond direct sales. Having the plugin listed on WooCommerce.com gives us additional visibility and likely helps with SEO. Even if the sale does not happen directly on the marketplace, the listing still contributes to overall discoverability.
One clear benefit of the Woo Marketplace is that the version distributed there does not include our Freemius licensing library, which some customers prefer. So in that sense, the WooCommerce.com version is a bit leaner.
The biggest downside is that we do not receive the email addresses of people who buy or download the free version through WooCommerce.com. That limits our ability to build a direct relationship with those users and market to them later. Also, at least in our experience, WooCommerce.com does not actively help drive sales. They do not really promote our plugin through newsletters, campaigns, or other marketing channels.
Overall, I still see WooCommerce.com as a valuable additional channel, especially because publishing there is fully automated on our side and does not require much extra work. The main downside is that the fees are significantly higher than when selling through our own channels.
For an established plugin business, a marketplace listing can simply be another acquisition channel. If most sales already come through your own website, newsletter, affiliates, content, or partnerships, then even a relatively small contribution from the marketplace may justify the extra effort.
What I’m less certain about is how this translates to someone starting from zero. If I were launching my very first plugin, I would probably evaluate the marketplace very differently. Without an existing audience or customer base, I’d be much more interested in understanding how much visibility and discovery the marketplace can actually provide on its own.
That’s why I find discoverability such an interesting topic. The same marketplace can look very different depending on whether you’re bringing customers with you or hoping to find them there.
Note for WooCommerce: existing plugin sellers care deeply about customer relationships. While I understand the need to protect customer privacy, there may be opportunities to give vendors more insight into who uses their products and how they use them. The less of a black box the marketplace feels, the more attractive it becomes as a sales channel.The Solo Developer: Karolína Vyskočilová’s Phone Validator and Formatter for WooCommerce
This is someone with a good idea and no audience. This is the person I think about most when discussing the marketplace: for them, marketplace visibility may be one of the biggest reasons to join in the first place.
This is what Karolína Vyskočilová, told me about their Phone Validator and Formatter for WooCommerce plugin on the marketplace:
I’m a small fish, but being on the official marketplace buys you instant authority and distribution you’d otherwise spend months earning – it’s non-exclusive, so I can still sell the same plugin anywhere else, and Woo handles licensing, updates and payments for me.
The con is that I own nothing about the customer, and barely anything about the listing. It’s a black box – no emails, no feedback, barely any stats, no staged rollouts, no way to take people with me if I leave. I’m renting visibility, not building an audience.
Is it worth it? For a niche plugin I don’t plan to market, the reach can be fair value. But Woo takes 30% of every sale, renewals included, and the moment you want to build an ecosystem – upsells, a mailing list, a real relationship with your users – you need a channel of your own anyway and you’re never really in control here. The Marketplace sells your plugin; it doesn’t hand you your customers.
Reading this, I found myself agreeing with both sides of the argument.
On one hand, the marketplace clearly solves a lot of problems for a solo developer. Getting listed on an official WooCommerce property immediately gives a product credibility that would otherwise take months/years to build. It also removes much of the operational work around licensing, payments, and distribution.
On the other hand, I couldn’t help thinking about ownership. Over the years I’ve invested a huge amount of time into building an email list, publishing content, growing a community, and creating direct relationships with WooCommerce developers. Looking at it from that perspective, giving up access to customers feels like a significant tradeoff.
Of course, that’s easy for me to say because I already have an audience. If I were starting from scratch with a niche plugin and no plans to actively market it, I can absolutely see the appeal of letting the marketplace do the heavy lifting.
Maybe that’s the real question. Are you trying to sell a plugin, or are you trying to build a business around it? Those two goals can lead to very different decisions.
Note for WooCommerce: solo developers need help reaching their first customers. Once a plugin has installs, reviews, and momentum, discoverability becomes much easier. Getting those first users is the hard part. Consider giving newly approved extensions a more structured visibility boost through search, category pages, curated collections, and whatever can help them get that first dollar in the bank.The Established Plugin Brand: Barn2
This is a company with multiple WooCommerce products and an existing reputation. Great search engine rankings, tons of backlinks, videos, mentions, you name it.
These businesses often arrive with built-in trust, marketing resources, and a customer base that can be introduced to new products. Discoverability is still important, but they are less dependent on marketplace traffic alone.
In this case, Katie Keith tells us why Barn2 didn’t land on the WooCommerce Marketplace (yet):
It’s very tempting to sell on the official Woo Marketplace because many plugin companies are seeing a drop in sales from traditional sources such as SEO. Being on the Marketplace would provide an additional high profile channel to help people discover your plugins.
However, there are various reasons why I don’t currently sell on the Marketplace. If you already sell elsewhere, it would be quite a large project to make the changes required to maintain separate licensing systems. Unlike selling directly from your own website, you do not own the customer relationship when you sell on the marketplace. This means that you don’t know who your customers are, you don’t have their email addresses, and you can’t upsell your other products to them. Anecdotally, existing Marketplace sellers have told me that going on the Marketplace only increased their sales by a relatively small proportion, which may not justify the amount of work. I’ve also been told that there are limitations regarding the types of discounting and bundling you can do when selling your plugins on your own website because the price is always supposed to be comparable to the marketplace, although I haven’t verified this myself.
Despite all this, being on the Woo Marketplace would definitely be good for visibility. If I was just getting started with selling WooCommerce extensions today, then I would seriously consider it even though the decision is less clear-cut for an established plugin shop.
For an established plugin company, the marketplace is no longer about “getting started” or finding first customers. It becomes one of several channels, and it has to compete with everything else that is already working: SEO, direct sales, affiliates, email marketing, partnerships.
In that context, the tradeoffs feel more complex. The benefits are still there, especially around visibility and being present where WooCommerce users already look for solutions. But the cost is not just the 30% commission. It also includes operational complexity, separate licensing systems, and the loss of direct customer relationships that many companies rely on for upsells and long-term growth.
What I find interesting is that even with those downsides, the marketplace still feels attractive because of one thing: distribution. If organic traffic is declining and acquisition is getting harder, then any additional high-intent channel becomes valuable.
At the same time, it doesn’t sound like a clear growth lever for most established businesses. It sounds more like a marginal gain that has to be weighed carefully against the effort required to maintain it properly.
So again, I end up in the same place. The marketplace is neither clearly right nor clearly wrong. It simply plays a different role depending on how your business is already built.
Note for WooCommerce: established plugin brands need simplicity. Many already have their own licensing systems, support workflows, and marketing channels. The easier it is to integrate with existing operations and manage products at scale, the more attractive the marketplace becomes as an additional distribution channel.The Acquirer: Kestrel
Some companies don’t enter the marketplace by building new products. They acquire existing extensions that already have customers, rankings, reviews, support processes, and recurring revenue.
At that point, discoverability becomes a very different problem. The challenge isn’t getting found for the first time. It’s maintaining and growing an asset that already has momentum.
A good example of this is Kestrel (Ian Misner, Beka Rice, Max Rice). Over the past couple of years, they have acquired multiple WooCommerce extensions (currently, they own 40 plugins on the marketplace, as per the screenshot above, while more products are sold exclusively on their website) and built a wider portfolio by bringing existing products into their ecosystem rather than starting everything from scratch.
And this is how they do their own research:
When I look at this model, the first thing that stands out is how different the starting point is. A solo developer is trying to get their first users. An established brand is trying to expand distribution. An acquirer is often starting with something that already has momentum.
That changes the role of the marketplace. It is no longer mainly about discovery. It becomes a place where established products continue to operate, get maintained, and sit alongside other extensions in the ecosystem.
In that context, discoverability is almost secondary. The product is already discovered. The challenge is more about integration, maintenance, and scaling what already exists.
This makes me think again about the original question behind this post. The WooCommerce Marketplace is not one single opportunity. It is a very different experience depending on how you enter it. For some, it is a launchpad. For others, it is an additional channel. And for some, it is a portfolio that gets expanded through acquisition rather than creation.
Note for WooCommerce: acquirers and investors need better market intelligence. One thing I would love to see is more transparency around marketplace trends, growing categories, underserved niches, and merchant demand. Shopify regularly shares ecosystem opportunities and areas where merchants are actively looking for solutions. Similar insights would help companies make better investment decisions and encourage innovation where it is needed most.4. Product Visibility / Discoverability
How New Products Get Found
Launching a product is one thing. Getting people to discover it is something else entirely.
The WooCommerce Marketplace already contains hundreds of extensions across almost every category imaginable. That’s great for merchants, but it raises an obvious question for authors. How does a new product get noticed?
My assumption has always been that marketplace visibility is one of the main reasons to accept the commission and the platform rules. If the marketplace can consistently bring qualified buyers to your product, that has real value.
At the same time, many plugin developers already have their own audiences, websites, newsletters, YouTube channels, communities, and partnerships. In those cases, marketplace traffic may be only one piece of the puzzle.
This is what Remi Corson, who used to work at Woo/Automattic, had to say about all this:
I worked on the Marketplace from the inside while I was at Woo, so I say this with some affection: the uncomfortable truth is that it rewards tenure more than quality. Visibility and ranking flow to the vendors who got there early and stacked up reviews, not to whoever ships the best product today, and there’s very little room to differentiate. So my advice for a new product is counterintuitive: don’t treat the Marketplace as your growth engine. Get listed for the credibility and the built-in reach, but build your audience, your content and your brand off-platform. That’s the only thing you fully control, and right now it’s the only real way to stand out.
Reading this, I can see where it comes from, especially the idea that visibility often rewards time in the marketplace more than anything else.
It also connects back to something I keep noticing throughout this research. Discoverability is not just about how good a plugin is today, but about how much momentum it already has inside the system. Reviews, rankings, and historical performance all seem to play a role in how much attention a product gets.
At the same time, I am not sure this applies equally to every situation. A new product entering the marketplace is in a very different position compared to something that has already been listed for years. And a vendor who is actively driving traffic from outside the marketplace may experience this very differently from someone relying on marketplace traffic alone.
What I take from this is less about whether the system rewards tenure or quality, and more about what role the marketplace is expected to play. If it is treated as the main growth engine, then these limitations matter a lot more. If it is treated as a distribution channel alongside other efforts, the picture may look different.
The value of the marketplace seems to depend less on the platform itself, and more on how it fits into the rest of the business behind it.
Note for WooCommerce: discoverability doesn't have to come only from rankings and install counts. One thing I admire about Shopify is the "Built for Shopify" program, which rewards apps that meet a higher standard for quality, performance, UX, and support. A similar badge could help merchants identify trusted products while giving newer plugins a way to stand out beyond simply accumulating installs and reviews over time.Number of Installs
One thing that stands out when you look at the WooCommerce Marketplace over time is how install counts tend to plateau.
Even well known and widely used extensions often sit in the tens of thousands of active installs rather than scaling into very large numbers. For a marketplace that powers a significant part of the WooCommerce ecosystem, that feels like a relatively contained range.
I don’t think this is necessarily surprising. The market itself is fragmented, with many overlapping solutions for similar problems. In that context, install counts may naturally distribute across a long tail rather than concentrating around a few dominant products.
Still, it raises an interesting question about scale. If most successful plugins eventually settle into a certain ceiling, then growth looks different compared to other software distribution channels where network effects or virality can lead to much larger user bases.
What I take from this is not a conclusion about viability, but another factor to consider when thinking about discoverability. Install counts become both a signal and a limit. They help new customers make decisions, but they also reflect how far a product can realistically go within the marketplace itself.
Note for WooCommerce: marketplace authors currently operate with very little context. Is 1,000 installs good? Is 10,000 exceptional? Are some categories growing while others are saturated? More ecosystem-level benchmarks would help developers better understand the opportunities available to them.Search and Categories
Beyond install counts, the other part of discoverability that feels important is how people actually find products inside the marketplace.
In most cases, this comes down to search and category browsing. Users either start with a specific problem and search for a solution, or they browse through categories and compare options that look similar on the surface.
From an author point of view, this creates a very specific dynamic. You are not only competing with other plugins in your category, but also competing for position inside a structure you do not fully control. Where your product appears in search results or within a category listing can have a big impact on visibility, especially for newer products that do not yet have strong social proof.
At the same time, categories also shape perception. Being listed alongside well known plugins can be helpful, but it can also make it harder for smaller or newer products to stand out if users tend to gravitate toward the most familiar names.
What I find interesting here is how much of discoverability is influenced by structure rather than promotion. It is not only about how good a plugin is or how it is marketed, but also about how easily it fits into the way the marketplace is organized and how users naturally browse it.
For themes, this is slightly different, especially if you can identify great niches:
Note for WooCommerce: consider publishing more information about how marketplace search and rankings work. The WordPress.org plugin directory has documented many of the signals that influence visibility, which helps developers understand what they can improve. Greater transparency around search, category rankings, reviews, install counts, update frequency, and other factors would make the WooCommerce Marketplace feel more transparent and help vendors invest their time in the right areas.5. Customer and Data Ownership
This is probably the area that interests me the most.
When you sell independently, you usually own the customer relationship. You can communicate directly, understand purchasing behavior, measure conversions, and build long-term relationships around your products.
Marketplaces naturally change that dynamic. The platform sits between the author and the customer, and every marketplace draws that line differently.
I don’t think there is a right or wrong approach here. The question is whether authors feel they have enough information and enough access to grow their businesses effectively.
Personally, this is where I struggle the most with the marketplace model. Over the years, I’ve invested a lot of time into building an audience through content, newsletters, courses, events, and community. That direct relationship has always been one of the most valuable assets in my business.
Looking at the WooCommerce Marketplace, I can understand why some developers are perfectly happy to trade customer ownership for distribution. If the goal is simply to sell a plugin, that tradeoff may be completely reasonable. But if the goal is to build a broader business around that product, the equation starts to look very different.
Several of the developers I spoke to mentioned the same thing. They appreciate the additional visibility and credibility that comes with an official marketplace listing, but they also feel limited by the lack of customer data, marketing permissions, and performance insights. The marketplace can generate sales, but it is much harder to build a relationship with the people behind those sales.
The more I think about it, the more I believe this comes down to a simple question: are you trying to sell software, or are you trying to build an audience around it? Depending on your answer, customer ownership may be either a minor detail or one of the most important factors in the decision.
Note for WooCommerce: customer ownership doesn't have to be all or nothing. Consider creating more opportunities for customers to opt into direct communication with plugin authors, whether through newsletters, product updates, educational content, or community resources. This would allow vendors to build relationships with interested users while keeping customer choice and privacy firmly in their hands.6. Pricing
One area I also wanted to understand better is pricing.
From what I can tell in the vendor agreement, there is an expectation that pricing remains consistent across channels. In practice, this means you are not really free to position the same product at different price points depending on where it is sold, at least not without running into friction or policy concerns:
Even beyond the formal rules, there is a more practical limitation. When you sell through the marketplace, your pricing is tied to a system you do not fully control. That affects how flexible you can be with discounts, bundles, and promotional strategies compared to selling directly on your own site.
This becomes more relevant once you start thinking about a broader product ecosystem. Many plugin businesses rely on cross-sells, upgrades, and bundled offers to increase lifetime value. If part of your sales happen inside the marketplace and part happen outside, keeping everything aligned can become more complex than it first appears.
What I find interesting here is that pricing is not just about the number itself. It is about how much freedom you have to experiment with that number over time, and how much of your commercial strategy is shaped by the platform you are selling through.
Note for WooCommerce: pricing is only one part of the equation. Developers also need context. Consider publishing more marketplace benchmarks around categories, conversion rates, renewals, and install growth so vendors can better understand the potential return on their investment.7. What Happens After Launch
Getting accepted and releasing your first WooCommerce Marketplace plugin is only the beginning.
In many ways, launching the product may be the easiest part of the journey. Once customers start using it, the real work begins.
Every plugin requires ongoing maintenance. There are WooCommerce updates to test against, bugs to fix, documentation to improve, new features to consider, and customer expectations to manage. WooCommerce itself evolves quickly, which means extension authors need to keep up with a constantly moving target.
From the outside, it’s difficult to know how much of this work is driven by customer demand and how much is driven by marketplace requirements. A plugin can be technically complete, yet still require a surprising amount of effort simply to remain healthy, compatible, and competitive.
Support is part of that equation as well.
Some products generate very little support. Others create a steady stream of tickets, questions, edge cases, and feature requests. The amount of support work often depends on factors that have little to do with code quality. The complexity of the product, the type of customer, the quality of the documentation, and the expectations set before purchase can all play a role.
What I find particularly interesting is how the marketplace influences that experience. Does selling through an official channel create more trust and reduce support requests? Or does it increase expectations because customers assume there is an additional layer of review and endorsement behind every product?
This is also where the economics of the marketplace become more interesting. The 30% revenue share is easy to focus on when discussing sales, but maintaining a plugin is not a one-time cost. It is an ongoing commitment that can last for years. Understanding how much work happens after launch is just as important as understanding how much revenue a plugin generates.
For someone considering the marketplace today, I think this is one of the biggest unknowns. Not whether you can build a plugin, but whether you’re prepared to support, maintain, and improve it long after the initial release.
Note for WooCommerce: consider sharing more data about what happens after launch. How often do successful extensions get updated? How many support requests do they typically receive? What does long-term maintenance actually look like? For developers evaluating the marketplace, understanding the ongoing commitment may be just as valuable as understanding the revenue opportunity.Wrapping Up: The Questions I’m Left With
First of all, thanks for taking the time out of your day to read this!
Second, the more I look into the WooCommerce Marketplace, the more I realize this is a question about priorities.
Every developer values different things. Some want the reach and credibility that comes from being part of an established marketplace. Others want complete control over pricing, customer relationships, marketing, and reporting. Most people probably fall somewhere in the middle.
What surprised me most is that I started this journey assuming the hard part was building the product. Thanks to AI and modern tools, that assumption no longer feels true. Building a plugin is still a significant commitment, but it feels more achievable today than it did a few years ago.
The bigger question may be what happens after the product is ready. Where do you sell it? How much control are you willing to give up? What do you expect in return? And what kind of business are you trying to build in the first place?
I don’t have definitive answers to those questions. In fact, after researching this topic, I probably have more questions than when I started. What I do know is that getting listed on the WooCommerce Marketplace is no longer something I automatically see as the end goal.
It’s simply one option among many. And before choosing it, I think it’s worth understanding exactly what comes with that decision.
Thanks for putting this together, Rodolfo. I really appreciate the effort that went into capturing the different angles here, especially the way you summarized the voice of the community in such a clear and constructive way.
There’s a lot of great feedback in the post, and I think the balanced framing is especially helpful. It recognizes the value the WooCommerce Marketplace can provide, while also being very clear about the areas where we need to keep improving, especially around discovery, visibility for new products, vendor data, and the overall value exchange.
I’ve shared the post internally with the team at Woo, along with a summary of the main learnings I think we should take from it. Thanks again for taking the time to put this together. It’s the kind of feedback that helps us have better conversations and, hopefully, make better decisions.
Music to my ears, thanks so much Adrian!
An interesting and informative article that is very well balanced. I am a novice plug-in developer and I have decided to go the Freemius route in part because of the very low fees. Author might want to write a similar article about Freemius. As a novice developer without any products in the market I cannot comment authoritatively on discoverability which in my experience is perhaps the greatest challenge certainly greater writing the software. However I do like the fremium model because I think it is true to the open source philosophy of giving back through functional free tiers.
Thank you, James! Freemius is definitely a popular choice in the WooCommerce ecosystem. The tradeoff is that it doesn’t provide the same discoverability benefits as the WooCommerce Marketplace, since it’s not a dedicated marketplace for WooCommerce extensions.
I think if Woo can improve even more the discoverability thing, especially for new vendors and new products, it can actually become a great platform for founders